There were 8,200 museums in the United States, according to the last count by the American Association of Museums (AAM). They range in subject matter from natural history to rock and roll, from science and technology to art, and from air and space to automobiles, agriculture and sports. We have so many museums because we think it valuable to document life on earth, human and otherwise.

The AAM census is an official one, bypassing informal museums all around us. Every home, for example, with its collections of paintings, pots, rugs, fossils, furniture, tools and other artifacts, is a museum of sorts that quietly records history and culture. Even more “hidden” as museums are some of our local shops and businesses.

For instance, framed and hanging at Sunflower Outdoor and Bike Shop in Lawrence is a pair of sleek, blue Lycra shoe-covers, splattered with French mud. They commemorate a brutal bicycle race across northern France called Paris-Roubaix, but known in cycling circles as the “Hell of the North.” It is the most grueling one-day road race in the world.

The shoe-covers belonged to George Hincapie, a member of the U.S. Postal Service professional cycling team. He wore them over his cycling shoes on a wet, cold Sunday in April to keep his feet from freezing as he raced for seven hours across 156 miles of treacherous cobblestones and slick roads from Paris to Roubaix against 190 other cyclists. Displayed below the shoe-covers is the white cloth bearing the race number that Hincapie wore that day: 101. To the left is a front-on shot of Hincapie, grim, dirty and determined, coming at you at 20 mph, his body and bike jack-hammered by the cobblestones. Hincapie’s blue U.S. Postal cycling shorts from Paris-Roubaix will be at Sunflower as soon as they are framed. His racing socks from that day are on loan, hanging in my office.

Paris-Roubaix becomes the palpable hell of the north for anyone who browses Sunflower and studies the photo of Hincapie’s mud-strewn body, his cycling shorts and his shoe-covers. Twelve miles from the finish Hincapie crashed headlong into a ditch when his front wheel got jammed in a deep rut between the rough stone cobbles. A long strand of yellow grass from that ditch is still stuck to the shorts. Third until that moment, Hincapie was caught by a group of chasers but hung on to drag himself over the finish line in sixth.

Hincapie is one of Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service teammates who has helped him win the Tour de France and its coveted yellow jersey four years running since 1999. Behind the counter at Sunflower hangs a replica of the 1999 Tour de France yellow jersey inscribed by Armstrong “To Dan and the Sunflower gang.” It took Dan Hughes, who owns Sunflower, a year to lay the groundwork for getting Hincapie to throw his race number and dirty cycling clothes into a plastic bag moments after Paris-Roubaix and have the package mailed to Lawrence.

For those who notice, the brick walls at Sunflower record other singular moments in local and international cycling: A Motorola team jersey raced in Wisconsin in 1996 by Lance Armstrong, who wore number 36 that day and who would shortly learn that he was suffering from cancer; the Master’s World Mountain Bike championship jersey won by Topeka’s Steve Tilford; the green climber’s jerseys from the Tour of Poland won by Chris Yankey, who worked at Sunflower in the 1990s; the 1997 U.S. National Team jersey that Matt Minard, who now works at Sunflower, raced in throughout Europe; the jersey worn by Wichita’s Scott Moninger when he raced for the Coors Light Team; and the 7-Eleven Team jersey worn by Ron Kiefel, who, in the 1980s, was among the first wave of Americans to race in the Tour de France.

Among the vintage bikes hanging on the wall is a red, white and blue Eddy Merckx steel road racer ridden by Sean Yates, who led the Tour de France at one point in 1994 and helped guide Lance Armstrong in his early racing years.

So, does Sunflower qualify as a museum? It does in my book, although the American Association of Museums might harrumph at that notion. It’s open to the public six days a week, with free admission to boot. It collects and displays the objects that document cycling history. It takes care to conserve these objects for the long term.

For example, when Hincapie’s soggy shorts, shoe-covers and socks arrived from Europe (in a U.S. Postal Service package; what else?), they were air dried and then frozen for a week at minus 89 degrees Fahrenheit in the Natural History Museum’s ultracold freezer to kill the bacteria and other potentially destructive pests. And hey, Sunflower has an enormous museum shop with bikes, tires, helmets, pumps, and cycling clothes, including the U.S. Postal team gear.

Cities and towns have many such hidden museums, but, for the most part, they go either unnoticed or under appreciated in our fast-paced commercial world. That’s too bad, because they help create that intrinsic aesthetic character of a community much as Art Walk does in Lawrence. So next time you’re out about town, look closely at your local restaurants, hardware stores, haberdasheries, microbreweries, barbershops or bookstores. Look for the photo, painting, artifact or other exhibit that records a special piece of history. When you find it, chances are you will have found a special establishment.

Leonard Krishtalka, is director of the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at Kansas Universit