The Cycle, Vol 2, No 11
Articles in this issue
- The paper's female columnist (signing as 'Daisie') shares cycling mileage diaries from nine English women riders in 1886, led by Marion Arkwright's 2,166 miles, then contrasts the encouraging attitude of eastern U.S. dealers toward lady cyclists with the obstructive indifference of St. Louis dealers.
- The Capital Bicycle Club of Washington, D.C. — the second oldest in the country — celebrated the completion of its $20,000 Americanized Norman clubhouse on 4 December with a reception for 400 guests, dancing, and a supper in the machine hall.
- A comic first-person story by 'Homo' in which a would-be suitor follows a young woman and her companion on a tandem to Crescent Beach, manoeuvres her escort into a drunken stupor, then rides home with her on the tandem — only to discover on arrival that he has been courting the housemaid wearing her mistress's dress.
- The Massachusetts Division L.A.W. officers met for dinner at Young's Hotel on 5 December, reporting a treasury balance of $824.87, and discussed membership retention, a new road-book incorporating Rhode Island routes, better danger sign-boards, a summer encampment at Cottage City, and revising the constitution.
- Three Westfield, Massachusetts riders — 15-year-old Gilbert Loomis (13,408 miles on a 52-inch machine), Telephone Manager Norton (10,706 miles on a 48-inch Star), and newsboy Emerson Burt (10,002 miles on a 42-inch Ideal) — have collectively logged 34,206 miles competing for the Lakin Cyclometer Company's gold cyclometer prize.
- The Cycle agrees with The News that while knee-breeches are the best cycling costume, advocating them as everyday wear goes too far; it endorses the counter-argument that social convention, not cowardice alone, governs dress, and that comfort still favours trousers for ordinary business life.
- The paper's miscellany column notes the upcoming serial 'Christmas at Clover Hill' by Colin Gray, reports that Singer & Co. will fit all machines with Otto's corrugated wire tire, covers the new 'Wheel Board of Trade' formed by Boston cycle dealers at the Pope Manufacturing Company's office, and includes a digest of brief items on riders, clubs, and cycling personalities.
- Racing results for late November 1886 include W. M. Richardson's twenty-mile Thanksgiving road race win for the Pequonnock Wheel Club in 1:32, Woodside's fifty-mile Minneapolis victory, Chicago's fourth annual hare-and-hound chase won by Crennan in 1:12:45, and the extended Macon, Georgia matches between Elsa Von Blumen and Robert Brantley over 50 miles and 27 hours.
- Club notes cover the newly organised Calumet Cycling Club of Brooklyn (officers listed) and the Philadelphia Bicycle Club's house-warming at its new $17,000 building on the corner of Twentieth and Perot Streets, attended by 500–600 guests with a gymnasium exhibition by Professor H. C. Barrett's class.