Perched atop a penny farthing, Simon Weir spreads equal parts confusion and joy as he "swirls" around Lake Burley Griffin. This weekend he'll be riding high at the National Penny Farthing Championships in Tasmania.
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00:00Like their mouth drops to the ground, it's just a delight to make a genuine smile pop
00:08up.
00:09Well, I'm Simon Weir.
00:10I'm a local bike mechanic around the ACT.
00:13I've got this magnificent piece of engineering called the penny farthing.
00:17When did you get the penny?
00:19Well, I bought it when I started my business actually.
00:22It was a bit of a thrill.
00:23It was kind of a crazy time, we were going into COVID, so it was a bit of a crazy buy
00:28for a crazy, crazy time, if you will.
00:30My first day at 99bikes, my team leader sat down and showed me these tabs for every one
00:37of the suppliers on the computer, and he said, you can absolutely buy anything in Australia
00:41in the bike industry, even racing level penny farthings.
00:44And my ear had my brain dribbling out through it.
00:47I was psyched.
00:48I was like, my penny's coming, I've got to be ready.
00:52So I took it to a quiet street, you know, it was a bit dark even, so no one could watch
00:56me in the seat.
00:58And yeah, it's very different.
01:01So when you press on the pedal, the whole wheel wants to turn and swivel.
01:05And so then you have to turn and pull back from the top.
01:08And so it's this real, like, Aberciser 3000 kind of movement, where you've got like a
01:13twist through the core, you know, a push on the feet.
01:18And then you're in this really upright position that's similar to running.
01:20It's a very sort of different movement than you would call like riding a bike.
01:25So I like to call the verb for riding a penny farthing, swirling.
01:30So swirling along on the penny farthing is truly the way.
01:35I've clocked it in at 30 k's an hour for an hour, a bit over an hour.
01:40And then like in a sprint, we can get up to like 45 even, it depends on the terrain and
01:47the weather.
01:48But yeah, we can move.
01:50This is called a moustache handlebar, is it not?
01:53So where'd the handlebar moustache come from?
01:58I'm the national champion at the moment, but I need to go down and show them how to ride
02:03a bike again.