Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Chapter XXVII.

Down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and Home again.

A bicycle excites more attention through Southern Ohio and West Virginia than in any State or Territory across which I have ridden. On one occasion, in Ohio, a district school was dismissed, and the schoolmaster asked me to perform a little for the edification of the scholars. I was climbing a steep hill at the time, in a broiling hot sun, and so declined, but was sorry afterwards that I did so. Crossing the Ohio River at Marietta, and following the north-western pike, east through West Virginia, over a very fair road, notwithstanding the hills, the machine was an object of curiosity to every one. In passing the farm-houses, some one was sure to give the alarm, and in some mysterious way the whole household was instantly aware that the opportunity of a lifetime was at hand, and they were bound to improve it. Out would come “Paw” and “Maw,” and four or five children, and generally three or four guests, for the people are great visitors in this section. And after I had passed they would all laugh, not derisively, but because they were pleased. The grown folks really acted childish about the machine.

One morning a little boy on horseback rode on ahead, and aroused the neighbors for miles. On another morning I got started early, and was noiselessly passing the house when the dog, I believe, gave the alarm, and the whole family, nine of them, broke from the breakfast-table and rushed out into the road, the farmer holding a Bible in his hand, with his finger in the place, so that the morning service might be resumed when I was gone. It was a pleasure to answer the questions of all these simple people, but when I passed through the larger towns it was really annoying to be the object of so much interest.

At Grafton, for instance, I stopped on the sidewalk for a minute, and in less time than it takes to write this I was surrounded. Then I moved out upon the curbstone, and instantly the crowd surged into the street and gutter, simply to get in front and look me squarely in the face. Here a reporter, in the form of an elderly gentleman, slightly inebriated, interviewed me, and contrary to my usual feeling when being questioned, I was decidedly pleased this time, and the crowd enjoyed it fully as much. It was only after asking and hearing the answers to his questions over and over again that he was able to put them upon paper, and when I told him the distance I had traveled on the wheel he made a calculation in regard to the circumference of the earth that surprised me, but I said nothing. This is the result of his muddled memory as it appeared in a Grafton paper:

“Mr. Thayer may be regarded as one of the most remarkable men of the age, who has accomplished the feat of traveling more than half way around the world on his bicycle. In his modest, unassuming way he informs us he has traveled 4,100 miles on his bicycle since leaving home.”

But to counterbalance the annoyance there were many things about the ride through West Virginia that were pleasing and new. A very busy branch of the Baltimore & “Ohar” railroad runs for miles close to the pike, and many times while I was climbing the long hill the trains would take a short cut and go through the hill, making the ground tremble beneath me as they rushed through the tunnel. The beauty of the changing foliage was at its prime, the air cool, and the wind blew the rustling leaves about with a pleasing noise. Sometimes I would sit down under a shady tree and quench my thirst with two or three nice apples (they were very plenty everywhere) or crack a few black walnuts, much to the anxiety of the chirping squirrels in the trees, or pull up a root of sassafras or a bunch of pennyroyal.

I stopped for a few minutes near a pair of bars. A squirrel came running along on the stone wall to these bars with something in its mouth, and, jumping down to the ground, skipped across to the other side, and went on his way along the wall. Pretty soon he came back, and in a short time had another chestnut in his mouth to be stored away with the first. As he jumped down to the ground to cross the space between the walls for the third time, a good-sized rat sprang out from under a large stone, and chased the squirrel half way across. Then the rat went back into his hole and waited. I could just see the head peeping out. Pretty soon the squirrel came back as big as life, and had got about half way across when the rat pounced out upon him, and the squirrel gave one squeak, and was back on the wall again in an instant. The rat retired to the hole again with a very determined look. I was getting very much interested. The squirrel, with more discretion, came slowly down to the ground with compromising chirps and creeped along, turning first to one side and then the other, but all the time arguing the question in his squeaking voice. The rat came out to meet him, a few steps at a time, sullen, but settled in his purpose to allow no more crossing on his premises under penalty of his jaw; and the affair to me was getting more than interesting when a small, shaggy dog came running along, in the road, turned, and went under the bars, and the rat went one way and the squirrel the other, without more ceremony.

All this added spice to the trip, especially as I had ridden so many miles through a section of the country where there were neither hills, trees, apples, nuts, sassafras, pennyroyal, nor water—to say nothing about squirrels and rats. Here there was too much water—hundreds of little brooks crossing the road, making unnumbered dismounts advisable. This reminds me of the different remedies wheelmen have of quenching thirst. Some advise taking toothpicks, others pebbles in the mouth, and so on. But somehow I have become accustomed to using water, that is, when I could get it. With the perspiration oozing visibly from every pore in a wheelman’s body for hours at a time, it seems only common sense to think that that waste of moisture must be supplied, not by extracting the juice from a wooden toothpick or a stone, but by a liquid in some form or other. When the system is dry it needs water, just as the stomach does food when it is empty. Toothpicks and pebbles may excite saliva in the mouth for a short trip, but as a regular beverage they are of little use.