If you are interested in making an off-season road trip, there is a mecca for the bicycling-obsessed in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, N.Y. The Pedaling History Museum has a collection of some 400 bicycles that date from a wooden velocipede of 1817 to many high-wheel ordinary bikes of the 1890s and the chain-driven “safety” bikes that followed. It is one of the world’s largest collections of bicycles.
But soon, it will be gone. The Buffalo News this week reported that museum owner Carl Burgwardt announced plans to sell the $4 million collection to an overseas businessman. The museum would close by January after the collection is shipped overseas.
Burgwardt had planned to move his collection into a new waterfront museum district in Buffalo, but has given up on those plans and is now cashing out and retiring.
Orchard Park is about a six-hour trip from Lancaster by car. The museum is at 3943 North Buffalo Road, 716-662-3853. During the winter, the museum is open Friday, Saturday and Monday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays, from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7.50 for adults, $4.65 for children, $6.75 for seniors and $22.50 for a family of up to eight people.
