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.
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION
is cheaper than any quantity of care. Don't give children narcotics or sedatives. They are unnecessary when the infant is properly nourished, as it will be if brought up on the Gail Borden Eagle Brand Condensed Milk—[Adv.]