The Cycle, Vol 1, No 20
Articles in this issue
- The Cycle objects that scheduling the fall Board of Officers meeting at Buffalo on the same day as the New York Division meeting and the tournament will split attention from League business, noting that meetings held at Philadelphia and Springfield on tournament dates were the least satisfactory on record.
- A detailed first-hand account, supplied by Mrs. Stickney, of how a tandem tricycle coasting downhill near Chestnut Hill reservoir without a headlight caught a cobblestone gutter and threw Mr. Rufus H. Stickney over his wife's head; he died hours later from a burst blood vessel on the brain.
- The Cycle publishes a flood of reader correspondence on the Orange bell-and-lamp ordinance, including letters from Karl Kron, E. J. Schriver, and L. H. Johnson, all arguing that singling out cycles for special lamp requirements sets a dangerous legal precedent and violates cyclists' equal rights on the road.
- Ninety-six wheels from six clubs — Scrantons, Kingstons, Wyomings, Pittston, Ramblers, and Wilkesbarres — took part in a lantern parade through Wilkesbarre on 6 August, each machine carrying two to four colored lanterns and creating a spectral effect on the asphalt.
- A column of short editorial notes covering racing gossip, League politics, the Lynn track improvements, record-keeping controversies, McCurdy's twenty-four-hour ambitions, and miscellaneous cycling news from Boston and Springfield.
- Major William M. Durell, Western agent of Pope Manufacturing Company and well-known among American wheelmen, died suddenly on 4 August; detectives investigating the circumstances allege that the apoplectic stroke which killed him was caused by a brutal beating he received at a sporting resort in the company of Duncan C. Ross.
- A New Orleans correspondent reports that the annual races of the N. O. B. C., set for 27–28 August, will include tandem, tricycle, and safety events for the first time, and that the city's cycling membership is growing steadily with two tandems already in use and two more on order.
- William H. Langdown, amateur champion of New Zealand and captain of the Christchurch Pioneer Bicycle Club, is making a 16,000-mile journey to participate in the Springfield tournament; a recent tour from Wellington through the Manawatu gorge to Napier and Wanganui covered some 600 miles before his bicycle broke down at New Plymouth.
- Tom Battensby, on a 42-pound Crescent racing tricycle geared to 64 inches, broke all English professional tricycle records to ten miles on 26 July, covering the distance in 31 minutes 2¼ seconds despite a strong wind.
- A tandem tricycle fire-and-life-saving apparatus invented by Mr. William Glenister and Mr. J. C. Merryweather incorporates a hose wheel, a collapsible double-pump engine, a rope-and-bag fire escape, and pumping seats, and can be run at full bicycle speed by two men.
- A humorous letter forwarded by L. W. Seely of the Capital Club, written by a young woman in Washington who recounts her first solo tricycle outings: colliding with a wobbling bicycler whose wheel buckled, getting stuck on a street-railway track, and being rescued by her cousin Tom.
- A page of short items and wit, opening with Alf Gibson's comic poem 'Wheelman's Chorus,' followed by notes on Coventry Machinists' new self-lubricating chain, Worcester-to-Chestnut-Hill record rides, Howell's prospects for Springfield, and various brief cycling observations.
- Race results from meetings at Woodstock (Canada), Youngstown (Ohio), Chicago, and Queen's County (New York), with times and placings for amateur and open events from the half-mile to the five-mile.
- Officer elections for two clubs: Clinton (Mass.) Bicycle Club chose Geo. B. Jackson as president and L. M. Cunningham as captain at its semi-annual meeting of 2 August; the Hyde Park Ramblers elected Theodore Walters as president and H. S. Peare as captain.
- A dated calendar of upcoming cycling races and meets for August through October 1886, covering events from Iowa to New Jersey, including the Connecticut Bicycle Club's annual Hartford tournament (8–9 September), the New York division races at Buffalo (3–4 September), and the Springfield tournament (14–17 September).