The Bicycling World, Vol 53, No 13
Articles in this issue
- C. W. Risden, one of the few exclusive motorcycle dealers in the country, crossed the continent from Los Angeles to plead in person with the Hendee Mfg. Co. for machines, having more than 40 names on his waiting list each bound by a $25 deposit; he also pays $125 apiece for good second-hand Indians and sold about 100 of 300 motorcycles on the installment plan.
- Collector Stranahan, acting on Appraiser Whitehead's reports, has raised the dutiable valuation on a shipment of Peugeot motorcycles as part of a Treasury campaign against systematic undervaluation of imported German and French machines, which carry a 45 per cent. ad valorem duty; some advances exceeded 50 per cent. and entailed seizure.
- The British postal service has placed its latest order for 1,600 bicycles, most of them to be equipped with free wheels and two brakes.
- An inquirer answers a Warren street, New York, advertisement of a "marvelous sale" of motorcycles at "$45 up" and finds a cigar-store front, garden-hose-grade tires and three dilapidated machines - an Indian at $115, a Rambler at $100 and a Columbia at $75 - offered by a hard-faced proprietor who bets a hundred dollars that the Thomas is still being made.
- Describes a spoke-nipple grip any repairman can make from a short length of old tubing and cold-rolled machine steel: a tapered wrench block held in the handle by a set screw, drilled and filed to the nipple flats, with a hacksawed slot to admit the spoke and a knurled handle for comfort.
- Weighs porcelain against mica insulation for motorcycle plugs - porcelain is the better insulator but brittle and unpredictable in life, while mica resists the high tension current but short-circuits once oil and water work into its laminations - concluding that a cool, easy-running engine favours porcelain and a "plugger" makes mica a necessity.
- An exchange's tempering-bath recipe for dies, taps, ball races and other over-heated cycle parts: 10 gallons of soft water, half a box of concentrated lye, fine salt, salammoniac, sulphide of bismuth, borax and the juice of three lemons.
- Argues from Theodore K. Hastings's southern tri-car "junket" accounts - $5.90 freight from New York to Ormond against about $30 for an automobile, $4.61 on to West Palm Beach and 75 cents to Miami - that the motorcycle's real economy shows in shipping, ferriage and toll charges rather than in running costs.
- Hopes America will follow France's five-year experiment in tarring highways, since macadam pulverises into a fine dust under increasing automobile traffic and asphalt, though dustless, is too costly for general use.
- Herman Hintze of the Century Road Club of America, riding off fourteen minutes, won the club's twenty-five mile handicap road race from Valley Stream to Seaford, Long Island, on 17th inst., while veteran Charles Mock took first time prize from scratch ahead of A. Demarest and Owen J. Devine.
- William Farnsworth, who bought Denver's saucer track under attachment last year, has ordered it demolished, having concluded that Denverites do not care for bicycle racing and that the crowds were too small to justify running the risk with insurers refusing to write on the several thousand dollars of lumber.
- More than half the motorcycle riders in and around Newport, R. I., have banded together as the Newport Motorcycle Club, electing C. Young captain, M. Brazil lieutenant and J. R. Chase secretary-treasurer.
- Edward Harper, off a half-mile handicap, won the two-mile road race at Bloomington, Ill., on Friday night 15th inst., from Dunn, A. Cowarp (scratch), Alvis and McGinnity.
- Frank L. Hill, the Stanford University student who had planned a leisurely motorcycle tour from San Francisco to New York with his cousin, has put the journey off until next year because his mother's serious illness compelled him to defer it.
- The paper's calendar of coming events from 30 June to 29 November 1906, including the F. A. M. annual tour and endurance contest from New York to Rochester, the F. A. M. annual meet and championships at Rochester, the world's championships at Geneva, and a run of Century Road Club and Roy Wheelmen handicap road races at Valley Stream, L. I.
- Texas figures for the first time in the Federation of American Motorcyclists' annual endurance contest through E. Y. White of San Antonio, who will test his own cushion frame over the 2,000-mile run; twenty-one nominations are in, the start is from Broadway and 110th street on 2 July, and Chairman Wehman has appointed checkers and controls from Peekskill through to Rochester.
- The San Francisco Motorcycle Club is giving up its Pioneer building quarters for cheaper rooms until it recovers from the fire, holding dues at $1 a month; a band of nurses from Los Angeles who occupied the club rooms had played sad havoc with its furniture, two silk flags given by Secretary Litchfield and a bushel of steins.
- An old follower of the game argues that an eight-lap banked board track built by Thompson & Dundy at Luna Park, Coney Island, would be a veritable gold mine, being far easier to reach than Vailsburg and able to draw on the resort's nightly thousands.
- At the Vailsburg board track on 17th inst., officially "Bay View Wheelmen's Day," the Roy Wheelmen's Watson J. Kluczek and Charles Jacobs beat six picked riders of the New York A. C., Bay View Wheelmen and National Turn Verein in the unlimited inter-city pursuit; W. S. Fenn and Floyd Krebs were roundly hissed for pacing the long markers to exhaustion in the five-mile professional handicap, won by Edward Rupprecht.
- The adjourned meeting of the National Assembly L. A. W. at League headquarters in Boston on Saturday 16 June transacted no business of importance, all regular business having been completed in February; rain drove the annual run to the Reservoir indoors, and five ex-presidents were among those present.
- At Jack Prince's Coliseum in Atlanta, Hugh MacLean of Boston beat Robert J. Walthour over five miles motor-paced in Walthour's home town, and Walthour turned the tables the following night, winning a fifteen-mile race by half a lap in 23:17 after MacLean's rear tire exploded.
- C. C. Murphey recounts the worst adventure of the 13,407-mile, year-and-three-month bicycle tour of every State he made with Clarence Darling: a storm aboard a Missouri river ferryboat at Wheeler, then near death from thirst on the old Valentine trail across the Rosebud Reservation, ending with a Sioux cattle rustler carrying them to his cabin.
- John MacMulken of Huntington, riding a motor-fitted Orient on Long Island, thrashed the five yokels who threw a cap into his front wheel, and a local justice of the peace fined him $25 for assault and battery after the defendants' contradictory testimony.
- Traces cycle squeaks to worn ball races in the steering head - to be ground on an emery wheel, annealed and re-hardened - to the turned end of the saddle spring rubbing its stud, cured by a leather washer, and to a dirty chain needing a thorough cleaning, a bath in lubricating oil and a little graphite.
- Theodore K. Hastings's expense account for the winter tri-car trip he and Mrs. Hastings made to Ormond, West Palm Beach, Miami, Havana and Cuba shows $37.36 in transport charges over eight hundred miles of road covered - 2.35 cents per passenger mile - against $25 plus $7.00 consul fees each way for a small automobile on the same boat.
- F. A. M. Competition Committee chairman Roland Douglass suspended for three months every rider who competed in the Waltham Motorcycle Club's unsanctioned road race of the 9th inst., and second offender Guy M. Green for a year, reporting all of them to the N. C. A., the American Automobile Association and the Amateur Athletic Union.
- A mix-up in the two-mile handicap at the Salt Lake saucer on 13 June left Cyrus L. Hollister of Springfield, Mass., with a broken collarbone and Floyd McFarland badly skinned; Saxon Williams was disqualified for causing the fall, and Australia beat America in the unlimited pursuit, Fogler and Bardgett against Pedlar Palmer and Ernest Pye.
- S. R. Wilcox of Salt Lake City won the two-mile lap race and the one-mile handicap at the Denver saucer on 10 June, beating J. E. Achorn and Emil Agraz; E. W. Smith took both ten-mile heats of his motor-paced match against Edward Schwartz, and Anderson missed the claimed world's record for motorcycles by seven seconds.
- Under the Frelinghuysen bill taking effect 1 July, New Jersey motorcyclists need not display numbers: Assistant Secretary of State J. R. B. Smith had instructed them to carry tags, but F. A. M. president Betts and Senator Frelinghuysen pressed the point to the Attorney General, who held the new law wholly revoked the old.
- J. D. Roberts, Jr., of 10 King street, Meriden, Conn., offers $5 and a year's Bicycling World subscription for information leading to the recovery of his chainless Columbia No. 3991, taken during Meriden's centennial celebration and identifiable by a kink in the right side of the handle bar and a small indentation in the gear housing.
- Percy Smooth, riding a high-powered imported Peugeot, started from scratch in the three-mile motorcycle race at Bennings track, Washington, D. C., on 16th inst., then picked up a tack; C. C. Campbell on an Indian finished first from M. E. Mangold, also Indian, and George Beal on a Crouch in 5:51 3/5.
- Tim Bahnsen, astride an Indian motor bicycle, won the three-mile motorcycle race at the St. Louis automobile race meet on Saturday 16th inst. by half a mile of daylight from seven starters.
- A cablegram reports Frank L. Kramer won the grand prix at the Municipal Velodrome, Vincennes, beating Gabriel Poulain by a quarter of a wheel; the same three-day meet saw Poulain take the Prix de Charenton, Doerflinger win the tandem final and Rene Pottier the hour behind human pace, while the Kramer-Poulain match at Antwerp was left undecided when Poulain's tire exploded in the final heat.
- Answers a cyclist who cannot climb as well on an 88 gear (28 front, 9 rear) as on his old 91 (26 and 8), arguing the difference is far too small to account for it and that the real cause is unfamiliarity with a new mount; advises using the machine a month before altering sprockets, and notes a 7-tooth rear sprocket is too small for comfort.
- The Scranton Bicycle Club of Scranton, Pa., celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary on Wednesday evening 20th inst. with three of its seven original charter members present and 192 of its 273 resident members at the festive board.
- A Melbourne correspondent reports the season closed at the Labor Day celebration before an aggregate 100,000, Floyd McFarland winning the ten-mile scratch from Mayer, Clark and Rutt and the classic "Eight Hours Wheel Race" for $500; he blames an appalling sameness of programme, questionable riding and a League that cuts up prize money - the Sydney Thousand paying $3,750, $500 and $125.
- American Consul F. B. Keene reports that Geneva has 321 automobiles, 470 motor bicycles and 18,000 bicycles registered with the cantonal authorities, and that of the motorcycles shown at the city's cycle, automobile and motor boat exposition the lightest, the Geneva-built "motosacoche," found most favour.
- Floyd McFarland won the five-mile lap race for professionals before nearly two thousand at the Glenwood saucer, Ogden, Utah, on 18 June, beating out Iver Lawson by half a wheel in 11:25 with Joe Fogler and Walter Bardgett close up; Saxon Williams took the mile handicap final after Lawson was eliminated by a punctured tire.
- Young Elmer J. Collins of Lynn beat William Stinson of Cambridge and J. B. Coffey in the thrice-postponed twenty-five mile paced race at Revere Beach, Boston, on Wednesday night 20th inst., in 37:19 1/5, Stinson having conceded him a handicap of three laps.
- Frank Kramer beat Schilling in all three heats of the 1,000 metre match race at Brussels on 10 June, with Jacquelin the third man; Kramer took the first heat by a length, Jacquelin's jumping act availed him little in the second, and the third finished Kramer, Schilling, Jacquelin.