Bicycling: A Year Round Sport!

Last week, my husband and I took a "local" sight-seeing trip up to New Bremen, Ohio to visit the Bicycling Museum there. Housed in a 19th century commercial building, the Bicycle Museum of America is largely composed of the Schwinn Bicycle company collection which was purchased by the owner of the Crown Equipment Corporation and opened to the public to create some tourism for this little town. New Bremen is charming, and the Bicycle Museum is located next to a reconstructed (and functioning) Lock on the Erie/Ohio Canal.

The museum is stuffed full of bicycles. Since today was such a slithery afternoon, I thought I'd share this one with you. It's a late 19th century/early 20th century effort to turn cycling into a year round sport in the northern climes. Although the manufacturer is unknown, it was probably made in New York. The bicycle (ice-cycle?) uses a standard frame, but the front fork is replaced with a ski, and the back wheel is fitted out with a spiked wheel to ride on the snow.

Here's the rear wheel. I wouldn't want to accidentally get run over by this spiky thing.

There were other renditions of a bicycle built for snow, but none of them went into major production and they are very rare.

I always enjoyed riding my mountain bike in the winter on Mt. Higby Reservoir trails in Connecticut prior to children. One trip, I was following Ian Thompson on ice and we were going along just fine until ultra-cautious Carlos yelled to me that it probably wasn't too good of an idea to ride on the sheer ice....of course that was when I started sliding sideways down the trail. Never trust a cautious Cuban! They'll MAKE wierd things happen! It didn't dampen my enthusiasm for it though.


I think though, that perhaps a tricycle arrangement might have been more successful than this one.

After you drool over all the bicycles, you could go just down the street and eat at La Piazza, New Bremen...a sister restaurant to La Piazza in Troy....WONDERFUL Italian food.

So...you see? Ohio isn't really a fly-over state...