For Local bikemaker, it's an ordinary world

You never get a flat tire with these bikes, but falling off can get ugly.

“It rides like a unicycle with a training wheel in back,” cyclist Paul Rust said.
A big unicycle. The front wheel is 53 inches high and followed by a tiny wheel in back, a style known as “ordinary” or “penny-farthing” bikes.

The gray-haired grandfather often rides around town on a hot-pink high-wheeler, turning heads as he casually cruises along Tejon Street downtown or through Garden of the Gods.

Rust, a 58-year-old machinist who grew up in Security, started making the bikes 25 years ago with the help of his brothers.  But he later quit for other pursuits.

He recently got back in the groove in a shop, Rocky Mountain High Wheels, off U.S. 24 in west Colorado Springs.
The 30-pound bikes are modern counterparts of the antique mode of early-cycling transit.
The symbol of the late Victorian era still demands a certain etiquette from the rider.

“People do notice you,” Rust said. “It’s like being in a fishbowl the whole time.”
But high visibility has its rewards.

“Everybody takes pictures with cell phones. Kids say, ‘That’s bad. Cool bike, dude.’ Older people say it in an English accent: ‘Penny-farthing, that’s nice. Yes, quite’,” Rust said.

Riders scramble to the seat using a peg in the back to give them a leg-up. It’s easier than it looks, Rust said.
The height is a mixed blessing — the downfalls are just that.

“I’ve taken five or six pretty good headers,” Rust said. “You go over the front when you go, so that can be a little dangerous.” Still, it’s safer than it was a century ago.

The speed is about the same as any bike.

“It goes as fast as your legs will go,” Rust said.

Rust credits his family with fostering his free-spirit side.

Rust and his brood of five bike-loving brothers took six of the high wheelers to Ireland in 1990.

One brother, 56-year-old Michael, 56, was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame and Museum in 1991. He went missing five months ago under what authorities term suspicious circumstances.

His blood was found near his home south of Salida in Saguache County.
The family has established a $25,000 reward for credible information.

“We work on the case every day,” Rust said.