The Bicycling World, Vol 4, No 7
Articles in this issue
- The Christmas editorial offers seasonal greetings and notes that Chicago's boulevards and South Park have been opened to bicycle traffic, while chiding 134 delinquent subscribers. It announces the republication of a Spirit of the Times article on "Bicycular Mismanagement" addressing the poor organisation of racing events such as John Keen's proposed 50-mile championship.
- Club news covers officer elections at the Capital Bicycle Club in Washington D.C. and the newly formed Lancaster Bicycle Club (Pa.), while the San Francisco Bicycle Club votes to arrange a 50-mile road race to San Jose. A Rochester bicycle rink exhibition drew a large crowd to watch Captain W.H. Reid demonstrate his American Star wheel and fancy rider R.A. Punnett perform on a 56-inch machine.
- Three riders recount a bicycle excursion from Marblehead to Concord, Massachusetts, passing through Swampscott, Lynn, Saugus, Melrose, Stoneham, Winchester, and Lexington before being forced to push their machines through deep sand on the final approach to Concord. On the sidewalks of Concord the party unexpectedly encounters Ralph Waldo Emerson, who steps aside and waves them courteously on.
- Reader letters cover champion Elsa Von Blumen's 1,000-mile endurance feat in Pittsburgh and the Keystone Bicycle Club five-mile race she sponsored, won by Philo N. French ("Irish") in 24m. 20s., alongside the New Haven club's fall races run in a driving snowstorm and Chicago's newly won boulevard access for cyclists. Further letters debate the legibility of the new L.A.W. badge's Old-English lettering and a public challenge from Prof. F.S. Rollinson to meet J.S. Prince on the track to settle the American championship.
- The Crescent Bicycle Club's exhibition at the Soldiers' Home Bazaar drew some 5,000 spectators, with the club appearing for the first time in its new cadet-blue uniform. P.T. Lowell won the slow race, Messrs. Cochran and Kennard performed a double fancy-riding act, and a twelve-man squad drill under Capt. F.B. Carpenter executed figure-eights and a grand right-and-left with precision.
- Ixion praises his new mount, the Surrey Machinist Company's Invincible (imported as the Yale), for its double-section hollow rim, tangent spokes, cow-horn bars, and Arab Cradle Spring, judging it lighter and stiffer than his previous Duplex Excelsior, Challenge, Humber, Harvard, and Columbia machines. A punishing thirty-five-mile test ride to Greenwood Lake on the northern boundary of New Jersey left the featherweight wheel unscratched while accompanying Harvards suffered bent handlebars and a broken rim.
- A reprinted Spirit of the Times editorial predicts failure for John Keen's fifty-mile "amateur championship of America" at the American Institute Building, arguing New York is the poorest bicycle town in America and that Keen presumes to override the National Association of Amateur Athletes and the League of American Wheelmen. It also charges sharp practice: Keen's troupe includes record-holder C.D. Vesey of the Surrey Bicycle Club, while American riders were given just ten days' notice at the close of the season.
- Four mail vote resolutions (Nos. 12–15) passed under President Charles E. Pratt authorise the Committee on Consuls to designate League Hotels in each state, prepare hotel certificates and signs, establish a uniform bicycle-transport tariff, and issue printed route slips. New membership applications from the Champion City, New York, and Crescent Bicycle Clubs are listed, alongside notes from the French racing scene assessing Charles Terront, Jules Terront, Esperon, and the seventeen-year-old G. Pihan.
- In the fifty-mile race for the amateur championship of America organised by John Keen at the American Institute Building, George D. Gideon of the Germantown Bicycle Club won in 3h. 13m. 8.5s. after English favourite C.D. Vesey (Surrey Bicycle Club) retired with cramp around mile 30 and W. Smith (Manhattan Athletic Club) fell exhausted at mile 40. Frank Howard of New York finished just two laps behind after a storming late charge, Louis Stearns of the Lenox Bicycle Club took third, and Keen closed the evening with a three-mile exhibition in 10m. 16.5s.
- Ixion analyses the second fifty-mile amateur championship, comparing it with Dave Stanton's February 1880 race won by little Walter Clark and criticising the incompetent management — spectators wandering the track, no scoreboard, and an unswept concrete surface. He credits Gideon's steady riding on a 58-inch Harvard semi-roadster with non-slipping rubbers, blames Vesey's and Smith's reckless early pace for their cramps, and judges the fresh-finishing Howard a future champion with proper coaching.
- A trade note welcomes English makers courting American buyers: Humber, Marriott & Cooper, makers of the famous Humber bicycles and tricycles, take large advertising space in the World this week. William Ford & Co.'s machines, though not yet in use in America, are well spoken of in the English wheel press and offered at surprisingly low prices.
- Brief items note that President Pratt's portrait will appear in The Wheel's Christmas number and that Kol Kron's ten-page essay "On the Wheel" has been accepted by Lippincott's Magazine. A.A. Ballard, engineer at the Abattoir, was deliberately run down by a two-horse team driven by Macy Stearns while cycling to dinner, damaging his bicycle to the value of $15–20, and plans to sue for damages.