The Twelve Days of Tammy World, Day Three: The Bicycle Museum of America

   One of the things my sister and I, (and Tammy World), had planned for our weekend was a trip to The Bicycle Museum of America, in New Bremen, Ohio. The reason we wanted to go, other than cool bicycles in general, is that they have one of the bikes from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure"! Well, normally they do...

That is actually Tammy World at the bottom of the middle window.

  When we entered, the girl behind the counter sold us our tickets, explained that there were three floors, and how the bikes were categorized, and  we weren't to touch anything except the green pedal car, and one other thing I can't remember. Then she sent us on our way. There was no mention made of the Pee Wee bike. My sister described how we felt during the girl's schpiel as how Pee Wee felt waiting to hear when the Alamo tour was going to see the basement. Neither of us wanted to ask where the Pee Wee bike was, because we are grown women in our 60's who didn't want to sound like Pee Wee Herman groupies. But we feared, since she didn't mention it, that it wasn't there.

  So we toured the museum. There were a lot of really interesting bikes.

A Gene Autrey bike.

And a Hopalong Cassidy bike. Both have holsters and guns, but the Gene Autrey one has a horse on the front!

My sister on the right, trying to avoid being photographed.

Practical and beautiful.

A wooden kids bike.

A side by side two seater.

Completely wooden, even the wheels!

  Tammy World even found one about her size, but it was behind glass, along with a Tammy sized anvil.

   Of course, Tammy took full advantage of one of the few things she could touch.

  She found somebody her size to hang out with but he wouldn't let her try his bike.

  And, of course, she had to cause a little trouble.  

  I tried to be arty.

  At the end of the tour we bought a couple of souvenirs, and I had to ask: What happened to the Pee Wee bike? Just our luck. The Pee Wee bike, along with a few others, is currently on loan to a museum in New York. It will be back about the beginning of next year! Of course it will! We're planning to go back at some point when the bike is actually there.

  Other than the bike museum, where three whole, actual, live people came in after us, the town was like a ghost town. We spotted a family coming out of the coffee and pastry shop, (and then the door was locked in our faces!), and a few random cars went down the empty street. You could literally stand in the middle of the street and take pictures, because there was no risk of getting run over. 

A car!

  It was a very pretty, well kept town. To paraphrase Monty Python's "Cheese Shop" sketch, it was certainly uncontaminated by people. 

  It had a log cabin.

And a lock.

The lock was to get boats down the Erie Canal.

And some random lions in the park, because those are native to Ohio...

  My sister made me take a picture of this sign. She found it amusing.

"Don't start!" Yeah! Just don't start with me!

  We drove around and there weren't even cars in the driveways, or parked in front of the houses. We did finally see two people sitting on their porch. Nobody told them about the part where the whole town hides from strangers, I guess.

  Eventually we ran across a place that looked open, and went in. The lady at the counter directed us to the 'busy' area of town, where we perused a toy store and a pie shop, and bought pie we shouldn't have. (But it was good, and we're fat anyway...)

  We never made it to our third destination for the weekend. We had planned a trip to Malabar Farm. I had Christmas stockings to make though, and I am really slow and don't sew well. My sister attributes the running out of time to the fact that I won't take advice on how to do stuff. Me? Would I not take advice? Would I always have to do things my way? Really!!

  You can see the webpage of The Bicycle Museum of America HERE.

  That's it for today. Tomorrow Tammy will show you some stuff.