Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating look at cycling, back when a mile was a mile
Review: If you've ever wondered how it was to ride those high-wheeled "ordinaries", this book is for you.

I will confess to having yet read only to page 73 of this thick tome, but from that alone I can recommend the book. It is an absolutely fascinating look into not only early-day bicycling, but also early New York City and environs. Bicycling was a totally different thing back then, and the reader is at once horrified and regaled by accounts of the challenges presented the wheelman in those days. Cyclists were held in awe by some, jeered and thrown at by others. Spills on cobblestone streets were frequent, and from those high-wheelers, falls were quite dangerous. I have toured over 15,000 miles by bicycle, but hardly a one presented the challenge this author commonly faced.

Read it as history or as adventure--it doesn't matter. It's a great, one-of-a-kind look into the past by a writer who told his late-1800s story entertainingly, using those wonderfully-competent sentences of the old school, and who believed that "The pleasure of riding alone depends very much on whether or not a man takes good company with him." To read this book is to take his pleasure and make it yours.