BLUFF SIDING, Wis. — Michael “Shadow” Gabrick’s barn looks like history’s garage.

“I’ve always been into antiques since I was little,” he said during a recent interview, mounting a narrow staircase smelling pungently of sawed wood. “I don’t know why; I liked old stuff.”

He opened the door at the top of the staircase. Inside was a loft crammed from corner to corner, floor to ceiling, with high-wheel, 18th-century bicycles. Some rusting, some shining, some with front wheels that reached chest-height, their bodies curved, elegant and sleek, the colossal front wheels each a sunburst of metal spokes radiating out to tires.

Gabrick builds, collects and rides these machines that have been out of fashion for so long, and he is best known in the Winona area for his regular appearances in festivals and parades.

But he’s known in the high-wheel bike community another way: He’s the world record holder for the fastest solo trip across the country on an antique bicycle.

When Gabrick completed his trek in 1991, he was just the 13th person to do it since at least 1884, the first record of any such journey (the man who completed it eventually went on to travel the entire world in 21/2 years).

The previous record was 45 days, set in 1984. He beat it by a week.

There aren’t many solid records kept on high-wheel bicycles — except, curiously, for how many bikes and riders can be stacked next to each other without tipping over.

But nobody has topped his record yet. As far as he can tell, anyway.

“Nobody’s had enough guts, I guess!” he said.

A lifelong obsession

Gabrick, a 55-year-old school-bus driver, has lived in the Fountain City area all his life. A stocky man with thick-fingered, calloused hands and wiry salt-and-pepper whiskers, he seems an unlikely candidate for such an eccentric hobby.

He rode his first high-wheel bicycle in 1974 when he was a teenager mowing lawns and setting bowling pins.

“Somebody had one, and I just did it,” he said, “And I became hooked.”

To Gabrick, the machines were more than bikes — more, even, than functional art. Something about high-wheel bicycles, something difficult to explain, kept him coming back for more.

“If you had the chance to ride one,” he said, “you’d know why.”

He began collecting the bikes 10 years later. For years he traveled around the country and around the world, competing in races. In 1988 he won the world championship for trick riding in a competition in Australia. Tucked away in a corner of the barn is the photo of him accepting the trophy; he is beaming in his button-up white shirt and period knickers.

In 1991, Gabrick was working for the city of Fountain City as an all-purpose maintenance man. He approached his employer and requested a leave of absence — so he could ride a high-wheel bicycle across the country.

He didn’t get it.

He went anyway.

“I just quit my job and did it, because hey, life is short,” he said.

Other than the modern additions of a raincoat, helmet, and bike gloves, Gabrick wore his period costume — knickers, a button-up shirt, a flat short-billed cap and leather dress shoes — for the entire trip. He keeps the clothes in the barn with the rest of his collection, still packed in the small suitcase he took with him.

“You needed a shower every day,” he recalled. “You stunk so bad. You can’t even stand yourself when you’re sweating all day long,” he said. He pulled out an old belt, cured and dried from perspiration, and examined it. “I was skinny, then.”

Gabrick pedaled his way through rain and sun, through countless towns, up and down mountains. He burned 5,000 calories a day and made up for them with anything he could get his hands on, stopping at convenience stores for Gatorade and ice-cream sandwiches. He still has the last Gatorade bottle he used on the trip.

From one end of the country to the other, Gabrick attracted the stares of curious spectators. Every time he saw someone snap a picture of him along the way, he would give them his business card and address and ask for a copy of the photo.

He got photos in the mail from almost all of them, some coming almost three years after he returned.

His wife, Sara, stayed home during his journey — even though the two got into high-wheel biking together shortly after meeting each other in 1975. Their matching certificates for their respective first “Century Rides” — 100 miles in a single day — are mounted on a wall inside their house, on either side of their wedding picture.

When Gabrick left, Sara, now an administrator at Winona Health, was the sole income for the family. Still, Sara said, she supported his endeavor.

“He’s a good guy,” she said. “He’s real spontaneous. He just doesn’t have to have a plan; he’s just in the moment. I like that, because I’m more a planner, and that can be both good and bad.”

As a surprise while he was gone, she commissioned family friend and prominent Winona-area sculptor Leo Smith to make a carving of Shadow on his bike.

Smith made two copies of the piece, “Shadow’s Ride,” with Gabrick dressed in period attire and sitting atop a gracefully carved antique bicycle. One is on display in the Gabrick family home; the other is on display at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum.

Returning home

After Gabrick crossed the country he returned home to Wisconsin and built a house — as well as the barn that’s become his private museum.

“How many people have barns anymore?” he said. “They’re becoming dilapidated, and the storms are taking them down. And you think about it: How many barns are left out there?”

As he walked past each bike in the barn’s loft, he immediately recalled where every one came from: Rochester, Michigan, New York, Ohio, California, Iowa. Every one had a story, a history, a previous life. He passed an 1880s bike that had formerly been plated in nickel. “That would have cost an extra three dollars, then,” he said. “It was the bankers, and the businessmen, and all of the rich people who could afford this.”

Countless historical odds and ends from the era are packed among his bicycles. Phonographs, pearl buttons, antique photographs, dented and rusty license plates, a bucketful of splintered yardsticks, stacks upon stacks of newspapers. They’re mixed with collections of a few of his more contemporary interests: hats, beer and NASCAR.

His house, sitting right next to the barn, also contains artifacts from various condemned buildings in the Fountain City and Winona areas, like lights, railings — “How many railings do you know have wrought-iron brackets? Now they’re just aluminum things,” Gabrick said — and decorative pieces: A wrought-iron register from a Winona red-light district hotel, a lightning rod globe mounted above a window.

Although Sara no longer rides high-wheel bikes nearly as often, Shadow has no plans to stop collecting and participating in the hobby. This summer he plans to ride in at least one parade and participate in his 29th national high-wheel bike event in a row in Louisville, Kentucky.

Gabrick has settled in his Fountain City home, content to live out his days with his wife and children as he builds his private museum in his barn. While he works tirelessly to preserve the past, Gabrick knows the importance of seizing the present.

His advice:

Just do it.

“You’re going to be dead a lot longer than you’re alive,” he said, looking around at his barn full of faded photographs and rusted bike parts.