The Cycle, Vol 1, No 23
Articles in this issue
- Chapter II of Colin Gray's serial fiction: the narrator, recovering from an overwork-induced breakdown, is ordered by his doctor to take up cycling and recalls how a ghostly encounter at a mountain gorge turned out to be a hallucination — and how Lucy, the daughter of his mysterious client, nursed him back to health and became his wife.
- A column of short cycling news items: riders' results and mishaps in Boston, Lynn, and Springfield; British cycling gossip including the Salvation Army's Marlboro' tandems and Furnivall's record attempts; notes on Mark Twain's clumsy debut on the wheel; the Stickney accident correction; Karl Kron's complaints; and race practice times at Lynn and Springfield.
- An exchange anecdote recounts how Samuel Clemens attempted to learn cycling in Hartford wearing a long linen duster, was promptly thrown when the coat caught in the wheel, and remedied the situation by cutting it short with a knife before buying a Norfolk jacket — though he never fully mastered the bicycle.
- George R. Bidwell's New York State Division plans to introduce a bill compelling park commissioners and road authorities to admit cyclists on the same basis as other vehicles, and will enforce an existing law requiring signboards at county road junctions.
- Full results of the 1886 N.C.U. amateur championships: P. Furnivall won the one-mile and five-mile bicycle titles; J. E. Fenlon won the twenty-five-mile bicycle and fifty-mile bicycle; Furnivall also won the one-mile tricycle; F. W. Allard took the five-mile tricycle; R. J. Mecredy won the twenty-five-mile tricycle.
- A handicap ride to John-O'-Groat's has been set in motion: G. P. Mills on a tricycle is the surviving rider, lying eighteen hours ahead of the existing record of 6 days 15 hours 22 minutes, with three other entrants having already dropped out.
- A. H. Overman, speaking from Europe, frankly tells The Cycle that his four Victor riders are full-time salaried men who do nothing but train — making them professionals in all but name — and that the promateur category is an absurd fiction, a view echoed by the British paper Cyclist.
- A Washington wheelman rode his bicycle along the narrow stone coping of Cabin John Bridge, 200 feet long and about a foot wide with a sheer 125-foot drop on the outside; a second rider, Will Robertson of the Capital Club, imitated the feat and added a unicycle flourish, prompting The Cycle to call for the practice to be stopped before necks are broken.
- Chief Consul Hayes has appointed the standing committees for the next year: Racing (chairman Abbot Bassett), Touring (W. O. Green), Finance (J. Fred Adams), Rules and Regulations (W. L. Harris), Legal Advisory Board (Charles E. Pratt), and the Signboards and Stencils committee (Hill and Tolman of Worcester) reappointed.
- A reader suggests that fox-hunters' tall silk hats would protect cyclists' heads in a header by acting as an air cushion; The Cycle replies sceptically, observing that a tall hat invariably flies off in the opposite direction from the rider's head on impact.
- Chas. D. Renton visits The Cycle to present his son's side of the League expulsion case, arguing that an earlier settlement had guaranteed D. H. Renton would not be expelled, that no threatening letter was ever written, and that the family intends to pursue the League in the courts for damages.
- Race results from Worcester, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland (three days), Carthage Ohio, Scranton, and Springfield, including W. A. Rhodes's new world five-mile record of 13:35 at Springfield and Woodside's new professional five-mile record of 13:50¾.
- Two new cycling clubs are reported: the Crescent Wheelmen of New Orleans, organised on 24 August with S. H. Plough as president; and the Wanderers' Club, formed on 27 August with Walter Gardner as president.
- A calendar of cycling events for September and October 1886 listing tournaments, division meets, road races, and club races across the United States, from the Springfield Bicycle Club's fifth annual tournament (14–17 September) to the New Jersey Cycling and Athletic Association's first annual tournament at Roseville Station (30 September–2 October).