SOME DON'TS FOR BICYCLERS.
BY WILLIAM HEMMINGWAY.
Don't try to do too much. Ambition to shine as a "scorcher" has seriously injured the health of many a good, strong rider. Probably no form of exercise is so full of temptation to over-indulgence as is wheeling. Except during the moments of hill-climbing, it is so easy to send the machine spinning along.
How often you hear riders say, "I'm feeling languid and draggy to-day. Can't imagine what's the matter. Had a splendid ride of sixty miles yesterday." Isn't that explanation enough? The effects of too great fatigue often last as long as life itself. If the muscles alone were concerned it wouldn't matter so much, but the great trouble lies in another quarter. There is always danger of injuring the heart. One can recover from a strained muscle or sprained joint or broken bone, but let the heart be once badly strained, and you may be sure that the evil effects will last a lifetime.
Is there a way of knowing when one has ridden enough? Yes. Whenever you feel that you couldn't dismount and run a quarter-mile at good speed, it is time to stop wheeling. Better get off and take a rest. Better still, put away the wheel for the day. There will be many other days, and you can enjoy them all the more if you have a sound heart.
Don't wheel up a steep hill. Leave that sort of thing to fellows who haven't enough sense to go in when it rains. What gain is there in it, anyhow? You can walk up and push your wheel just as fast, and with one-quarter of the exertion. If too much wheeling on the level road is bad, too much hill-climbing is ten times worse. If you could look into the minds of the smart hill-climbers, you would find that they half kill themselves to make bystanders think they are wonderful riders. Really, that sort of thing is too silly to talk about with patience.
Don't coast too much. If you feel that life without coasting is a mockery, then go to some hill that you are thoroughly familiar with, where there are no crossings, where you can watch the road for at least one hundred miles ahead, and then take care. No matter whether you have coasted down the hill a hundred times before or not, the danger is always just as great. Perhaps we are never in so great peril as when we think we know it all.
Don't "scorch" in the streets. At any crossing you are liable to run over some pedestrian or to collide with a big truck or carriage. Either one may mean a life lost, or at least broken bones. You wouldn't drive a horse at a 2.40 gait through the streets. Remember a bicycle is quite as dangerous.
Don't ride on the left side of the street. Your place is on the right side, because a bicycle is a vehicle in the eyes of the law, having the same rights and subject to the same rules as any other vehicle. If anything happens to you because you are on the wrong side of the street you cannot recover damages.
Don't think, because somebody you know has wheeled a "century," that you must do it too. There is really very little satisfaction in riding one hundred miles merely for the sake of saying that you have done it. If any other wheelman chooses to tire his muscles and overstrain his heart for a mere bit of boasting, let him do it. I know that most of us are sorely tempted by the "century" folly. But think a moment. If you owned a fine thoroughbred horse, would you run the risk of ruining him forever by speeding him to the utmost limit of his strength for a whole day? Yet is not your own health more valuable to you than all the horses in the world?
Don't let your cyclometer be your master. Make it your servant. Don't think, "I have wheeled thirty-seven miles to-day, now I'll run a mile and a half up the road and back so as to make an even forty." Use the cyclometer to find out how soon you must stop, not how much further you must go.
Don't neglect your wheel. Because it doesn't eat is no reason why it should be starved. It needs oil. It should be cleaned regularly after every ride. Be sure that all the bearings are oiled at least once for every one hundred miles travelled. In hot weather the oil runs off faster. Lubricate your chain every time you go out for a spin. See to it that the dust-caps are all in perfect order. Dust wears out bearings much faster than ordinary use.
Don't go out in the late afternoon without a well-filled lamp, especially if you live in New York. Think of the scores of wheelmen who have been fined for riding at night without lights, to say nothing of the danger of going unlighted.