The Wheelmen's Gazette, Vol 3, No 10
Articles in this issue
- George W. Rouse and Co. of Peoria, Illinois promote their cycle repair and nickel-plating services alongside easy-payment plans for new wheels from leading American makers.
- The Springfield Bicycle Mfg. Co. cites hill-climbing feats on its Roadster — Eagle Rock, N.J. twelve times without a dismount, Corey Hill, Boston ten times — and reprints a Bicycling World account of rider Shurman conquering Portland, Maine's Spurwick and Park Street hills.
- Clark Cycle Co. of Baltimore again invites cyclists to submit descriptions of their old machines to be taken in part exchange toward any New Rapid or Quadrant model, noting first come, first served.
- J. B. Starley & Co. advertise S. G. Whittaker's ride on the Rover at Bordeaux, August 15, 1888 — 21 miles 126 yards in the hour and 5 miles in 13m 33 3/4s — as a new world's record for the safety bicycle.
- By Harry Estey: at a lonely Colorado railway station, agent Frank Jordan is besieged by two armed robbers after a $2,000 express package, and telegraphs a coded distress signal to his cyclist friend Ike George, who races to the rescue on his Star bicycle just in time to help capture them.
- The quarterly list of U.S. patents granted for cycling devices from July 10 to September 11, 1888, compiled by Jos. A. Minturn, followed by a parallel list of new English cycle patents including John Boyd Dunlop's tire improvement.
- C. A. Rivers of Denver describes a family cycling trip to Greeley with his wife on a Columbia tricycle and their three-year-old son riding on a seat fixed to his Victor safety, passing prairie dogs and jack-rabbits along the way.
- A mournful poem, reprinted from America, on a lost love and the indifference of the turning world.
- Describes the Warwick Cycle Co.'s new spring-bearing frame, using a steel-and-rubber spring beneath the fork to absorb road vibration, adjustable by set screw to the rider's weight.
- Short cycling-world notes: the Kings County Wheelmen's planned race meet, Canary's engagement with the Winter Circus in Paris, and a Kentucky newspaper's appeal against wheelmen riding on sidewalks.
- An editorial argues that experienced cyclers tire of the monotonous main highways and should seek out quiet lanes and byroads for renewed pleasure, health, and closer contact with nature.
- A state-by-state and foreign roundup of cycling news from September 25 to October 15, 1888, covering tournaments in Kansas City, Quincy, and Dallas, the Rowe-Temple match races (Rowe winning the professional world championship), and English road records.
- Thomas Stevens recounts his passage through Afghanistan on his round-the-world bicycle tour, remarking on the total absence of visible women in Afghan villages, nomad camps, and the walled city of Furrah, compared to the veiled but visible women of Turkey and Persia.
- Reports Denver-area cycling news including riders Banks, Hopkins, Wright, and Perkins returning from a Buffalo race, a banquet for Rambler Cycle Club president Austin Banks, and a ball held by the Ramblers.
- Describes an amphibious pedal-driven machine invented by the Rev. Ezra B. Lake for use on the water near Atlantic City, N.J., which its inventor calls "The Ocean" craft and which the press has nicknamed the Sea Spider.
- Reports William A. Rowe's five-mile match-race win over Ralph Temple in the rain at Glenmere Park and other regional Massachusetts racing news.
- Joseph J. Bliss's four-part touring account reaches its "Fourth Day" installment, describing his return leg after riding from Alameda toward Monterey in February and being obliged to finish part of the distance by train.
- Karl Kron reflects on forty days of touring undertaken to recover his health while finishing his road-book, comparing the genuine, insatiable pleasure of "wheeling large" favorably to the empty ambitions of politics, and offers his views on the merits of slow, unhurried touring over distance-chasing.
- A poem, signed "S. K. B.," addressing the rider's bicycle as a steadfast and beloved companion on the road.
- A comic three-part poem giving a boastful racer's swaggering thoughts before, during, and after a race in which he crashes, fouls, and ultimately loses.
- Overman Wheel Co. "apologizes" that three unaffiliated riders on Victor bicycles swept a Nashville race meant to promote a rival maker's machines, after Victors also took first and second in the year's Buffalo hundred-mile road race.