[OUR MUTUAL FRIEND THE “BIKE.”]
By “MEDICUS” (Dr. GORDON STABLES, R.N.).
If the hints on cycling which follow are worth anything, it is because they are written by a man who has been a devotee to the wheel for more years than he cares to think about, and who has studied anatomy, physiology, and medicine. That is all I lay claim to, for of course a mere man is nobody nowadays. The ladies are cropping up and coming to the front every day, and doing something fresh and startling, so that we poor little chaps of men-people have to take a back seat, or about three inches each of the outside of a front one—by permission only.
Well, in this paper I believe that some useful hints may be found. Not on the bicycle itself—O, no, I wouldn’t dare to lecture a lady on that subject, for although I have ridden for twenty years and over on all sorts of machines, my youngest lassie Ida thinks she knows a good deal more than her daddy. Heigho! perhaps she does. But I’ll tell you what I have done, girls, which I am sure you haven’t. I have studied cycling from a health point of view, and I am going to impart a little of the knowledge I have gained to you, in the hope that it may be of use in the coming cycling season.
Well, now winter is passed, at all events, and although the roads may not have dried up everywhere, they soon will, so it is time for you to see to your cycle. I don’t suppose, however, that in the end of autumn you rolled it up in cotton wool and stowed it away in a drawer or in the wardrobe. It is so hard to give up cycling even for a few months and be reduced to walking again. If one is going anywhere, even if only a distance of two miles, it seems such a long way to walk; the trees won’t meet you fast enough, and the silly sticky road seems bent upon stopping your progress, and you are certain you shall feel terribly tired and absurdly stupid, when you do reach your destination. But mount your dear little wheel, and, hey, presto! you are there.
Yes, indeed, the cycle is a glorious institution, and we may thank, not only the man who invented it, but the men who are constantly improving it. I daresay that, in one form or another, it is as old as the Highland hills, though I never read anywhere that Adam went out for an airing on one. But I’ll warrant that if he rode one she wasn’t going to be a long way behind him. If he was going to be the peacock, she would be the peahen. For Eve was a woman, you know.
Somewhere in the haystack of my library I have an old book in which two exquisites, dandies or “mashers” (horrid word!) are depicted riding a bicycle of a bygone age. How gay they look in their long-tailed coats, knee-breeches, and faces beaming with smiles beneath their broad silken hats! And they wear their beards and moustachios in precisely the same style as that which seems now becoming fashionable, that is, nowhere at all. But their bicycle? Why, a boneshaker much the same shape as ours, that is, it went with one wheel in front and had another coming up behind, the saddle in the centre, and no gear or machinery of any kind bar a rudder. Their lordships’ legs are on the ground. They just give a kick first to one side and then to the other and off they go. Cycles have improved since then.
But regarding your own particular bike, unless it is especially good, send it to be overhauled. Ask the man what it will cost, else—well, he won’t cheat himself, anyhow. But it is better to start your season with a neat turnout, and when you get it home do please take care of it. A new bicycle is as handsome and pretty as a new binnacle, but both need attention, which the binnacle always gets, the poor bike all too seldom.
Last summer two “G. O. P.” girls visited my caravan, and one asked if I could tell her fortune.