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WEDNESDAY
The bicycle is the most elegant and efficient mechanical form of transportation ever invented, but it’s not much help if you have a business meeting in Tokyo or a taste for Provence. So it’s probably just as well that Orville and Wilbur Wright turned from designing and building bicycles to designing and building flying machines. (But don’t blame them for today’s in-flight experience.) Of course, they based their experimental aircraft technology on the kind they’d already mastered. National Air and Space Museum curator Peter Jakab will explain how in this evening’s “Bike to Flight” program, which will compare the Wright Flyer to bicycles of similar vintage and demonstrate how pedaling became soaring. At 6:30 p.m. at the National Air and Space Museum, on the first floor, 6th and Independence Avenue SW. Free. For reservations call (202) 357-1593. (Mark Jenkins)