I have had my first experience on the wheel, and it certainly shall not be the last. It must be a very trying thing t begin wheeling in a dark and dingy hall with a man leading your nag around for you and holding you up while he tells you just what to do in so many different expressions that you couldn’t remember them if you had 50 heads instead of one We, who have but one brain, don’t like to overwork it for fear it might go back on us and refuse to obey our behests.
I didn’t begin that way, I took my firs plunge on a tandem because I was too impatient to take it in any other manner. I wanted to know whether or not should enjoy the exhilarating sport, as my friends termed it, before I wasted time and patience in learning to master the machine. Because one person likes a thing is no sign that we shall all like it. But when everyone a person knows, from the ethereal spiritual girls down to the most persistently materialistic men, assure one of the delights of a diversion particular, then one must begin to pay some attention to them. The other night I had nothing in particular to do and wanted company. What did the most congenial people I know do but get into conversation about some picturesque spot on the environs of this beautiful city of waters and rush off for their knickerbockers and wheels. I was de trop, I could not ride. “Very good,” said I to myself, “I will play billiards and increase my capacity for enjoyment in that direction, I will not be thrown into a state of ennui.”
If you really want to enjoy yourself you can, you know, and I forgot my friends completely until they came back in a vulgar state of elation and rhapsodized over the run. I hate to have people rhapsodizing over things I haven’t taken any part in, it is almost as bad as to have people leaving off doing what one is just learning. So I put my cue up in the rack and announced my intention of going out on a wheel at once and exploding the notion that it was fun. “Not tonight!” exclaimed one of the men who has a provoking habit of believing everything I say, though I have assured him a thousand times that a woman never means just what she says. I therefore explained to His Density that at once meant any old time when I got ready and that I should probably get ready the following morning. He told me with great excess of courtliness-I love excess in that direction by the way-that he merely wanted to know in order that he might attend me as an admiring witness of my skill. When I amplified my statement, to show that I had no idea of taking out a wheel and mastering the cranky brute in five minutes, but that I desired to be taken out and given a sensation without too much effort on my part, there was an awkward silence in our billiard parlor. They all love me, but not well enough for such a terrible ordeal as I was proposing. Ah! these tests which strain the affections. Do they not show that we are all selfish egotists beneath the thin veneer? Shade of Marie Bashkirtseff or Walt Whitman, throw your mantle over these, my traitor squires!
I said not a word to mar the beautiful silence which flooded the apartment, but sat quietly on the end of a billiard table and swung my heels in a careless manner, while they looked worried and lighted cigarettes, through force of habit. If you want to know why young men smoke cigarettes, just get into an awkward situation, and you’ll find out how much non-nonchalance is wrapped up in one of those fascinating sticks of nicotine. A man may look as fathomlessly sapient as a cat when he smokes, and know just about as much as the dignified pussy sitting in the sun. When they could bear it no longer, one of them remarked, tentatively, “Which of us did you purpose to go out with?” “You,” said I scornfully; “why, you can’t take me; I want someone who knows everything about a wheel.” You would have thought this would have been a very squelching observation, but cheerfulness sprang up under it instanter. They both remarked at once, with eagerness, that they thought there was a fine tandem at the Snow bicycle house, and that we could get it for the next morning. I laughed immoderately and then had to stop suddenly for fear they would think I didn’t want to go. As there was no girl present to puncture the atmosphere with the needle of wit, I told them I was laughing to think what a guy I was going to make of myself the next day, and the horrid things said: “Yes, by Jove; won’t you, though!” I call that terribly unfeeling, considering I had let them down so easily.
We had crackers and cheese and shandy- gaff directly so that every man would go. to bed in time to get up early. And the next morning I tumbled out at 7 o’clock. I said all the time that it was bound to be a fizzle and that I would regret my impetuosity. I always regret an impulse that gets me out of bed early, until I have splashed ice-cold water over my face and shoulders and gasped quantities of ozone away down to the inside of my toes. Then I feel better, and when I have had some good coffee and get outdoors, oh, how I love the morning. The nice new morning, all dew-washed and fragrant, and filled with the chirping of merry songsters in the golden green trees. It is a thousand times better to get up and hear them sing than to stay up and hear them, for, some way. the getting up makes you feel, young and good.
When I got over to the Snow house I found the cycler who practiced courtliness there before me talking wheels and looking dubious. “I say,” he said to me, as I sauntered in, “you can’t ride a diamond frame, can you?” “Why not?” said I, beaming on everyone. “Well, you know, it’s a man’s wheel, and you’ll have to wear bloomers, and I thought”- “My dear boy, I’m dying to wear bloomers. You surely did not do me the injustice to think I was afraid of them?”
At this the genial Mr. Snow broke into the argument to assure me that two or three ladies had bought the diamond frame out of preference, as it is stronger and firmer, as well as lighter in build. He also mentioned the fact that they had bloomers with which to accommodate me, if I liked to try them. I lost no time in re-pairing to the dressing room and donning the garment. It turned out well that I had “worn black woolen equestrians instead of a skirt for this jaunt. The dark blue bloomers matched my tailor coat in color; I had a black sailor hat, a linen shirt waist and a black satin cravat; I wore tan shoes and gloves and believed there was nothing glaringly wrong about the outfit. I hoped there would be nothing horribly wrong about the riding. But with all my misgivings I hadn’t the slightest notion of the obstinacy wrapped up in one of those ma- chines. The man who desired to take me out went downstairs with me first and gave me a turn around the hall, showing me how to mount and get off and adjusted the saddle to my height. The men upstairs were meantime taking a beautiful new Warwick out of the window and doing countless things to the handles, saddles and wheels. They were still about it when we came back, and I looked at my watch, impatient to be off. A croaker came in-and that man made remarks enough to turn a sensitive girl’s hair gray. He knew I couldn’t ride, he wouldn’t try it for anything, I was sure to lose the pedals and probably bring the thing down in a heap. But the cool-headed gentleman who was to take me out never noticed him, for which I was grateful.
It was a little after 8 o’clock when we filed out into the street and I think there was something of an audience to see me get on. The machine itself was an attraction, light and bright as a bird. I felt as though there should have been a caller to cry, “They are off,” for we got away together without a break. It wasn’t so hard swinging into the saddle as one might think.- When there are no skirts a woman can handle herself with as much dexterity as a man, and she doesn’t have to be assisted. There is a freedom about it absolutely fascinating, though indescribable. For my part, I can’t see why women should conceal the fact that they are two-legged any more than that they are two-armed, or why they should try to live walking lives in skirts any more than they should try to compete in art with mittens over their fingers.
Do you remember how you felt the first time you sat on a bicycle saddle? I think it is one of the most impalpable insignificant seats I ever had the pleasure of occupying. My accompanist told me not to grip the handles, as he must have absolute freedom to control the machine, and he told me to lean easily back and float. We started. There was a blinding rush of intricacies upon me which made me feel that the earth had fallen away and I was going through the horrors of transition. Of course I lost the peddles at once and I thought the rider would stop. Not he, he only talked to me in a low encouraging way about not gripping those handles. The insignificant saddle became my only hope, I groped blindly below for the peddles. I had them, I had them not, I had had them. Ye gods! I know not how I was gotten over to the asphalt of Park Avenue, the retrospect is one lurid blank, out of which rises nothing but the spectre of wheels that would not be caught by my eager feet. If I secured them for one happy moment we would go over a bump in the pavement and cff I would be again. When we reached the asphalt it began to be better, but I was still struggling with this phantom of now you, have me and now you don’t, when we reached the end of the floor-like pavement. I had, however, grasped one idea, that was that I must cling with the ball of my foot and my toes, and just as I was getting the feeling in my foot my accompanist told me to get ready to stop. I had an idea I had heard my friend call out jubilantly, “We’ll stop up here and get a drink,” but it had been like a voice from another world.
We stopped and he sauntered up to me after I had accomplished a graceful de- scent and want to know how I liked bicycling. He looked very confident and jaunty himself in blue knickerbockers and a white sweater, with a blue jacket and cap, also plaid stockings and gray bicycle shoes. I told him I liked it immensely, and then I sat down on a bench, glad to have something to sit on once more, and drank the ginger ale that was handed me with more satisfaction than I remember ever having when partaking of that fluid before. The men rearranged my saddle, tipping it back a trifle and we started off again.
This time we got a dignified and steady start and I had the extreme felicity of being able to hold the peddle for a considerable space of period, as my friend would say. As soon as that was accomplished we showed my artist friend a trick. The machine had a high gauge and in a few minutes we passed him easily, it was worth oceans of misery to come out on the crest of the wave like that, and now I did begin to float. Down Lake Street we sped on a road hard as iron though unpaved. We passed Lyndale but decided to go back and turn out that avenue. In making the turn we came to earth, but without any discomfiture, and that was the only fall we had. The fall was the mere dropping on one’s feet, however, and we righted and were off again.
Flee as a bird to your mountain, thou wheeler weary of town, so I paraphrased to myself as we sped along a country road and drank in the beauty of morning in the suburbs. The man on the wheel behind me had the most patient and cheerful disposition of any man I have ever had the good pleasure to meet. He told me a wealth of things about the wheel and it seems to me that it would be the ideal way to master its peculiarities. Away out on Lyndale, we ran down the hill by the ruins of Coffee John’s old roadhouse. After the artist had made a sketch in this picturesque spot we walked back up the hill and ran on to Richfield. I had the pleasure of spinniing down a grade like the wind, and I remembered those rhapsodies of the night before and forgave them. Down at Richfield we got off to sketch a church, that is the artist did, and while he sketched my guide and I descended upon a village stor for lemon soda and glasses which we carrried back to the grassy. bank in high glee. The ungrateful sketcher murmured something about beer as we set it down. “Didn’t you even ask for beer,” said he disgustedly. “Do you think that storekeeper could stand a girl in bloomers asking for beer?” I asked. Those people have an old-fashioned idea about the fitness of things which you may not appreciate.” “Oh yes I do,” said he. “Bloomers and beer are alliterative and bear each other out. Your bloomers are artistic, and beer is artistic, all artists love it. Bloomers have a swagger to them, beer sometimes has a swagger about it, oh I can think of lots of similitude and fitness. “I threw myself down in the shade and scorned his remarks.
I had a feeling that I could live in the country again and love it. There were the blue cabbages, the waving corn, the pasture where well-fed kine grazed, the sleepy, lazy life flowing peacefully along. Ah me! No throb of a printing press, no clatter of telegraph instruments, no managing editor shouting “Copy”-the most grateful of all absences. The other gentleman strolled off to get cat-tails and water lilies, the artist still sketched and I dreamed a sylvan dream, till I happened to think there would be no bathtubs in the country, no ice boxes from which to extract the cheerful mid-night luncheon, no electric cars to jump on and run up to the library. I sat up and Looked wide awake and found the wan- derer returned with the cat tails and making a rope of grass to tie them to the wheel. The artist had gathered up his portfolio and was making ready to run a bit to look at some magnificent larches.
We ran on around the curve and ad-mired the larches. They were magnificent, making one think of Unter den Linden. After a little more delay we consulted our watches and to my astonishment it was noon and we were eight miles from town. “That’s nothing. We’ll run back in less than an hour,” said the artist. “You’ve got the hang of that wheel now, you know.” With that flattering remark, I did my best, of course. We would have gotten back without mishap had I not broken the shir string of my bloomer and had to bind it under with a white silk handkerchief. I looked, like a knight of the garter, I suppose, though my friend gallantly swore the drapery of the plaits concealed it. And back we came to town sailing. We really did it in the time proposed, but I am free to confess I have been somewhat lame ever since and have cherished a bottle of witch hazel for two days. -Sibyl Wilbur
–Minneapolis Daily Times- Sunday, July 14th, 1895
