A Bicycle Built for You

A couple of days of rest in Wapakoneta before heading into Michigan for the summer, a cold front has blown in so the temps are down about 15 degrees, but when we woke up this morning the water line was frozen. Must be time to head south again. For years I've been wanting to stop at the Bicycle Museum for America in New Bremen, its only about 20 miles from here so we headed over there.

When we got there the first thing we noticed was how neat and clean everything was, the entire street looked like a post card from the late 1800's with every building immaculate. We found out the reason for this is that the Crane Equipment Corporation bought up the entire street for their corporate headquarters, instead of one big building they have numerous beautiful old buildings. The one we were interested in was the corner one with the museum.

We were met my an elderly gentleman that it turns out knew everything there is to now about bicycles and was able to answer any question put to him. We watched a twenty minute film which showed you how to ride an old fashion bike wheel cycle, which came in handy later, then we start checking out all the bikes which ranged from a 1816 model with no pedals to the most modern racing machines.

I've been in love with bikes all my life and before I meet Cathy and got married ( a bachelor until I was 36) I lived on bicycles. One of the guys I worked with would pick me up in the morning and I would throw my bike in the back of his pickup, then after work I would bike the 20 miles home, if I drove to work I would bike out to a suburban coffee shop when I got home for a round trip ride of 25-30 miles. When I took my vacation I would load two bags on the back rack and two bags on the front rack drive to Ohio,Indiana or one of the Carolina's, park the car and take off on the bike for two or three weeks, I would average about 5000 miles a summer on the bikes, so this place was like heaven to me.

As usual, I took a ton of pictures, so I'll just post a few of the ones I thought we more interesting, we were there close to three hours and we could have probably stayed a little longer, when we were getting ready to leave the host said “you guys really love bikes, ya wanna see some more” of course we said yes, so he lead us to a door, opened it up and said there's a lot more down the basement, down there we found more bikes that they rotate on display and three rooms full of bikes that were waiting to be restored and brought back to life. I know what I'm going to be dreaming about tonight.

One good turn deserves another.

........No chain just Gears

The orange bike is a 2008 delivery model, the one next to it is almost identical but it was made in the late 1800's. Nothing is new.

.....How the Pennyfarthing got it's name.