Globetrot On A Big Wheel

To the screeching hot rodder of today it may seem as though the bicycle is an invention nearly as old as the wheel itself. Actually, it is comparatively young. In the 1880s bicycles were an exciting novelty in the U.S. The "safety," with front and rear wheels the same size, was the newest thing, and its radical design made it possible for even the timid to mount and ride. But the real cyclist of that time remained loyal to the "ordinary," or "penny-farthing," a machine with a huge front wheel standing as high as a man's shoulder and a tiny wheel rolling along behind.

This bicycle, which predated the safety by about 10 years, was fiendishly difficult to master—a fact that helped account for the skilled rider's loyalty to it—and not readily adaptable to long-distance travel. Yet it was on such a machine that Thomas Stevens set out from San Francisco on an April morning in 1884 to cycle all around the world. Bidding goodby to his friends with a wave of the slouch hat he was soon to exchange for a more practical pith helmet (good for warding off thrown stones as well as sunshine), Stevens began the journey that was to carry him farther, presumably, than any bicyclist has ridden since—some 13,500 miles in all.

Pedaling across lands where no American, much less an American on a bicycle, had ever been, Stevens considered himself the special correspondent for a magazine called Outing. He was, more accurately, a rolling advertisement for his patron, Colonel Albert A. Pope, the pioneer bicycle manufacturer in America, whose Columbia had; more than any other, made bicycling a respectable pastime.

In Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, the Columbia ordinary was advertised "for roads." But during much of Stevens' journey there were no roads of any sort, much less the smooth macadam that Pope was promoting as best for his bicycles. Crossing the mountains beyond Constantinople, Stevens had to push his cycle up an ancient pack-animal path where there had never been a wheeled vehicle of any sort and to edge along narrow ledges above precipices. Leaving Teheran, he slogged through mud, slush and deep snow accompanied by an equestrian holy man whose horse kept falling and pitching the old man into the mire. Stevens never complained; he found the "cold, bracing air suitable for exertion." Sometimes his bicycle had to be hauled at the end of a rope across wilderness rivers, after which Stevens would leap onto his machine and ride it across the mud flats faster than the apprehensive nomads he met could race away on their terrified camels.

In Europe, India and Japan people were used to seeing bicycles, but in Asia Minor his approach was often the occasion for riots in the villages. Everyone wanted to see his bicycle, and everyone expected to see him ride it. Usually, however tired he was, he tried to oblige, but no matter how many turns he took around the local square, the crowds' curiosity could not be satisfied. At many an inn where he took refuge, doors were forced open, and gentlemen travelers who tried to shelter him in their own rooms were compelled by the hysteria of the crowds at their windows to think of some polite way of inviting him back outside.

Most of Stevens' meals consisted of pot luck with nomads (usually yogurt and black bread) or the hasty purchase of the makings of a cold meal in a village followed by an equally hasty retreat into a country hiding place while village horsemen—all would-be cyclists—galloped up and down the road searching for him.

In China the danger he met was much more serious. He arrived there during a particularly severe outburst of antiforeignism, and he spent one night clutching his bicycle in a bamboo grove while all around howling mobs searched for him. Hurled bricks and stones left dents in his helmet.

In some lands, on the other hand, his reception was more splendid than any ever dreamed of by the decorous cyclists pictured in the advertisements enjoying the paths in New England parks. Local potentates on every level were politely eager to know more about his marvelous machine and often asked to be given lessons on this new form of horse. Trotting along beside some tottering pasha, whose legs were too short to reach the pedals, Stevens often wished he had included a web "instruction belt" with his other travel gear. Even when he really didn't deserve hospitality, as when he shoved a pasha's son into a watery ditch for too persistently examining the cyclometer, he was feasted with pilaf and sent on his way with a guard of honor—perhaps to protect the local populace from his unpredictable temper!

In Teheran, Stevens was received by the Shah himself. His Majesty asked many intelligent questions about the bicycle and requested a complete demonstration, during which he laughingly attempted to goad Stevens into riding into a ditch in the apparent hope of seeing what might happen when a rider fell off his bike.

One American advertisement claimed that after a bike ride, "nothing is so refreshing as a good bath." Stevens was not always able to follow the suggestion of this ad. Usually, in Persia anyway, he was able to reach some sort of village, but often enough he had to sleep on a lonely plain sheltered by a tent of his own devising which used the big wheel of his bike as a tent pole.