Pee Wee Herman’s Bicycle

Breaking news folks, winter happens in January! The news media is in apoplectic overload as storm Juno simultaneously bears down upon both the Big Apple and Bean Town. Gone are all of the archaic terminology that was once used to sensationalize winter weather. The polar vortex is like so last year. #Snowmageddon? Please! This year’s new term of art to describe imminent meteorological disaster is bombogenesis, an extreme storm formation, often characterized by a sudden barometric pressure drop of 24 millibars in a 24 hour period. It even sounds scary!

On Sunday, Anne and I once again traveled across the river in order to attend Trailnet’s Bike Swap Meet. Being the guy who has everything, at least bike related, I didn’t buy anything, but Anne got some more bike clothes. We also got some ideas for mini-bicycling vacations this year. One that sounded rather interesting was the Tri-State tour. It starts in Indiana and ends in Wisconsin and travels the length of Chicago’s waterfront, 85 miles in one day. It should be pretty flat and hopefully with a tailwind too.

Pictured is a reproduction of The Best Bike in the Whole World, the Pee-Wee Herman bicycle that was prominently featured in his movie, Pee-Wee’s Great Adventure. In his movie the eccentric man-child, Pee-Wee Herman, embarks on the big adventure of his life and travels across the US, as he sets out to find his beloved bike, when it was stolen in broad daylight. Previously, I’ve blogged about this bike and the Dan Zettwoch poster of it that I purchased at Art Crank / Cranks-Giving. Follow the above link to view the poster. It will annotate all of the gadgets that are on the bike. Since it has lots of detail in it, I’ve posted this photograph at a larger than normal size, so click on it to see it all. This was my favorite bicycle at this year’s bike swap meet.