Most bike news is thefts, close passes and crash reports. You scroll, you sigh, you wonder why you clicked.
These strange but true bike stories are the opposite. Twelve real cases where bikes went gloriously, ridiculously right, from a dog-approved burglary in California to a reunion in England that may get you a little misty at the end.
1. The Bike Thief Who Stopped to Cuddle the Family Dog
Picture a garage camera at 10:40 at night in July 2023. A stranger slips into a garage in San Diego, California to steal a bike. Then he meets the golden retriever.
Instead of running, he stops for belly rubs. You can hear him tell Ace on the video, “You’re the coolest dog I’ve ever known.”
San Diego Police later arrested a 42-year-old man after an anonymous tip. Their update said it best, “We’re thrilled to report the bicycle is back home, much to the delight of Ace, a very good boy.”
The bike was a black 3-speed worth about $1,300. Ace, clearly, was priceless.
If that restored a little faith, wait until you see what two friends built to settle a pub bet.
2. A Pub Bet Built the World’s Tallest Rideable Bike
It started the way bad ideas always start. Over drinks.
In November 2019, Nicolas Barrioz bet his friend David Peyrou that they could build the tallest rideable bicycle in the world. They set the record in Clermont-Ferrand, France, on a machine nicknamed Starbike.
The result measured 25 ft 5 in (7.77 m) tall. The chain alone stretched 53 ft (16 m).
David rode it unassisted for 330 ft (100 m) on May 14, 2022. He wore a safety harness on a zipwire, but it did not aid the bike’s balance.
As Nicolas explained, “The speed of the bike was the key to its stability.” Starbike needed at least 9 to 12 mph (15 to 20 km/h) to stay upright, so the speed was the key, not the harness.
For scale in the other direction, Sergey Dashevsky set the smallest rideable bicycle record in 2019 at just 3.31 inches (8.4 cm). The next one is just plain huge.
3. A 100-Inch Penny-Farthing and One With a Dinner-Plate Wheel
A penny-farthing is the Victorian high-wheeler with a giant front wheel and a tiny rear wheel. It looks impossible to ride. It almost is.
In London, England in June 2026, Neil Laughton of the Penny Farthing Club rode Big Bertha the required 330 ft (100 m). The front wheel measured 100 inches (254 cm), with handlebars 9 ft 3 in (282 cm) off the ground.
He called it “certainly the largest, certainly the most spectacular and certainly the most terrifying!” You can see why.
Then siblings Flo, 7, and Finn, 6, set the smallest rideable penny-farthing record on Little Bee. Its front wheel was just 11.4 inches (29 cm), same as a dinner plate.
Those tall Victorians pitched riders over the bars so often the design earned the nickname widow maker. A famous bike in a tree has a tall tale of its own.
4. The Bike in a Tree, and the Legend That Isn’t True
On Vashon Island, Washington, a bike is stuck in a tree that grew around the frame. The popular story says a boy left it there before going to war in 1914 and never came home.
That story is false, and the truth is funnier.
Don Puz left the bike in the woods in 1954 and never went back for it. As told in Don Puz’s own account, “That’s my bike,” he recalled. “I recognized it immediately.” He also admitted he “detested the little thing.”
A University of Washington biologist said someone likely hung the bike in an older tree that then grew around it. A children’s book, Red Ranger Came Calling, was later inspired by it.
Real speed, though, looks very different from a bike stuck in bark.
5. She Rode a Bicycle at 183.9 mph
Denise Mueller-Korenek did not do this on a bike path. She did it on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah on September 16, 2018.
She rode paced in the slipstream behind a dragster. That means she sat tucked in the dragster’s draft, sheltered from the wind. Pro race car driver Shea Holbrook drove the pace car.
Mueller-Korenek, 45 at the time, was towed for about the first 1.5 miles, then released into the draft for 3.5 miles. She reached 183.9 mph, breaking the 167 mph mark set in 1995 by Fred Rompelberg.
Her verdict afterward, “It was a crazy wild ride to 183.9 mph… We weren’t supposed to go more than 175!” She had already set a women’s paced record at 147.74 mph in 2016.
Long before dragsters and salt flats, the U.S. Army tried something even stranger.
6. The 1897 Army Bicycle Corps That Rode 1,900 Miles
In 1896, 2nd Lt. James A. Moss organized the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps at Fort Missoula, Montana. The idea was simple. Could the Army go to war on bikes?
On June 14, 1897, Moss left with twenty Black enlisted soldiers. They carried only two days of rations as an incentive to cover the scheduled 50 miles a day.
Forty-one days later they rolled into St. Louis, Missouri on July 24, about 1,900 miles from where they started. About 1,000 St. Louis cyclists rode out to meet them.
They were called the Iron Riders, and their story is told by the Fort Missoula museum history. Another American rider began a different kind of long haul in 1894.
7. Annie Londonderry Set Off Around the World in 1894, and Probably Invented the Bet
Annie Cohen Kopchovsky was a mother of three in Boston, Massachusetts. In June 1894 she left the Massachusetts State House on a 42-pound Columbia bicycle.
The story went that a wager with a $10,000 prize sent her off to circle the globe in 15 months and earn $5,000 along the way. Her great-grandnephew and biographer says she almost certainly made the wager up.
She sold ad space on her body and bike. A spring-water company paid her to use its name, Londonderry. Large stretches were by steamship, so she did not pedal every mile, but she is widely credited as the first woman to circle the globe by bicycle.
Her story is told on her biographer’s site. Our next rider, a centenarian, needed no publicity stunt.
8. At 105, He Set an Hour Record in a Category Created for Him
The hour record is simple and brutal. Ride as far as you can in 60 minutes on a velodrome. No drafting, no excuses.
On January 4, 2017, Robert Marchand rode 14.01 miles (22.547 km) in one hour at the velodrome in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. He was 105 years old. Cycling’s world governing body created a 105-and-above category especially for his attempt.
Guinness World Records lists him as the world’s oldest competitive cyclist. In 2014 he had ridden 16.7 miles (26.925 km) in the 100-plus category.
Age changes a lot about riding, and our guide to how age affects cycling covers what you can do about it. Back in the 1890s, though, doctors worried about something much sillier.
9. Doctors Once Warned Women About “Bicycle Face”
You know the face. Jaw set, eyes fixed, mouth doing something odd on a hard climb.
In the 1890s, a few physicians warned women about it in the popular press. They called it bicycle face, a supposed nervous condition from balancing and grimacing while riding.
The wider medical community was largely skeptical. Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, the first female member of the American Medical Association, said a cyclist’s expression was no different from a straining swimmer’s. The condition never existed outside anxious headlines.
The full story is retold in a 2026 medical journal viewpoint.
It pairs well with our tour of things cyclists used to believe. Next up, a 7-year-old with a much kinder idea.
10. A 7-Year-Old Spent His Birthday Gift Cards on a Stranger’s Bike
John Taylor, 62, had his bike stolen outside a McDonald’s in Orlando, Florida in 2018.
Matthew, 7, happened to drive past with his mom Suzanne on the way to a friend’s birthday party.
As Suzanne recalled, “he said, ‘I want to use my Target gift cards to get him a new bike’.”
Taylor later recovered his old bike too and planned to pass it on to someone else in need. Kindness, like a good tailwind, keeps moving forward.
This next one took patience, 28 years of it.
11. He Lent His Bike in 1992 and Found It on Facebook Marketplace in 2020
Peter Lavalley of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada lent his orange 10-speed to a friend moving to Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1992. Then silence. He heard nothing more about the bike.
In August 2020 he was browsing Facebook Marketplace for a bike for his daughter. He stopped scrolling. There it was, the same orange frame he had last seen almost three decades earlier.
The seller had kept it almost untouched in a garage for 15 years.
Some bikes refuse to leave the family. Some animals refuse to leave the rider.
Related:
Our last story shows you never really retire from riding.
12. A 96-Year-Old Racer Was Reunited With His Old Bike
Clifford Craske met his wife through cycling in Cambridge, England in 1947. He was a competitive cyclist, and his treasured bike was a Claud Butler road bike.
His daughter Alice, 67, arranged for the bike to be restored and brought to his care home. Original saddle, drop handlebars, wheels removed for display. Members of his old cycling club came to see the reunion.
As Clifford put it, “It was so unbelievable to see my bicycle again.”
Bikes have a way of sticking around. They connect strangers, carry soldiers, embarrass doctors and wait patiently in trees and garages until someone claims them again. Go look at the old bike in your garage a little differently today.
Related: Worst bike lanes ever built
Know a riding buddy who needs a smile today? Share it below👇
