The Wheel: Journal of Bicycling, Vol 11, No 13
Articles in this issue
- Regular news column with short items about cycling clubs and athletes, including the Lynn Cycle Club's New Year ball, the Stanley Show opening in London, a sub-rosa L.A.W. Executive Committee meeting in Philadelphia, and Hugh Callan's prize-winning 1,450-mile bicycle tour from Glasgow through Turkey reported in Tid Bits.
- Unsigned editorial offering seasonal greetings to readers and reflecting on the meaning of Christmas, briefly noting a veteran wheelman's adjacent column advocating year-round cycling and the cycling press's mistaken habit of declaring an 'off season.'
- Summary of Wheelibus's plan from Wheeling (November 27) proposing that cycling clubs reorganize as stock companies, issuing shares to members and paying annual dividends from race-meet profits, rewarding active workers with preferred shares rather than collecting dues that benefited only future members.
- Letter from Frederick Jenkins of New York arguing that winter cycling is underrated, that frost-hardened macadam roads are often superior to summer surfaces, and urging cyclists to keep riding through the cold to prove the sport is a year-round pursuit.
- News report on the silence of round-the-world cyclist Thomas Stevens since his October 4th letter from Shanghai; Outing Co. officials express confidence he is alive, attributing his prior success to natives' reverence for religious pilgrims, but fear he has been laid low by fever in China within twenty days' ride of Yokohama.
- Editorial commentary on the controversy sparked by manager A.L. Atkins' reported remarks in the St. Louis Post-Despatch disparaging Hendee and favouring Rowe, concluding that Rowe of Shoemakerville is the faster man but that the reporter likely exaggerated Atkins' words.
- Club notes from the Brooklyn Bicycle Club reporting 50,000 total miles ridden in the season, led by president A.B. Barkman at 8,000 miles and Hawkins at 5,000; the club also held a ladies' reception on December 10th and organized a twenty-member toboggan club at Washington Baseball Park.
- Correspondence from Hartford reporting the Hartford Wheel Club's successful toboggan slide opening (320-foot run, electric lighting, firework display) and their outstanding record of 67 prizes at road races and home-trainer contests in fourteen months, led by E.A. De Blois with 25 prizes.
- Humorous narrative by L.G.B. recounting three Northwestern wheelmen's October 1886 steam-launch voyage from Fort Snelling down the Mississippi toward Winona, marked by sandbar groundings, a lost propeller screw, paddle-powered improvisation, and a cold night camped in a riverside hollow.
- Excerpt from Karl Kron's Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle surveying cycling governing bodies worldwide, covering the Irish Cyclists' Association (R.J. Mecredy, secretary), Germany's Deutscher Radfahrer-Bund (7,187 members), the Union Velocipedique de France, and Australian, New Zealand, and Tasmanian cyclists' unions.
- Manager W.J. Morgan's open letter to Sporting Life announcing the American professional cycling team's planned 1887 European tour—champion Woodside, tricyclist Eck, Frazier, and Morgan—challenging Howell, Battensby, and other English riders for world titles at various distances.
- Letter from Edward J. Shriver defending the New York Bicycle Club against an unprovoked attack by an L.A.W. Bulletin correspondent, demanding that editor Aaron promptly publish the club's rebuttal rather than suppress it for two weeks.
- Feature on the Rover-type safety bicycle imported by L.H. Johnson of East Orange, N.J., presenting testimonials from C.T.C. Gazette correspondents praising its immunity from headers, hill-climbing power, low vibration, and ease of learning—predicted to be 'all the rage' in America in 1887.
- Trade news covering the Cunard Cycle Co.'s new incorporation at £50,000, the Overman Wheel Company's cyclometer patent victory over the Butcher Cyclometer Co., Stoddard Lovering & Co.'s new 1887 Rudge and Crescent models including a Rover-type safety, and H.B. Smith's expanded Star bicycle salesrooms in New York.
- Letter from a lady member of the C.T.C., reprinted from the C.T.C. Gazette, praising the Cunard convertible tandem's rigidity, balance with unequal rider weights, and easy conversion to a single Cripper-type safety after eight months and several long country-road journeys.
- Weekly list of U.S. cycling-related patents granted, including bicycles by A.A. Carter of Newark and G.D. Ferris of Springfield, an anti-friction bearing by Haynes and Schaaf of Buffalo, and velocipedes by C.H. Linley and T. Biggs of Southwark, H.H. Pope of Hartford, and others.
- Calendar of upcoming cycling club social events, listing the Ilderan Bicycle Club's December 29 entertainment in Brooklyn, the Massachusetts B.C. athletic entertainment on January 6, and the Somerville Cycle Club's ball on January 22.