The Crank House, Shop & Lounge
Hi! We’re Paul and Eileen, the owners of The Crank House, Shop & Lounge. While out on a walk during the summer of 2020, we started talking about buying a place in Colorado for mountain bike trips, but decided it was too much of a hassle to get us (and our bikes) back and forth from Minneapolis. So the conversation turned to how great the trails are only two hours away in Cuyuna. Fast forward four whole days, and we became the owners of what is now the Crank House, Shop & Lounge. Nothing like impulse shopping during COVID, huh?
We created the Crank House, Shop & Lounge as a place that we would want to stay and with all the amenities that make for memorable trips with friends and family. So we spent the fall and winter fixing up and furnishing the Crank House, Shop & Lounge. During an early snowfall in October, Eileen was sweeping snow from the deck steps so Paul could see the joists as he was drilling in screws. We finished remodeling the Crank Shop & Lounge in the spring of 2021 -- Paul spent many hours on a ladder with buckets of sheetrock mud and a trowel. Eileen painted or stained pretty much every square of the house and shop. The before and after pictures are pretty amazing.
As fate would have it, our very first guest was exactly one year to the day after we purchased the Crank House.
We hope you'll be our next guest and enjoy the Crank House, Shop & Lounge as much as we do!
Paul & Eileen
We’re biking and outdoor enthusiasts -- Paul even proposed to Eileen during a bike outing on a tandem. We joke that Eileen said “yes” in order to ensure she had a ride back to the hotel!
Paul started cycling in high school, taking summer bikepacking trips with his buddies. In 2012, three days after returning from Colorado to crew for a friend that completed the Leadville 100 MTB, Paul had a mountain bike and has been hooked ever since. In addition to completing the Leadville 100 twice and Leadville Stage race once, Paul’s completed Lutsen, Chequamegon, and Borah Epic as well as road and gravel events including Hillfest, Tour de Tonka, Miesville 56 and Horribly Hilly. When he’s not riding or playing hockey, he’s the CTO for a software company .
Eileen’s biking story started with a red Coast-to-Coast 10-speed that she bought while in college. She upgraded to a Schwin and later added a tag-along when her son was too big for the bike seat. She started to get serious about road biking when Paul gave her a Trek Domane for her 50th birthday, and completed her first century ride the following year. A couple of years later, Paul gave her a mountain bike for her birthday (are you noticing a pattern yet?). She now enjoys riding the green and blue trails at Cuyuna; no black diamonds (yet). After leaving her former CFO job, she started her own accounting consulting business and enjoys cooking and working in her flower gardens.
In addition to hiking many parks in Minnesota and Wisconsin, we hiked our first Colorado 14er in 2014 and hiked the Grand Canyon the first time later that year. We try to squeeze in a hiking trip to Colorado or Arizona annually. We recently started paddle boarding and also can be found kayaking or doing just about anything that's "people powered". Paul and Eileen have two amazing adult sons; one thoroughly enjoys road and mountain biking and the other is an avid muskie fishemen that's adding mountain biking to his activities list after staying at the Crank House a few times.