The Wheel: Journal of Bicycling, Vol 1, No 13
Articles in this issue
- Opening column of editorial squibs joking about lingering snow-storms and moonlight spins, predicting the League Meet will be held in New York, and chiding the Bicycling World editor for reprinting Mr. Julius Wilcox's article without credit.
- Reprinted essay from the Wheelman's Year Book advising the businessman-racer how to get into racing form—giving up tobacco and spirits, eating plain fare of fish, steak and dry toast, and taking a daily spurt of two or three miles from five to six o'clock.
- A comic Latin-hymn parody 'by Augustus Mountacen Toi'Wheely' addressed to the 'Wheel of England,' celebrating in mock-heroic style the pleasures and occasional spills of bicycle riding.
- Report that committees from the New York, Mercury and Manhattan clubs (chaired by Mr. Putnam) are arranging to host the League of American Wheelmen's annual meet in New York on May 30th, and that their petition to ride through Central Park—aided by Mr. Benjamin—was granted by the Park Commissioners for that day only, with bicycle storage sought near 59th Street.
- First-person narrative (signed G. V. S.) of two Americans wheeling at night from Oxford toward the Oxford–Cambridge boat race in March 1880 on a Hickling Timberlake and a Newton-Wilson Acme, visiting Garrard & Mortimer's Alliance works at Uxbridge and planning calls on the makers of the Invincible (Surrey Machinists), the Arab (Harrington) and Keen's Eclipse, and seeing Charles Terront finish the six-day race at the Agricultural Hall.
- New York city letter signed 'Mercury' answering 'Jo' (Pennell) over the League Meet and the Central Park question, then touring the New York, Mercury, Manhattan and Lenox clubrooms—reporting the Manhattan Club's annual election under President N. Hobart and a stable ranging from a 42-inch Singer to a 60-inch Special Columbia.
- Letter from 'Capt. C. W. F.' recounting four days of February riding and defending his earlier proposal for an electric bicycle lamp against critic 'Cyclos,' calculating that only 1/200 of a horse-power is needed for a 10-candle light, and boasting of 150-mile Kentucky road rides and an 81-mile Louisville-to-Lexington run.
- Editorial notes stating the paper's aim to cover club meetings, races, tours and inventions and inviting correspondence, followed by a critique of the two- and five-mile handicap races at the New York Athletic Club spring games, arguing handicaps are best set by a committee of club representatives and pledging to keep records of every race to aid handicappers.
- Boston correspondent 'Juvenis' continues his survey of the Scientific American's 1869–70 velocipede coverage and its later coolness toward the bicycle, recalling Mr. Soule's prophetic Albany two-wheeler patent, noting an English exercising machine on view at the Pope Manufacturing Company's rooms, and reporting Boston's spring roads now rideable.
- Letter from 'W. Heel' describing a fall-strewn 8-mile 'icecycling' run down the frozen Hudson to Castleton that left him with bent cranks, calling on inventors to devise a detachable tyre 'creeper' for winter riding, and regretting that Saratoga rather than Washington was not chosen for the L. A. W. meet.
- Weekly New York theatre listings for 14–19 March 1881, covering Mme. Etelka Gerster at the Academy of Music, Hazel Kirke at the Madison Square Theatre, Billee Taylor at the Standard Theatre, and shows at the Union Square and Bijou Opera House theatres, Haverly's and Daly's.