The Wheel: Journal of Bicycling, Vol 7, No 10
Articles in this issue
- Unsigned leading editorials extending sympathy over the Thanksgiving fire at George R. Bidwell & Co.'s New York salesroom, arguing the Buffalo-based 'Big Four Tour' is a bigger draw than the League Meet and that the Meet should coincide with it, and reiterating in reply to the Gazette that any competent newspaperman could edit the League's monthly Gazette.
- Short items covering the Bidwell & Co. Thanksgiving fire at 4 East 60th Street New York, the New York Athletic Club reversing its decision to repurpose the bicycle storeroom, Karl Kron's slow-progressing book canvass, and the Western Union Telegraph office in Washington D.C. deploying four bicycles for message delivery.
- Correspondent W.I.H. reports on Thanksgiving rides at the Reservoir attended by the Massachusetts Club (eleven bicycles) and Boston Club (eight men), and gives a detailed description of the new Massachusetts Bicycle Club house on Newbury Street, funded largely by Colonel Albert A. Pope at a total cost of thirty thousand dollars.
- Account of the grand entertainment at the Alpha Roller Skating Rink, Jersey City on 26 November, featuring a drill by sixteen Hudson County Wheelmen under Captain E. W. Johnson, trick riding by Master Thomas Finley on a Star bicycle, polo on wheels with Chas. Frazier, a cavalry drill by the Kings County Wheelmen, and feats by champion rider Prof. Harry W. Tufts.
- Report of a 100-mile bicycle contest at the Apollo Skating Rink, Baltimore on 25 November, in which John S. Prince gave Miss Elsie Von Blumen a nineteen-mile start on a fifteen-laps-to-the-mile track; Von Blumen won in 7 hours 27 minutes with Prince credited at 99 miles and 6 laps at the finish.
- New York cycling correspondent reports on park badge distribution by N. M. Beckwith, dangerous conditions on the boulevard between 59th and 72nd streets, and an incident in which Citizens Club riders Ford and Case fought off stone-throwing roughs and had two youths sentenced to ten days on the Island.
- Notes from the Hudson County Wheelmen's election-day run to Newark, East Orange, and Eagle Rock with the New Jersey and Staten Island Wheelmen under Captains E. W. Johnson and Knight L. Clapp, plus a description of the newly fitted Lynn (Mass.) Cycle club rooms adorned with steel engravings and a Wood's grand piano.
- Detailed account of the Thanksgiving Day fire at Geo. R. Bidwell & Co., 4 East Sixtieth Street, which destroyed over $8,000 of stock including Expert and Standard Columbias, Rudges, Kangaroos, and Victor tricycles, with the blaze attributed to spontaneous combustion of oily cleaning rags left in lockers.
- Humorous first-person account by the club Secretary of the Maryland Bicycle Club's cornerstone-laying ceremony on Thanksgiving Day, with a parade of 38 Maryland members plus the Druid Cyclists (Captain E. Kemp Bartlett), Lafayette Wheelmen (Captain Mealy), Wheeling Wheelmen (Captain Booz), and Junior Wheelmen (Captain Packer), followed by a dinner at Towson where the 'Order of the Trowel' was inaugurated.
- H. F. Fuller reports on a musicale at the Dearborn Cycling Club at the home of H. W. Fuller, featuring Miss Adele Geiser and Miss Florence Fuller at the piano, and on the opening of the Le Grand Bicycle Course at the Le Grand Skating Rink, where Mr. Van Siclen rode an exhibition mile in 3:25 and the Hermes and Aeolus Bicycle Clubs drilled.
- Karl Kron reports that after ten months his subscription canvass for 'Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle' has reached 2,091 pledges with 909 still needed, and recounts a remarkable coincidence in which a letter from Australian cyclist James Copland of Melbourne arrived at the exact moment Kron was writing to solicit Copland's subscription.
- Humorous poem by 'Georgius' playing on the names of contemporary bicycle and tricycle brands including Jumbo, Kangaroo, Star, Facile, Extraordinary, Yale, Boneshaker, Rudge, Royal Mail, Premier, Humber, and Sanspareil.
- Review of English tricycle racing records for the season compiled by Pembroke Coleman, official handicapper to the National Cyclists' Union, highlighting H. J. Webb's 100-mile record of 6h 43min and Land's End to John o'Groat's in 7 days 18h 58min, and W. F. Sutton's 230½ miles in 24 hours on the road.
- Items from other cycling journals including news of women's tricycling enthusiasm in Sydney from the secretary of the Wheelmen's Union there, a Birchfields social address by Reuben Chambers on his American tour with Illston, and confirmation that champion Dr. H. L. Cortis — rumoured dead — is alive and well at the Sydney B.C.
- H. C. Finkler's extended tour report to Karl Kron covering 686½ miles through Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake, Napa, Solano, Yolo, and Sacramento counties, with accounts of climbs over Cobb and St. Helena Mountains, hospitality from the Sacramento Bicycle Club under Captain R. R. Flint, and a final solo century attempt from San Francisco to Hollister covering 100½ miles in half a day and fifteen minutes.