This Department is conducted in the Interest of Bicyclers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject. Our maps and tours contain much valuable data kindly supplied from the official maps and road-books of the League of American Wheelmen. Recognizing the value of the work being done by the L. A. W., the Editor will be pleased to furnish subscribers with membership blanks and information so far as possible.
Among the most difficult questions to answer, because it is always so varied, is that which involves how much, how long, how far the impersonal "I" should ride. I do not write this in the spirit of ridicule at all, for evidently the many inquiries received are sent in all seriousness, and even if this were not so the subject is such a serious one that it would demand earnest attention. It may be said that any particular person can ride, or rather may ride, just so far on a wheel as his physical powers and his physical training will permit him to without completely exhausting him. This is, of course, entirely relative, and there are at the same time cases where a man may exhaust himself without fear of injury, and other cases where he must stop long before he approaches the point of exhaustion, unless he wishes to take the chance of severe injury. Each person, in other words, must be his own judge of what his distance and speed may be, unless there is some one near to watch and advise him competently.
Having stated the general case, let us particularize. An average afternoon ride for a business man who does not train regularly is twenty miles, without much of a stop anywhere from the first to the twentieth mile. An average ride for a woman who probably never has taken much exercise is ten miles, with several dismounts, to walk up most hills, and get the variation on the muscles furnished by a little walk. An average ride for a young man in school or college who has been in pretty good condition for some time, if not absolutely in training, is from forty to fifty miles in an afternoon, without much stop. An average ride for a girl of healthy out-door life and training—for there is always a certain amount of physical training in out-door life—is twenty miles in a day, with several stops. Here are four grades, so to speak, which merely give us a basis to work on. Now as to the time occupied. In the first, the man's twenty-mile ride, it would be safe to say two hours should be occupied in doing the ride. In the second, or woman's ten-mile ride, about an hour and a half altogether would be required. That is to say, she will wheel at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour to occupy a good fifteen minutes in walking. The third case, that of the young man in training doing fifty miles, ought to occupy under four hours, or, at any rate, not much more than four hours; thus starting out at one o'clock in the afternoon, he should do his fifty miles and be at home again by five. Finally, in the girl's twenty-mile ride, with its more or less frequent stops for a walk, two to two and a half hours should be employed. If you happen to belong to any one of these four classes, very probably you cannot easily do the amount set down here as the average for that class. It will be found, however, that these figures in the end will strike the amount nearly at the general average. The fact that you cannot do the amount without becoming exhausted at the moment and stiff the next day simply means that you are not yourself up to the average. This is nothing to be discouraged over, as it is a very simple matter to reach the average by a little training—that is, a little steady riding for a week or two—unless, of course, there is something organically defective about you.
The important point in all this—for we cannot stop to go into details—is that bicycling does not depend on the amount of ground covered, nor upon the speed with which you cover it, but upon the pleasure of being out-of-doors, and of moving along over the ground to the comfort rather than the discomfort of your body, and, consequently, of your mind. Hence, if you are planning out a trip for some holiday, for example, or for a holiday of more than twenty-four hours, do not think out a trip which will be a record for distance covered. Yet that is the point of most of the inquiries received by this department. "Please tell me whether I can do seventy miles a day for a week. I am going to spend my vacation of a week on my wheel, and want to take as long a trip as possible. Can I do 500 miles in the week without becoming sick?" This is, of course, an imagined case, but it is representative of what is often considered the point of a trip of this sort. There never was a greater mistake made. The point of a week's bicycle trip is, or should be, fun, unless the absolute object is a road record for so many hundred miles—fun and amusement and health; and therefore you must not ride so far that you begin to make work of it, nor so short a distance that you do not get the pleasure of the exercise. You should not tire yourself by riding up absurdly steep hills; you should not make yourself disgusted with wheeling, or your doctor disgusted with you, by trying to keep up with a better rider, or trying to beat some professional bicyclist's record. Let the pace and the distance disappear from among the factors that make up a bicycle tour.
[A NEWSPAPER MAN'S PROTÉGÉ.]
An old newspaper man told the following story not long ago, which is interesting, in that it shows what pluck and ambition will do for a boy: "Several years ago I was detailed to cover some disastrous floods in the lower part of the State. After travelling slowly all the afternoon, about dusk we began getting into the flooded district. The conductor of the train expressed some fears about the condition of the track, so when the train reached Boylston, I hunted up the telegraph operator to learn what the chances were of reaching the scene of the floods.
"While discussing the probabilities, the train-boy came up and called out to the operator, 'Oh, Mr. Jackson, have you that shorthand book you promised me?'
"When he had gone the operator apologetically said, 'The boy is studying shorthand, sir.'