The Bicycling World, Vol 4, No 9
Articles in this issue
- Letters arrive from Scranton (F.C.H.'s Christmas visit to New York, riding borrowed wheels with Mercury and Lenox club members), Washington (Capital Bicycle Club's Christmas Day ride to Soldiers' Home and move to the new Le Droit Building), Montreal (an impromptu Boxing Day ride by the Montreal Bicycle Club to Blue Bonnets), a Boston business man reporting 3,048 miles ridden in one season, a technical rebuttal of G. W. Pressey's tire-flattening calculations, and a Pittsburg report on Miss Von Blumen's benefit at Old City Hall with Keystone Club racing (Hoover winning a mile in 3.48) and Von Blumen riding two miles in 8.07.
- Le Sport Velocipedique, which began in March 1880 as a four-page paper, has grown to twelve pages and will convert to a weekly; a new French paper, La Revue Velocipedique, is to launch from Troyes; the Lyons Club des Cyclistes grew from 16 to 78 members in under a year; and Italian trick rider Scuri demonstrates riding backward, down stairs, and on a bottle-covered table on his one-wheeled Scuricycle.
- An American correspondent visiting Coventry, England describes it as the world's bicycle manufacturing capital, with letter carriers and police using tricycles on its streets, factories employing around 2,500 workers, and the Queen having ordered two tricycles; the writer stays at Knight's Inn (Bicycle Touring Club headquarters) and notes riders cycling nineteen miles from Birmingham for breakfast and thirty more to Stratford-on-Avon for dinner.
- The Boston Bicycle Club held the formal opening of its new three-story brick clubhouse at the corner of Tremont Street and Union Park on January 2, 1882, from 3 to 11 PM, drawing members, journalists, and civic guests who admired the reading room, pool table, and Capt. Hodge's Stanley Racer decorated with smilax and blossoms in the bay window.
- Personal notes include Keen and Prince training intensively ahead of their January 14 race, Jay E. Alden of the Massachusetts Club riding to West Newton and Waltham on New Year's Day, the Montreal Bicycle Club opening 1882 with a city ride at eight degrees above zero, and Von Blumen's manager denying that she performed in Chicago under Rollinson's management as an athlete named Louise Armaindo.
- The League of American Wheelmen applications list newly proposed members including George B. Hayes of Canandaigua, N.Y., Henry M. Stillwell of Rochester, N.Y., and newly appointed Maritime Provinces consul D. W. Robb of Amherst, Nova Scotia (no. 223).
- This miscellany column reports on a Punch's Almanac cartoon "The Coming Force" depicting an electric bicycle, the Crescent Bicycle Club's second annual party at Odd Fellows' Hall on February 1, a new watch-sized dust-tight cyclometer from Fairfield & Taylor of Chicago, and plans for the Union Athletic Club games on January 25 at Mechanics' Fair Building including one-mile and two-mile bicycle races for gold and silver medals arranged by Charles E. Pratt.
- The Notes and Queries section solicits reader contributions, with C. G. of Germantown asking for the best method and material for polishing nickel-plating on bicycles.
- A four-stanza victory ode by Ira Joyce of Philadelphia hails a Germantown Bicycle Club champion who seized a thrown gauntlet and defeated five opponents in a major race, spreading his fame from Baffin Bay to Mexico.