The lost holiday.

        I started the New Year with a very fortunate failure.  I was going to the annual "Hair of the Dog" ride sponsored by a local pub, but wasn't prompt enough.  I showed up a couple of minutes after scheduled 1PM start and they were all gone.   I thought about trying to catch up, but that would be too much like trying and I'm not real good at trying, especially when the people ahead are really known for trying, really hard.  I found out later that they took a different route than previous years so I would have been trying real hard at being by myself.

So I took a different route and went to the Museum which was open for the holiday and still had an exhibit of bicycles that spanned through much of the history of our beloved machines.

     I was met right at the door with the fiberglass "moon" cycle which was inspired by our space race back in the early '60's.  It was cool looking but I doubt it would endure much abuse.

No museum display could be without a couple penny-farthings or

steel welded boneshakers.

early attempts at chainless bikes,

later attempts at something resembling something odd,

a Raliegh touring bike which I remember seeing in a bike shop in my own day,

(can anybody explain why this is?),

a real advance in the method and madness,

as well as several steel versions,

of 50's cruisers,

of different brands,

the plastic space bike was based upon.

as well as a penny farthing with some weird pedaling mechanism I didn't understand.  It may have been me, because I felt lost already that morning, but there didn't seem to be any organization to the displays, a lot were displayed drive side wrong, but it was a nice collections of bikes to look at. 

Oh yeah, In another room I stumbled across a helmet,

which they say is special because it has lights in it.  YAWN!