The Bicycling World, Vol 2, No 17
Articles in this issue
- The editor announces spring has arrived with some parodied spring verse, then describes the first muddy spring ride by the fighting editor and discusses interest in road racing.
- An overview of the racing season's prospects considers which riders and clubs are likely to excel, and what improvements in tracks and organization might be expected.
- A humorous sketch by "Augusta" in which a sceptical professor is coaxed onto her husband Henry's bicycle, sent spinning down a gravel walk into a ditch, and thereafter parts company with the machine forever.
- A legal analysis examines the rights cyclists have under law to use public roads and park paths, noting conflicting municipal ordinances in different cities.
- L.A.W. President Bates replies drolly to "Juvenis" of Boston, who had accused him in the New York Wheel of "trying not to be funny" over his recent statistical article, and adds that Michigan wheelmen would prefer Washington over New York for the League Meet.
- A correspondent rebuts "Rolain's" letter of 25 February, denying that advocates of Washington are trying to force the L.A.W. Meet there and defending the committee member from that city.
- A letter weighs what the League Meet is actually held for — display, participants' benefit, moral effect on the public, or social gathering — and, withdrawing an earlier claim for Boston, comes out in favour of New York City.
- A member of one of the country's oldest bicycle clubs, writing from Morristown, N.J., argues that New York still holds the fort as the most desirable place for the coming L.A.W. Meet.
- A London Sportsman correspondent describes the much-discussed "Otto" safety bicycle — two large side-by-side wheels with the rider seated between them — whose show-rooms at 118 Newgate Street, London, drew nearly three thousand visitors in a day.
- John Browning of the London Tricycle Club gives practical technique for descending hills — pedalling up speed then putting "feet up" on the rests — with notes on carrying twenty-eight pounds of touring luggage and a short closing word on up-hill riding.
- A profile of England's greatest amateur racing man, born at Filey, Yorkshire, on 7 June 1857, the son of a south London doctor, tracing his rise on the racing path as bicycling swelled to a quarter-million riders in Great Britain.
- The Archery Field leader argues that archery talk dwells too much on technique and the science of implements, and urges archers to value the pastime's social side, especially where ladies take part.
- "Madeline" returns to the paper's pages with a light plea on behalf of lady archers, noting that among girls of her acquaintance the mere mention of "points" brings on a Sunday-afternoon headache.
- Notice of the Ohio State Archery Association's annual business meeting at the Gibson House, Cincinnati, on 16 March, with corresponding secretary Chas. Welker's call for delegates and proposed constitutional amendments on championship rounds and the executive committee.
- Harry Hunter reports the Highland Park Archers' first meeting of 1881, held 19 February at Field-Captain Carver's house, where the gentlemen's championship medal was presented and arrows had to be dug out of the snow.
- Comic verse signed D. O'C. — from field-notes of A. W. Havens of the Oakland Bow Club — on the merry archer whose shafts fell the farmer's cow and goat and whose scores gain a hundred in the telling.
- Archery gossip notes California archers' doings, ladies' and gentlemen's club-badge scores (Mrs. T. Morton's 486, J. W. Auten Jr.'s 497 and 514), and identifies the song in another column as Daniel O'Connell's, president of the Merry Foresters.
- The National Archery Association's executive committee, in session at corresponding secretary G. F. E. Pearsall's Brooklyn office, invites club applications ahead of the Grand Annual Meeting in Prospect Park during the second week of July.
- A letter to the London Sportsman gives a characteristic Englishman's idea of "Yankeedom", quoting a New York Herald claim that an English bicyclist may meet a cowboy who speaks four or five languages.
- Comic verse by "Tommy B.", reprinted from the Wheel World, in which a velocipede built in '68 defies the jeers of modern riders and insists it is fleet and graceful yet.
- "Ixion" submits the road record of a racing man over New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts roads in 1879 and 1880 — 302 rides totalling 3,673 miles since first mounting a wheel in January 1879.
- The first of a series on tricycles in the American market opens with the Harvard tricycle, sold by Cunningham & Co. of Boston and made by Bayliss, Thomas & Co. of Coventry, describing its tubular-steel frame, double-cranked axle and rear steering wheel, with the 50-inch size judged well adapted for ladies.
- "Gray" urges the L.A.W. to adopt a uniform for the country's unattached riders, suggesting one manufacturer supply a standard cloth at a low rate and one tailor in each state undertake the making.
- League department with corresponding secretary Albert S. Parsons's membership applications from the Arrow Bi. Club of Richmond, Ind., and the Chelsea Bi. Club of Massachusetts, and director Llewellyn H. Johnson's consul appointments for Newark, Orange, Red Bank, Plainfield and Princeton, N.J.