The Wheel: Journal of Bicycling, Vol 8, No 1
Articles in this issue
- The special-issue lead feature by manager Burley B. Ayers detailing the Big Four Bicycle Tour Association's plan to run 100 wheelmen from Buffalo to New York in July 1885 in four city divisions (Chicago, Boston, Buffalo, New York) under commander Fred G. Bourne, covering organisation and membership, dress, ambulances, baggage and the $50 coupon ticket, the Big Four century road race from Colborne to Kingston for a gold medal (entries to chairman Abbott Bassett), and the detailed eleven-day route through Ontario, the Thousand Islands, the Mohawk Valley and down the Hudson to New York.
- A Buffalo correspondence column of club and trade notes: the newly organised Buffalo Ramblers Bicycle Club and its planned 50-mile Decoration Day road race to Corfu, Bull & Bowen's accessories and repair shop and Buffalo home trainer, the Genesee as the L. A. W. hotel, and local racers Dan Milley and Jim Hedge training on the trainer for the season.
- Karl Kron's signed proclamation to his 2,621 enrolled subscribers reporting progress on his book, his contract with the Springfield (Mass.) Printing Co. and the Photo-Gravure Co. for 5,000 copies costing upwards of $2,100, and his hope to secure the full 3,000 subscriptions and issue the volume by summer.
- A satirical poem ridiculing the "jaunty man of polo" who, having joined the rink set, finds himself barred by the judges from amateur bicycle racing and the medals it brings.
- Unsigned editorial paragraphs on the opening of the season: the League constitution changes, ridicule of "Spokes'" call for a professional League, the festive club run versus the skating rink, English race-meeting mania, Thomas Stevens's humorous "Across America" passages, the case for state road-books, and a Western club's bid to drill in a skating rink.
- A letter signed "Subscriber" cautioning Karl Kron that his politically charged description of "Greystone" and the 1876 Electoral Commission in his road book risks alienating readers, urging him to eschew disputed political and religious questions lest they injure the prospects of "Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle."
- The weekly miscellany noting that The Wheel enters volume eight and its sixth year, the Keen testimonial fund of $639, twenty-three new L. A. W. members, Fred Wood joining Howell at Springfield, Frank A. Elwell's Moosehead Lake tour, the Troy Bicycle Club reception, the new Massachusetts Bicycle Club house, the Citizens Bicycle Club race meeting, and Thomas Stevens's coming round-the-world ride for Outing.
- A detailed account of the formal opening of the Massachusetts Bicycle Club's new three-storey Newbury Street clubhouse in Boston, attended by some 600 cyclists including Col. Albert A. Pope, Abbott Bassett, Thomas Stevens and Ralph P. Ahl; describes the wheel room, locker-room dressing curtains, cherry-finished parlour and ladies' library, gymnasium and bowling alley, crediting architect George F. Meacham and Pope's enterprise.
- Boston correspondence covering fine late-March weather spoiled by six inches of snow, Fast Day club runs by the Massachusetts, Boston, Newton, Charlestown and Salem clubs, the Springfield Bicycle Club's L. A. W. state ticket headed by Henry E. Ducker, the Nemo Cycling Club's mixed-pairs membership, and an argument for separating League governance from racing.
- Frank A. Elwell announces an eleven-day tour from Boston to Moosehead Lake and Bar Harbor, Maine, departing July 27 with a four-horse coach for non-cycling companions; the 150-mile itinerary runs from the Kineo House and Greenville down through Monson, Dexter, Bangor and Ellsworth to Mount Desert, with a Pine Tree Bicycle Club reception and races at Maplewood Park, costing about $30.