Not Quite Ordinaries

Another way to simulate an Ordinary is to bodge up a big wheel. The Scallywags did this around 2002, thinking they would be a pennyfarthing gang. One boneshaking ride on the thing and they started making tallbikes instead.




I call these "Not Quite Ordinaries" because they are attempts to recreate the actual Ordinary construction. The middle one is Mike Phippen's, who inspired my first pennyfakething. The last one was a kid who came to Bike Kill.

See more here.

Here's a member of Rat Patrol Russia with yet another take on the pennyfarthing:

Three-penny farthing

In 2002, a Canadian named Paul Neugebauer built this "Three-Penny Farthing" using a unicycle wheel:



Inspired by his design, Tongue of Fire of Adelaide, South Australia made one too:

Pickup Styx- the first pennyfakething

While riding with recreationists in Critical Mass in 2003, I often wished I could make a pennyfarthing. The problem is just where to get a large, fixed wheel- otherwise the bike is very simple to construct. I researched making your own unicycle wheel, figuring I'd just make it larger. I found lots of tales of horror about trying to drill through axles.

Then I saw a picture from Marin County of an odd reverse chopper. The maker had tilted a frame upwards, reversed the bottom bracket, and mounted a seat on the extended fork! The result looked like a chopper that rode backwards. This gave me the idea that I could cheat and skip the big wheel if I just flipped a frame upwards. This was the result:



The bike was deadly. A small bump or slight grade and you'd crash forward, catching your legs on the handlebars. The terror of riding it set me on the path of developing a pleasant, retrofuturistic faux ordinary.