Randy and Amy Oleynik look as if they should be in sepia tones. One expects to see those antique, “high-wheel” bicycles — with the giant front tire — colored by the aged beige of photographic history.
Except the father-daughter pair aren’t confined to old photographs (although they take plenty of current ones). They’re actually on the move — in neon fitness fabrics and sunglasses made from modern-day materials — pedaling their antique contraptions from Michigan to Florida and coming soon to a Florida Key near you. The Oleyniks, with mom, Pam, following in a van, will arrive in Key West in the coming week, ending a cross-country ride that started a month or so ago in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
“I learned about this pair through my father, who’s a member of a high-wheeled bicycle club,” Key West resident Destiny Montgomery told the Keys Weekly. Montgomery is organizing a “Key West welcome” for the trio that will end their journey at (where else?) the Southernmost Point. “We’ve gotten the local bicycle groups — Key West Mile Markers and Key West Bike Club — in Key West to meet them at the Triangle when they arrive in Key West, and ride with them to the Southernmost Point. Key West hotelier Kate Miano is hosting them for the night at The Gardens Hotel. Montgomery will post their arrival date and time on Facebook and it’ll be on the Oleyniks’ blog as the details are finalized, according to weather.
“I think it’s such a fun story, and we could all use a little good news right now,” Montgomery said.
The Oleyniks aren’t raising money or awareness for anything. They’re just having a good time and getting a different perspective on the country, seeing it as they do from 52 inches above the road.
That’s right. Their front tires are more than four feet off the ground. Oh, and their bikes are 132 years old.
“My dad’s friends all ride modern-day high-wheels that look like the old ones, but Randy’s and Amy’s bikes are the real deal, built in 1888,” said Montgomery. “Can you imagine trying to fix them and maintain them to keep them on the road?”
And it’s not as if those bikes were built with gel seats — or any sort of saddlebags. Hence, mom and the van.
The family clocks about 60 miles a day and stops in local motels and restaurants, posting their adventures on a hilarious blog Amy writes at highwheelride.wordpress.com.
This is the family’s second long-distance high-wheeled ride. The first was four years ago, from Boston to San Francisco, which took 53 days. This is “Season 2,” as Amy Oleynik writes.
“Season 2 will feature your favorite SAG mom, Pam, all new special guests, and the legendary ibuprofen count,” she says online. “What will the weather be like? What song will Amy sing to annoy her dad? Who will we meet along the way? Will they stay 6 feet from us? (I have a stick that will make that answer a ‘yes’.) Stay tuned for the rest. Don’t worry, viewers, Amy and Randy will be taking all COVID precautions. We will have masks, sanitize our hotel room, wash hands often, and not lick doorknobs. The good thing about a cross country ride is that no one will be within 6 feet of us while we ride (face to face…. the cars, however….stay in your lane!) The fresh air and breeze will be with us as well. It is now under a contract to be a tailwind, so help me God.”
The two are the first father-daughter team to cross the United States via high wheel, and Amy is the second woman to ever do so.
What’s a high-wheel bike?
Also known as penny-farthings, the high-wheel was the first machine to be called a bicycle in the 1870s and 1880s.
The name “penny-farthing” “came from the British penny and farthing coins, the former being much larger than the latter, so that the side view resembles a larger penny leading a smaller farthing,” according to “Bicycle: the history” by David Herlihy. “Although the name ‘penny-farthing’ is now the most common, it was probably not used until the machines were nearly outdated,” Wikipedia states.
The rider could travel farther at higher speeds, as each rotation of the pedals moved the bicycle the circumference of the large front wheel.
Frenchman Eugène Meyer invented the high-wheeler in 1869, along with the wire-spoke tension wheel.
“It became obsolete from the late 1880s with the development of modern bicycles, which provided similar speed amplification via chain-driven gear trains and comfort through pneumatic tires, and were marketed in comparison to penny-farthings as “safety bicycles” because of the reduced danger of falling and the reduced height to fall from,” writes high-wheel historian Sheldon Brown.
“Although the trend was short-lived, the penny-farthing became a symbol of the late Victorian era. Its popularity also coincided with the birth of cycling as a sport,” Herlihy writes.
