The American Bicycling Journal, Vol 1, No 13
Articles in this issue
- Reprinted from the "Boston Herald," comparing Massachusetts roads with English ones and reporting a million dollars invested in bicycle manufacture in England, fifty-five clubs in London and a hundred and twenty-five more in the rest of Great Britain against only two in the United States, the Boston Bicycle Club and the Suffolk Bicycle Club. It cites a Boston Bicycle Club member who rode the twenty-one miles to Salem by Cambridge, Somerville, Charlestown, Everett, Saugus and Lynn in one hour forty-five minutes without a dismount, then went on to Gloucester.
- The journal's standing department of British reprints, here drawing on the London "Bicycling News" and the "London Bicycling Journal" for two road-run narratives, "A Circular Run" and "A December Ride in Notts."
- "R. C., Tours," writing in the London "Bicycling News," describes an eighty-five-mile circular ride out of Paddington on 19 April by Shoot-Up-Hill, Kingsbury, Pinner, Uxbridge, Maidenhead, Windsor, Virginia Water and Cobham, returning via Kingston, Ham, Richmond and Kew Bridge. H. K. broke a spoke of his 54-inch Keen at Burnham and later lost his tyre, and E. N.'s Carter's trailing brake carried off the caps of some Chertsey urchins for three hundred yards.
- From the "London Bicycling Journal," signed "Schnel Llaufer": a forty-mile winter run from the Midland Railway bridge at Nottingham out by Ratcliffe and Bingham on to the Roman Foss Road to Newark, passing the "Red Lodge," Flintham Park and Stoke Hall. The pair covered 15½ miles in an hour and five minutes and saw the old castle at Newark where King John died.
- Editorial noting that the Boston and Suffolk Bicycle Clubs have suspended their meetings, meets and runs for the summer, so that Trinity church will cease to be the Saturday-afternoon rendezvous. It argues the machine will instead follow its rider to Newport, Saratoga, the mountains and the seaside resorts.
- Report of the fourth annual meet of the London and Suburban Bicyclists at Hampton Court on Saturday 18 May, at which sixty-one London and fifteen country clubs—seventy-six in all—mustered fifteen hundred and twenty-seven riders. The "Assembly," "Attention" and "Advance" were sounded at 5.20 p.m. for a procession over an eight-mile route lined with spectators.
- The journal's standing department for the professional racing path, carrying in this number the Agricultural Hall endurance match between bicyclists and horsemen and the Oxford–Cambridge inter-university races.
- The six days' test of endurance at Agricultural Hall, London, completed on Saturday 25 May, went to the horseman Leon on nineteen horses with 969.2 miles, ahead of the bicyclists Cann (910), White (864), Phillips (850.2), Patrick (801.2), Thomas (734) and Rawson (375); the horseman Newsome retired at 282. Fifteen hours a day were allowed each rider, and Stanton's six days' ride of a thousand miles remains unequalled.
- Oxford swept the annual contests with Cambridge at the C. U. B. C. grounds on Saturday 18 May: W. D'A. Crofton won the two miles in 6m 10s and the ten miles in 33m 28s, and A. A. Weir the twenty-five miles in 1h 24m 36s. C. P. Wilson took the three miles' learners' race, which was open to Cambridge only, in 11m 3s.
- The Boston Bicycle Club's 7th regular meeting at 178 Devonshire Street on 24 May suspended summer business meetings and weekly runs and tabled a motion defining "a professional" as one who has raced for a money prize since January 1878; the Suffolk Bicycle Club likewise adjourned until autumn. Also: two San Francisco riders fined six dollars each at Oakland under a boneshaker ordinance, Messrs. Pratt and Hodges' run to West Boylston, and Parker beating Cabot by half a front wheel in the Harvard Athletic Association's first bicycle race at Beacon Park on 24 May.
- The journal's standing department for readers' letters, given over in this number to a single long contribution from a San Francisco correspondent signing himself "Sly Bacon."
- A San Francisco correspondent recounts his first road run, on a 52-inch Duplex Excelsior a size too large for him, out Van Ness avenue and Bush street to the Point Lobos or Cliff House road and back through Golden Gate Park. He was thrown crossing a car track and again into a hole by a railroad station, timed a lap of the half-mile track in 3.01, and passed between two and three hundred teams in sixteen miles without one bolting.
- Short editorial replies to "Tor." of Plymouth, to "Ralph G." of New York—told there are at least two other riders in his city, and that he will lose money importing his own machine—and to "Machinist," advised to become an accomplished bicyclist before trying to improve the modern bicycle.