Seventy-five percent of my book is now written. A pesky 25 percent is still brewing. The book’s first chapter goes through the copy-editing mill next week, via a copy-editor with an interesting history of his own (more on that later). […]
Continue ReadingThe very first motor cars – such as Henry Ford’s Quadricycle – didn’t just use bicycle wheels and bicycle chains they also used bicycle lamps and other brass accessories, including bicycle horns. A typical bicycle horn had a rubber bulb […]
Continue ReadingTo the New Year. BY A BICYCLER. All hail, O first of Jan.! thou greatest day (For swearing off) of all the merry year; When whiskey topers drop to lager bier, And beardless youths demand a “raise” in pay. When […]
Continue ReadingPity.* They look cute. But maybe you need the waxed ‘tache to truly make the look work for you? The 25 cent cotton caps – and the more expensive silk ones beneath – were advertised for sale in an 1889 […]
Continue ReadingThe cartoonist in the League of American Wheelman’s weekly magazine didn’t pull any punches, in 1889, when he imagined the punishment that ought be meted out to those horse-and-carriage drivers who were less than kind to cyclists. They should be […]
Continue Reading1930s press baron Lord Beaverbrook said Alfred Harmsworth was “the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street.” It might have been more accurate if Beaverbrook had said “rode down Fleet Street” for Harmsworth was an enthusiastic cyclist, familiar with […]
Continue Reading‘Madeline’, promised anonymity, wrote the following to American weekly magazine The Bicycling World, 17th December 1880: “My window looks out upon a street that seems to be a favorite bicycle route, or at least a favored one, and the appearance […]
Continue ReadingHistory books have long said that Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States during and three years after the First World War, was a huge fan of the automobile. “No more ardent motorist ever occupied the White House […]
Continue ReadingGoing down Hill on a Bicycle: A Boy’s Song By Henry Charles Beeching With lifted feet, hands still, I am poised, and down the hill Dart, with heedful mind The air goes by in a wind. Swifter and yet more […]
Continue ReadingThis Saturday sees the fifth annual staging of the Tweed Run, in London. Riders will be entertained by the legendary, 1960s-vintage Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and judged on sartorial elegance by tailors on Saville Row, who come out en masse […]
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