The Bicycling World, Vol 2, No 8
Articles in this issue
- Year-end editorial column by 'Rad.' imagining Yale undergraduates riding bicycles to lectures in 1900, reviewing 1880 as the bicycle's banner year, and offering squibs on cold-weather riding and holiday gifts from the Columbia catalogue.
- Comic poem in mock-Hamlet soliloquy form, in which a bicyclist deliberates whether to stay indoors for a poker game or brave December weather for a ride, concluding that the machine always wins.
- New Year editorial welcoming 1881 as the year American cycling comes of age, citing League membership growth, new tracks planned in Boston and New York, and the first women's bicycle tours.
- Excursion narrative: a New Britain rider recounts a December run from Hartford south toward New Haven by bicycle, with notes on road surfaces over the traprock hills, a puncture repair on the road, and an overnight stay at a local club house.
- Chicago correspondent 'Steno' describes deliberating between three bicycle makes before selecting a Columbia, and recounts a club ride on icy Chicago streets in late December where several members fell at a corner.
- A.S. Parsons, a Boston commercial traveler, continues his case for the bicycle as a business vehicle, documenting daily mileage savings over streetcars, time saved on Back Bay deliveries, and customers' surprise at seeing him arrive by wheel.
- Reprinted commentary from the Brooklyn Daily Times defending cyclists' right to city roads and arguing the bicycle is as legitimate as carriages, with a rebuttal to a hostile letter from a coachman who claimed the machines frightened his horses.
- First part of a detailed technical history tracing bicycle development from the 1860s velocipede to the 1880 high-wheel machine, comparing frame geometry, wheel sizes, spine versus backbone frames, and the merits of ball bearings.
- Letters: W.H.L. of Brattleboro', Vt., waiting for spring roads; Wm. Barbee of Louisville on a tour to Lexington over Kentucky macadam; further contributions to the cyclist-nickname debate; queries about saddle adjustment and winter lubricants.
- 'Chiron's Most Important Paragraph' column: satirical bicycle wordplay, absurd cycling riddles, a mock inventory of December riding mishaps, and the award of worst 'header' of the month to a Boston club member who rode into a delivery wagon.
- Short items: George D. Hoffman, Boston Bi. C. secretary, currently in Rome; Pope Manufacturing filing infringement suits against importers of English bicycles; a new riders' school opened in Springfield, Mass. by F.E. Adams.
- 'Knick O'Bocker' on New Year's Eve celebrations at the New York and Mercury clubs, Captain Ames's new ulster as club winter uniform, mid-winter race challenges, and the first English Humber tricycles arriving at a New York dealer.