Jeff Groman brings his Classic Cycle shop and museum to the heart of Winslow.

At bike seller Jeff Groman’s new store downtown, the 120-year old Victor high-wheeler isn’t for sale, whatever the price.

Neither is the heavy steel contraption that sports one of cycling’s first inflated tires.

The stick-shifting, banana-seated Schwinn Sting-Ray is off limits, too, as are the shiny, bare-bones racers that broke world speed records in the 1930s.

While these gilded dinosaurs of cycling’s early days are priceless in Groman’s eyes, many of their decendents are priced and ready to spin off the racks and onto Winslow Way from the newly relocated Classic Cycle store.

“Everything is better about this store,” said Groman, who has operated his Bainbridge bicycle shop in the Village Shopping Center off High School Road for over six years.

“We’re adding another nuts and bolts store to downtown,” he said. “And it’s great for us. It’s much larger, we have more display space, more repair space and we’re much more accessible for people. And it gives us room to move our museum.”

Now more than double in size, the new Classic Cycle shop will absorb the state’s one-and-only cycling museum, which Groman has operated in Kingston for over a decade.

“These bikes are great and need to be seen,” the 23-year island resident said, standing under the single-speed racer that Doris Kopsky rode into history as the first women’s national champion.

A photo, dated 1937, has Kopsky posing proudly astride the bike, dressed in a star-spangled outfit that also happens to hang in a case above a doorway.

Staring up at the outfit’s faded red and white stripes, Groman said he hopes to link modern cyclists with the sport’s long history.

“I want them to appreciate that right now is one stop in the bicycle tradition (and) that they’re a part of the fabric,” he said.

The museum is set to reopen at the shop’s 310 Winslow Way location by late next week. Over 200 bicycles and wheeled oddities, including a pedal-powered riding lawn mower, vintage baby carriages and soapbox racers, will rotate through the museum, which can exhibit up to 60 bikes.

Groman thinks his museum will help form a triumvirate of destination museums in downtown Winslow.

“You’ve got the historical museum, a kids museum and now a bicycle museum” within walking distance of the ferry, he said.

“And it’ll give something for the males to do while their wives shop at Churchmouse (Yarns and Teas),” interjected bike mechanic Paul Johnson.

Groman said his shop wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t infuse his love for biking with his passion for the sport’s history.

His formative years were spent in New Jersey, a place that was “believe it or not, the center of the bicycle racing universe,” he said.

Growing up at the hub of the pedal-powered cosmos meant cycling’s stars often came into close orbit.

“The grandfather of one of my buddies was one of the first great pro racers in the country,” he said. “We used to play with his old racing bike parts that filled his basement. I was 7 then, the age when a person is wide open to everything. What ever happens at 7 comes rushing in and stays with you.”

Groman’s first bike was a green Schwinn with book rack, headlight, horn and chrome fenders.

Groman talks fondly of his first bicycling love, but not as the two-wheeler that got away.

“It’s over here on the wall,” he said as he bolted to a back room that will soon serve as his museum. “I never got rid of it. I never throw anything away, to my wife’s displeasure.”

Groman was soon riding his Schwinn to hang out in neighborhood bike shops, where he “became a big enough nuisance that they handed me a tire iron and told me to get to work.”

Retired racers also congregated at the shops to swap tales of their glory days. Groman absorbed the stories, but with a skeptical ear.

“When I first started listening to the old-timers, I thought they were just drunks who worked at the Budweiser brewing plant,” he said. “Later, I looked at the old trade journals from the ‘30s and saw them in it. I said ‘Wow, they really are the real thing.’”

Photos of those cycling champions now hang all over Groman’s store and museum. He’s most proud of a large black and white picture showing Madison Square Garden packed to the brim with race fans.

“This velodrome toured the country for races,” he said, pointing to the photo. “Cycling was the premier professional sport in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Along with boxing, it was where the money was made. It wasn’t in baseball, basketball, football or hockey. But now, it’s almost totally unknown.”

Despite bike racing’s sideline status in the professional sports world, Groman said cycling is growing, especially on Bainbridge Island.

“Now there’s two bike shops within a heartbeat of each other,” Groman said, referring to the B.I. Cycle shop a block to the west. “But that’s a good thing. Now there’s two shops downtown that, combined, offer anything you can buy in Seattle.”

Groman thinks the island’s passion for cycling will keep both shops busy as residents continue to cycle to work and for play.

“People know it gets you out of your car, it’s healthy, it saves fuel, it’s social, it’s beautiful,” he said. “Look back (at cycling’s history) – it changed the world. Now it’s going to save the world.”

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Ride on in

Classic Cycle’s new shop is located at 310 Winslow Way East, next door to Isla Bonita restaurant. Parking is offered on the street and to the rear of the store. Call 842-9191 for more information.