The Bicycling World, Vol 1, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Short editorial paragraphs noting a proposed bicycle club at Williams College, J. C. Thompson's new riding-school at Springfield, Mass., the New York club's winged-wheel stationery, an address by President Bates of the Detroit Bicycle Club, and Mr. C. A. Boyce's fall at Chester square as reported in the Boston Herald.
- A profile of the Chauncy Bicycle Club — Boston's smallest, composed entirely of Chauncy Hall School students — covering its founding in November 1879 and its single racing member W. S. Tufts.
- An account of the New Haven Bicycle Club, founded January 1880 with twenty riding members, noting the excellent level roads and pulverised oyster-shell surfaces available in the area.
- Advice on adjusting and maintaining bicycles, emphasising that every rider should understand their machine's mechanism, know how to take it apart, and attend to bearings and pedals regularly.
- A narrative of a bicycle touring trip to Atlantic City, describing road conditions on the New Jersey shore routes.
- Continuation of F. H. B.'s French tour, riding from Salins through Donnemarie, Provins and Laferte-Gaucher to Chateau-Thierry, until dwindling funds and driving sleet force an abrupt finish at Voulangis.
- Mile-by-mile scores from the American Institute Building, New York, covering the fifty-mile professional matches between David Stanton and Daniel Belard (Stanton winning the second by about four yards) and the fifty-mile amateur race of 21 February won by L. H. Johnson of the Essex Bicycle Club. A clipped statement from Wentworth Rollins explains the prize-money troubles behind the rink's racing tournaments.
- A comic ballad from Detroit in which a jolly bicycler races a sporting vet's trotting horse, both tumble into a ditch, and the wheelman rises from his header declaring 'My wheel is whole.'
- Under the Relative Athletics department: J. Sauve wins a one-hour skating race at Brockville, Ontario, and G. D. Phillips of the Hudson Boat Club skates ten miles against four relieving amateurs at the Madison Avenue Rink, New York; roller-polo at Buffalo, the Montreal Snow-shoe Club's annual races and the Westchester hare-and-hounds chase follow.
- Club notes: the Buffalo Bicycle Club elects Dr. H. T. Appleby president, the Columbia College club takes its first excursion through the park, the Massachusetts Bicycle Club adopts a new gray-and-seal-brown costume, and new clubs report from the Pennsylvania Military Academy and Rochester, N.Y.
- An account of a bicycle club run or celebration conducted in wet and muddy conditions, recounting the humorous difficulties encountered.
- An alphabetical directory of American bicycle club secretaries and their addresses, from the Boston, Brooklyn and Buffalo clubs to San Francisco, Saratoga Springs and Yonkers.
- An editorial greeting the opening of the spring season, observing that bicycling and archery clubs are forming fast, practice-grounds and riding-schools are opening in new places, and the manufacturers are not only pushing but being pushed.
- A review of the British Bicycle Union, formed 16 February 1878, its four declared purposes and its Council of club delegates; secretary R. T. Cork's wish to resign, the Union's small income, and its rivalry with the Bicycle Touring Club are discussed.
- The department opens with 'The Round,' J. W.'s plea for American archers to adopt the English York and National Rounds in place of the American and Columbia rounds, followed by letters from Capt. Jack and Chicago and by club scores including the Nottingham vs. Ascham and Brooklyn vs. Ascham matches and Frank H. Duncan's Battle Creek practice records.
- Replies to readers on average touring speed and wheel size for a thirty-two-inch leg, on whether passing an opponent on the inside is fair (the Leffell–Mears dispute, decided against inside passing), and on the definition of a professional bicycler.
- Notices of the March magazines — Scribner's 'The Tile Club Afloat,' the Atlantic's 'Egypt under the Pharaohs' and Lippincott's 'The Lakes of Minnesota' — with greetings to exchanges from Omaha, Salem (Ohio), Detroit and the Goodson Gazette of Staunton, Va.
- A comic poem signed J. G. D., each stanza turning on the refrain 'Bicycle high with the slippery seat,' celebrating the nickeled wheel as the rider's partner through bachelorhood, marriage and winter.
- Foreign notes reporting the Velo-Club of Madrid's race meeting of 1 February, with wins for G. Fernandez, Don Eugenio Honlan, Don Ignacio Santos and Miguel Santos over distances from 1,000 metres to 10 kilometres.
- Letters from a hopeful Brooklyn tramper seeking a faster mode of locomotion, from 'Harvard' in San Francisco on the fine macadam road to the Cliff House and Oakland's hundreds of miles of level roads, and from 'Country Bicycler' of Farmington, N.H., on riding alone among astonished country folk.
- Correspondence from Paris reporting on French cycling news, races, and the state of cycling culture in the French capital.