Page 21 - PBCOctober2012

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine. Volume 9 No.3 October 2012
21

We give sketches showing the bone-shaker of 1869, a racing bicycle of 1874, and the latest
fashion of the present day. Contrasting the first two, it will be noticed that the ugly old-fashioned
spring of the bone-shaker, which of necessity compelled the manufacturer to make both wheels
the same size, had given way to the modern style of spring. This at once enabled the hind wheel
to be much reduced in size. At the present time manufacturers are inclined to make the back
wheel, if anything, rather too small. This does not so much matter in a racing bicycle, which is
only intended to travel over a smooth surface, but an ordinary roadster, if the hind wheel be too
small, it will not run easily over the various inequalities in the road, producing a kind of jerking
motion to the backbone of the bicycle not at all pleasant. Twenty-two inches should be about the
proper diameter for the hind wheel of a fifty-inch machine.

There are probably few bicyclists who have not, at one time or another, felt an inclination to try
their fortune on the racing path. To those uninitiated in the difficulties of racing, it seems so easy
to win a prize. As a matter of fact, it is not so. Much practice and training are required before a
competitor can hope to hold his own in a handicap. To be a good rider is not the only qualification
necessary to make a man successful on the path. No man whose nerves are at all weak, or who
is not possessed of a considerable modicum of what is generally termed “pluck”, can expect to
find his way into the front rank. The racing season of 1879 was marked by an extraordinary series
of accidents to all our best riders. Mr. Cortis, the present amateur champion, came to grief more
than once. Mr. Wadham Wyndham, an ex-amateur champion, was seriously injured in the Brighton
Bicycle Club Races. Mr. East, the vice-president of the Surrey Club, fell during a race, and was
so much hurt that he has decided never to race again. Intending racers might, therefore, be asked
to consider whether, to use a French expression, “the game is worth the candle”; for if those
accomplished riders whose names we have mentioned have been so damaged, it is more than
possible that a tyre might come to greater grief.

The speed at which races are now ridden is so tremendous that a fall becomes a very serious
thing. It is certainly remarkable, however, that men falling during a race are not more hurt than
they are. It is a constant occurrence to see one of the competitors in a race fall over and remount
apparently not much damaged by his sudden and violent contact with mother earth. To any one
wishing to race, plenty of opportunities are afforded. Every Saturday afternoon during the season
there are bicycle races in which valuable prizes are offered for competition. The entrance fee is
always 2s. 6d.. We should advise intending competitors not to think of racing unless they have
gone through a certain previous amount of training. Without this training they can scarcely hope
to win. We can positively assert that if a man be possessed of average strength and nerve, he
can, by dint of training, expect to do very well on the path, and to such we would call to mind those
well-known lines –

“If at first you don’t succeed,
Try again.”

This is the last of the series,
Submitted by Past President Joseph Smiggers,Esq.P.V.P.M.P.C.(aka Steve Bullen)