There’s unique travel and there’s really unique travel. Definitely the second category for the Oleynik family’s rides on 132-year-old ‘penny-farthing’ high-wheel bicycles.
They’ve just completed a north-south trip from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on the Canadian border, to the marker at Key West, Florida that is the southernmost point of the U.S. Four years ago, they did an west-east jaunt from San Francisco to Boston.
The riders, 61-year-old Randy Oleynik and his 30-year-old daughter Amy, are accompanied on the treks by a support van driving by Randy Oleynik’s wife, Amy’s mother. Randy first got interested in the antique cycles when he was invited to join a club in 1992.
The pair ride about sixty miles a day on the trips, which they hope will encourage people to get outside and to ride bikes. Randy told Canadian Travel News that “When people see us going by, number one they smile, so it’s a great reaction,” said Randy Oleynik. “They wave, they yell, they beep their horns, they swerve, they’ll stop their cars in the middle of the road.”
