2023 Wheelmen Meet at Old Car Festival, Greenfield Village/Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan

This video is an assembly of short videos I took over the four days I was at The Henry Ford Museum's "Greenfield Village", both as part of my attendance at The Wheelmen vintage bicycle club's annual "Meet" (convention) AND the village's recurring "Old Car Festival". The video sections are not entirely in chronological order.
Keywords: Henry Ford, Greenfield Village, Old Car Festival, Wheelmen, highwheel bicycle, Ordinary bicycle, Penny-Farthing bicycle, Ford Homes Historic District, Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion
Table of video segments:
00:00 Highwheel bicycle ride around Greenfield Village
11:37 Old bicycles & cars at Detroit Central Market
15:05 Old bicycles "Pass-in-Review" (Saturday version)
38:13 Model T ride around Greenfield Village
45:14 Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion House" at Henry Ford Museum
54:01 Armington & Sims Machine Shop, Greenfield Village
56:48 The Wheelmen's "OHWT", a 10 mile ride through Ford Homes Historic District
1:11:12 1908 Renault AG ride around Greenfield Village

[@genericusername5520]

what a wonderful video, and what a great exhibition
did anyone happen to have early models of FOLDING bicycles? I am curious

[@davidgriffin14]

Were the bicycles back then only for the upper class or could someone like a factory worker afford them? Also, did they have many paved roads back then? I'm going to have to do some research now that my curiosity is peaked.

[@youtuuba]

davidgriffin, I wrote a fairly long reply to your query, but then CZcams glitched and the comment was lost. I don't want to re-write the whole thing. Take a look at the Wikipedia page on "Thomas Stevens (cyclist)", and I recommend reading his book "Around the World on a Bicycle", which is still in print and available on Amazon; he did his amazing ride in the mid 1880s. This detailed travelogue gives quite a good idea what roads were like back then, not just in north America, but in all the countries he rode through on his highwheel bicycle.
Regarding who could afford the highwheel bikes, as with most new things (air travel, computers, electric cars, etc) the "early adopters" have to pay a LOT more than what it eventually ended up costing. Initially, a typical professional man then (think upper-middle class American these days) had to spend between one quarter and one third of their income for a year to purchase a new highwheel bike; this is similar to somebody today buying a nice new luxury SUV or something like that. Your 'blue collar' workers could not afford them until later on when bikes became much more commonplace and prices fell to more affordable levels.
But the wealth and clout of the early adopters was compounded by their political leverage when they formed the first bicycle clubs, and these spearheaded the "good roads" movement that convinced national, state and local governments to spend more of their budget on improving and maintaining roads. This was long before automobiles started to use the roads.

[@dunedigger5406]

Is there a way to message you personally withoult leaving a general youtube comment? Thanks, Jeremy

[@youtuuba]

Dunedigger, not that I am aware of.

[@clffliese26]

I didn't see you doing any of those riding tricks. Not that I blame you. I wouldn't do that stuff on a "modern" bike.

[@youtuuba]

Clffiese, where would you have seen me doing tricks? All this video is from my own perspective.......

[@clffliese26]

@@youtuuba That's what I meant. You didn't do them and I don't blame you.

[@youtuuba]

@@clffliese26 , I did do tricks, but not while holding a camera, so I don't think you meant THAT.....