Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle
Cite this book
Citation
Karl Kron. Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle. 1887. cyclearchive.com, https://cyclearchive.com/books/ten-thousand-miles-on-a-bicycle-karl-kron-1887/
Page numbers are pages of the PDF, which can differ from the numbers printed on the page.
Contents
- Opening essay on the sociable transformation a bicycle works on its otherwise solitary rider, drawing character sketches from roadside encounters along the Erie Canal tow-path and reflecting on railroads, baggage handling and country hotels for the touring wheelman.
- A brief comic verse parody of George Arnold's temperance poem "Beer," written by Kron and first published in Puck on August 11, 1880.
- Practical essay on touring dress and kit, championing white flannel suits and velveteen over wool and cataloguing the contents of Kron's handle-bar luggage-roll along with headgear, gloves and footwear for the road.
- A short verse fantasy in imitation of Thomas Love Peacock, first printed in The Bicycling World of January 14, 1881.
- Kron recounts learning to ride a 46-inch ordinary in Boston after breaking his elbow, then tallies his climbing annual mileage around New York and New England, 742 miles in 1879 rising to 1,956 in 1881 and 1,827 in 1882.
- A mechanical biography of Kron's own Columbia bicycle, serial No. 234, tracing its wear and repeated repairs, broken backbones, worn tires, damaged spokes and cranks, from its first 1,500 miles to its retirement in favor of its successor, "No. 234, Jr."
- A statistical log of 234 individual rides on the "No. 234" machine, covering speed and hill-climbing trials, falls and headers, encounters with horses, mules and road-hogs on Long Island, and Kron's exercise, bathing and eating habits.
- A detailed touring-route survey of Greater New York, the macadam roads above Central Park, routes to Yonkers, the Palisades, Newark and Brooklyn via the ferries, plus notes on club-houses, Prospect Park and Coney Island.
- Route notes for wheeling out of Boston to Portsmouth, Lexington, Waltham and Worcester, plus rides to Newport and Providence and a survey of the city's hotels, club-houses and Back Bay streets.
- A rider's-eye survey of the roads radiating from Springfield, Massachusetts, eastward, northward toward Northampton, westward and southward, with notes on maps and guide-books for long saddle stays without repeating a road.
- Connecticut touring notes covering the shore route from New London to New Haven, the roads between New Haven and Hartford, the Naugatuck Valley, the Litchfield hills, and the run from the Hudson into the Berkshires.
- Covers Kron's Long Island rides from Greenport to Riverhead and along the North Shore, an 1881 run from Flushing to Yaphank, and his exploration of Staten Island's roads.
- New Jersey touring routes through the Orange hills, Morristown and the Delaware Water Gap, and south via Elizabeth, New Brunswick, Somerville and Trenton toward Philadelphia, with a description of the towpath from Easton to Hackettstown.
- Traces routes up the Connecticut Valley to Bellows Falls and Rutland, around Lake George, and down the Hudson Valley from Glens Falls through Poughkeepsie to New York, including the Wallkill and Ramapo valleys.
- Follows the Mohawk Valley from Schenectady through Canandaigua to Niagara and Buffalo, the Ridge Road along Lake Erie, and a separate run from Binghamton to Great Bend along the Susquehanna.
- Wheeling from Utica to Trenton Falls and on toward the Adirondacks, then west via Canandaigua and the Genesee Valley falls at Portage to Niagara, closing with the Erie Railroad route from Corning through Binghamton to Wilkes-Barre.
- An 1882 tour of Kentucky's Blue Grass Region through Covington, Lexington and Harrodsburg to Mammoth Cave, crossing the Perryville battlefield and praising the limestone pikes, with a companion 450-mile road survey by J.M. Verhoeff.
- An 1881 Centennial-inspired tour along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath from Frederick and Hagerstown to Cumberland, and the return leg from Harper's Ferry to Washington.
- Describes cold-weather riding from New York to Port Chester and across Connecticut, including Kron's 6,000th mile logged in a snowstorm, plus Christmas and January excursions around Springfield and to Hartford.
- An account of an organized Maine coastal cycling excursion from Eastport through Robbinston, Calais and Lubec to Campobello and Machias, ending with a club scramble for mileage on Mount Desert Island.
- A fortnight's tour of Nova Scotia from Yarmouth through Digby, Annapolis and Windsor to Halifax, with side trips to Cape Breton Island and Prince Edward Island.
- Kron's account of riding a continuous 1,400-mile straightaway trail from Michigan to Virginia over forty days, crossing Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah in what he claims as the longest continuous bicycle trail yet made.
- A two-week Ontario tour from Windsor and Tecumseh through London and Goderich to Toronto, including an account of the first American straightaway road race, from Cobourg to Kingston, won by Cola E. Stone, and routes on to Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec.
- Traces a route from Kingston and the Thousand Islands south through Watertown, Binghamton and the Lehigh Valley into Virginia's Shenandoah region, along the "Valley Pike" to Staunton and on to the Natural Bridge.
- A winter tour of Bermuda's coral roads from Hamilton along the North Road to St. George's and the South and Middle Roads to Somerset, closing with Kron's successful appeal to the U.S. Treasury Department to admit bicycles duty-free as passengers' personal effects.
- An 1884 League-inspired tour through Philadelphia and Baltimore to Washington, across the Bull Run battlefields to Warrenton, over the Blue Ridge to Luray Cavern, then down the Shenandoah past Antietam to the Gettysburg National Cemetery and on through York and Lancaster.
- A memoir of the 1869 velocipede craze at Yale College, Kron's own conversion at the campus rink, and the Yale Literary Magazine's chronicle of the fad's rapid rise and fall at New Haven.
- An affectionate biography of Kron's bull-dog Curl (1856-1869), covering his temperament, habits and death, illustrated with an ambrotype portrait and verses written in his honor.
- An extended essay on bachelor life at the University Building on Washington Square, its history since 1833, testimony from Hamerton and Henry James on the square, and comparisons of American "social pressure" with the concierge-policed lodgings of Paris and London.
- Surveys long-distance American tours led by Thomas Stevens's 1884-85 ride from San Francisco to Boston and on to Liverpool and Teheran, alongside Hugh J. High's 3,000-mile Pennsylvania-to-Nebraska trip and other cross-country riders' reports.
- A compilation of personal mileage statistics submitted by veteran American wheelmen including Charles E. Pratt, J.G. Dalton and J.D. Macaulay (6,573 miles in 1885), documenting years of riding and machines used.
- Mileage records and biographical notes on British riders such as journalist E. Tegetmeier (46,600 miles in 13 years) and editors Henry Sturmey and H. Etherington, followed by Australasian reports on touring and road-racing in Victoria, New South Wales and New Zealand.
- A state-by-state digest of American touring information from Maine to Kentucky, indexing road reports, guide-books and club news, including F.A. Elwell's Kennebec and Moosehead Lake parties and updated notes on Central Park and the Long Island Road-Book.
- Examines railroad and steamship policies for carrying bicycles as baggage, listing tariff-charging lines, the League's negotiated concessions, and customs regulations for cycles crossing into Canada and Europe.
- A critique of the Cyclists' Touring Club's "reduced rates" hotel-certificate scheme as a source of poor service, arguing for higher hotel standards for touring wheelmen and listing the 146 American towns whose hotel-keepers subscribed to the book.
- A history of the League of American Wheelmen from its founding at Newport in 1880, covering its badges, annual meetings through 1886, membership statistics, the evolution of the L.A.W. Bulletin, and its constitution and officers.
- A bibliographic survey of American and English cycling journalism and book publishing as of August 1886, cataloguing the American Bicycling Journal, The Wheelman and their rivals alongside British and Continental cycling papers.
- Kron's account of the book's three-year genesis, his arrangement and later break with Colonel Albert Pope, the subscription canvass that built his 3,000-strong list of backers, and his proposal for a sequel, "My Second Ten Thousand."
- An alphabetical list of the roughly 2,196 subscribers who each pledged $1 toward the book's publication, with a monthly tally of the canvass from its 1884 launch to its close in 1886.
- The subscribers regrouped geographically by state and town from Maine to California and abroad, followed by a trade directory of dealers where the book could be consulted.
- A short closing chant of greeting Kron delivered at the League of American Wheelmen's first annual banquet, Newport, May 31, 1880.