Bicycle rider

“ In ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen heavenly powers.
Generally speaking, the rider is a lady, and then one feels that, for perfect bodily rest combined with entire freedom from mental anxiety, slumber upon a water-bed cannot compare with bicycle-riding upon a hilly road. No fairy travelling on a summer cloud could take things more easily than does the bicycle girl, according to the poster. ”

“ A little experience will soon teach the rider how to exercise the care necessary to prevent falls. He will learn to lean well back in his saddle when descending a hill, when about to apply his brake, or upon striking a stone or other obstacle. He will learn to lean forward when ascending a hill, and to dismount rather than to try and force his machine through sand.
That bicycling is a healthy exercise is a fact beyond dispute, as any physician who has the slightest knowledge of the bicycle will assure you. ”

“ Now, the bicycle track showed that the machine was ridden up the hill (the track zig-zagged along the road, whereas if it had been running downhill it would have gone pretty straight) , the rider getting very tired (more zig-zag) near the top. There the bicycle had stopped (sharp turn and slither of the wheels in the sand) , and the rider had got off to rest. It was a woman (small foot, no nail marks, small, sharp heel) .
She had stood a short time (footmarks on top of each other) , and had then remounted and ridden on. ”

“ The crowd seem very loath to let such an extraordinary thing as the bicycle and its rider depart from among them so soon, although at the same time anxious to see me speed along the smooth, straight trails that fortunately lead directly from the caravanserai eastward. ”

“ The best and most sensible bicycling suit consists of the uniform adopted by the L. A. W., which is of light gray throughout—blouse, flannel shirt, breeches, stockings, and polo cap, or helmet. If too warm, the rider can take off his blouse, and carry it very comfortably, rolled tightly, and strapped to the handle-bar of his bicycle.
Before closing I want to say a word about drinking. When a rider becomes very warm, and perspires freely, the temptation to drink, and to drink a quantity of almost anything that offers, is very great. ”

“ The rider of the bicycle must remember that not only are the legs affected by riding, but the exercise benefits nearly every portion of the human body. This seems at first to be rather odd, but at the same time it is perfectly true, and has been proven by the best experiments. ”

“ This leaning to either side by the machine and rider gives rise to that delightful gliding which none but the bicyclist or the skater can experience. In this respect the bicycle has an enormous advantage over any machine, tricycle or Otto, which must at all times remain upright, and which must, therefore, at a high speed, be taken round a curve with discretion. ”

“ The objections to the high bicycle were many, and among its chief drawbacks were that owing to the disparity in wheel diameters and the small weight of the backbone and trailing wheel, also to the rider’s position practically over the centre of the wheel, if the large front wheel hit a brick or large stone on the road, and the rider was unprepared, the sudden check to the wheel usually threw him over the handlebar. ”

“ Since the great Newport meet of bicyclers, or "wheelmen," as they are now generally called in this country, a number of letters containing questions about bicycles have been written by boys anxious to become riders, and sent to Young People. In the following hints to young riders I will try and answer all these questions:
Any active boy of ten years of age and upward may become a wheelman.
It is best to learn to ride on an old-fashioned wooden machine, or "bone-shaker," or on a bicycle so low that the rider may touch the ground with his toes. ”

“ When you are riding along level ground, and do not touch the "brake," the gear is at 80. Soon you come to a hill. Then by pulling the "brake" handle up half-way the gear of the wheel is changed from 80 to 60, and thus you can go up hill, slower, to be sure, but much easier. After reaching the top of the hill you pull this rod up close to the handle-bar of the wheel, and the gearing is thrown off entirely, so that the bicycle will coast down hill without turning the cranks. Of course the rider can keep his feet on the pedals all the time. ”

“ The average French cyclist is rather different from a British rider; he is seldom a tourist and appears to follow the pastime more for the sport of racing than riding from town to town on touring bent. The French bicycle is therefore, as may be expected, largely of the road racing type. ”

“ On meeting a team the rider must stop and stand at side of road between the bicycle and the team—the outer side of the road if on a grade or curve. In passing a team from the rear, the rider should learn from the driver if his horses are liable to frighten, in which case the driver should halt, and the rider dismount and walk past, keeping between the bicycle and the team.... ”

“ The chief objections to the bicycle, then, are the liability of the rider to go over the handles, the impossibility of stopping very quickly, and the inability to remain at rest or go backward, and the difficulty of learning. ”

“ He travelled through Russia, Poland, Germany, Belgium, and France, and was accompanied during part of the time by pacemakers on bicycles. Moreover, his manager and friends went from one stopping place to another by train, in advance of the cyclist, to make arrangements for his reception. Practically everywhere along the route this French rider was met by groups of cyclists who escorted him from point to point and showed him the best route to take
Fig. 25
A MODERN LADIES' DROPPED FRAME SAFETY BICYCLE, BUILT BY RUDGE-WHITWORTH, LTD.
to avoid steep hills and thick traffic. ”

“ An alternative construction on the Orient multicycles of the larger sizes is to place the rear rider on a saddle overhung just back of the vertical line above the rear axle; this rear rider pedals on an independent axle within the rear hub and drives forward, by a separate chain on the left, to the crank-hanger sprocket next forward of him; the power of all the riders is carried to the large sprocket on this cramp axle and then back, on the right hand side, to the small driver sprocket on the rear wheel. ”

“ A favorable place for a bicycle is along a railroad track—going in the centre or at one side. When suddenly attacked, my men can get out of the road like a covey of quail, and a bicycle can be trundled across the worst possible country as fast as a man can travel, for you see all the weight of the man’s gun and pack are on the wheel, which runs without any appreciable resistance, and all bike men know how to throw a bicycle over a [237] fence with ease, and my average march is eighty miles a day. Ladigo, remember—eighty miles a day. ”

“ His legs move only in the tread of the wheel, and his hands rest quietly on the ends of the cross-bar of his machine. The rope-walker keeps every muscle tense, and every limb in motion or ready to move. No wonder, when a tourist on his bicycle spins for the first time through a village here, or among the nomads of Asia, he is followed by a gaping crowd, till his machine carries him out of their sight. ”

“ In this way bicycling has added, methinks, an item to the hurry and breathlessness of existence, and to the difficulty of enjoying the passing hour—nay, the passing landscape. I have only once travelled on a bicycle, and, despite pleasant incidents and excellent company, I think it was a mistake; there was an inn to reach, a train to catch, a meal to secure, darkness to race against. ”

“ Finally she gave in, and the burly gentleman began impelling the machine up hill by his own unaided strength. His face made a dot of brilliant colour among the greys and greens at the foot of the hill. The tandem bicycle was now, it seems, repaired, and this joined the tail of the procession, its riders walking behind the dogcart, from which the lady in green and the driver had now descended. ”

“ Perhaps an engineer enamoured of his engine can understand the love of a cyclist for his wheel.
[289]
The people around the Garfield Park Loop were beginning to get impatient. Most of them had stood for two hours holding their bicycles, and even a well behaved bicycle is an awkward possession in a crowd. Pedals scraped the shins of utterly strange riders, handle-bars got tangled in watch-guards, and front wheels got into mischief with unpleasant regularity. ”

“ THE MAN ON A BICYCLE.
The man on a bicycle came panting up a hill at the beginning of a large town.
“Hello! Knickerbockers,” cried the man on foot; “do you call that the gait for a scorcher? Why, it aint more’n a pair uv bars.”
“That’s all right, little boy,” returned he of the wheel.
“Little boy, yourself! Didn’t you know it was five dollars fine for ridin’ on the sidewalk?”
“Is it? All right? I’ll pay when I come back;” and the man on a bicycle, encountering a level piece of road, put an end to further conversation by a sudden spurt. ”

“ Hoopdriver rode swaggering along the Ripley road, it came to him, with an unwarrantable sense of comfort, that he had seen the last of the Young Lady in Grey. But the ill-concealed bladery of the machine, the present machinery of Fate, the deus ex machina, so to speak, was against him. The bicycle, torn from this attractive young woman, grew heavier and heavier, and continually more unsteady. ”

“ This sort of conduct is, I admit, unwarrantable in the extreme; but cycling is responsible for it all. If continuous cycling is productive of a superfluity of exhilaration, and said exhilaration bubbles over occasionally, plainly the bicycle is to blame. So forcibly does this latter fact intrude upon me as I shake hands with the farmer, and congratulate him on his rare good fortune in belonging to Carson Township that I mount, and with a view of taking a little of the shine out of it, ride down the long, steep hill leading to the bridge across the Nishnebotene River at a tremendous pace. ”

“ There was infinite pathos in the tales of helplessness of these drought-harried men.
* * * *
There are abundant proofs as we steer out of Carrieton towards Cradock that we are already on the outskirts of the kingdom of the bicycle. The horses—bony apparitions mostly—have for the machine none of that contempt which tells of its familiarity to the city horse. So the bell is handy. Not so much to warn the equestrian as to soothe the bicyclist's conscience. You ring your bell and by that simple act throw on to other shoulders the full responsibility for all the frightened horse may do. ”

“ It was also my fortune to decide one of the very early cases determining the rights of riders of the bicycle. The law is fixed that one approaching a railroad crossing must stop, look and listen. A man riding a bicycle came to a railroad where a train was passing. ”

“ The true definition of the bicycle is a two-wheeled vehicle, with one wheel in front and the other in the rear, and both in the same vertical plane. Its life principle is the physical law that a rotating body tends to preserve its plane of rotation, and so it stands up, when it moves, on the same principle that a top does when it spins or a child’s hoop remains erect when it rolls. ”

“ The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and acute as a spirit-level in the detecting the delicate and vanishing shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as I might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. ”

“ A bicycle is a decided novelty up here, and, of course, the multitudinous youth turn out in droves to see it. The bewildering swarms of these small mountaineers distract my attention and cause me to take a header that temporarily disables the machine. The result is, that, in order to reach the village where I wish to stay over night, I have to "foot it" over four miles of the best road I have found since leaving San Pablo, and lose my supper into the bargain, by procrastinating at the village smithy, so as to have my machine in trim, ready for an early start next morning. ”

“ But the steed that never tires, and is [12] “mettlesome” in the fullest sense of the word, is full of tricks and capers, and to hold his head steady and make him prance to suit you is no small accomplishment. I had often mentioned in my temperance writings that the bicycle was perhaps our strongest ally in winning young men away from public-houses, because it afforded them a pleasure far more enduring, and an exhilaration as much more delightful as the natural is than the unnatural. ”

“ He dismounted and laid his bicycle on the side of the road. He had already ridden much further than he wanted to. The duties of a dean are not a good preparation for a cycling tour in company with an energetic girl of eighteen years old. ”

“ They are followed by many good road riders and racers, and that is some recommendation, and for the practical pleasure of wheelman they are probably the best that can be had.
In the first place, it is taken for granted that you are riding a bicycle for pleasure, not as a business: that you ride of an afternoon say thirty miles or so, not much more, that occasionally you make a day's trip to some place and do fifty miles, and that perhaps you take a fortnights trip of five or six or seven hundred miles. ”