May 3, 2012
Grueling Travel through Beautiful Places: the Madness of Extreme Races
These cyclists are enjoying another day on the trail in the Crocodile Trophy, in northeastern Australia, considered one of the most punishing bicycle races in the world. Photo by Regina Stanger/Crocodile Trophy.
As the famed grand tours of summer begin rolling through Europe on carbon frames and ultra-light wheels, a number of lesser known but perhaps much more rigorous races are also gearing to go. They include cycling and foot races that take athletes through some of the world’s most spectacular and rugged country, as well as to the boundaries of what humans can endure, physically and psychologically. The more demanding of them allow no rest or sleep—unlike the more publicized stage races—and amount to nonstop endurance tests lasting as long as a week or more. Some of them also allow almost anyone to enter, in case you’re interested in trying your muscles in what might be the most unenjoyable tour you’ll ever take of the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains, the American desert or the Australian outback. Here are a few options for your next vacation:
Race Across America. Called RAAM and widely considered the hardest road cycling race in the world, the event starts in mid-June in Oceanside, California and leads several hundred dogged competitors more than 3,000 miles across the entire country to Annapolis, Maryland—without stopping. Last year, Christoph Strasser, now 29, pedaled the distance in eight days, eight hours and six minutes. RAAM soloists (racers in the team divisions take turns riding) may take cat naps totaling an hour of shuteye per day, but the general idea is, you snooze, you lose. The race is so demanding that many cyclists don’t finish at all. Some have died trying. Others begin losing their wits. Some solo riders may even lose their teeth as they eat sugary foods nonstop to replace the 10,000 calories that they burn a day, and for those that don’t brush at each pit stop, teeth may decay rapidly. To get a good taste of what this race offers before you consider attempting it, read Hell on Two Wheels, in which author Amy Snyder elaborates on the many forms of misery that one can expect while pedaling without rest across the continent.
Badwater Ultramarathon. For many foot racers, running one marathon isn’t enough. Nor are two, or three, or even four, and the Badwater Ultramarathon amounts to five—135 miles of trotting through some of the hottest, grittiest country in the world. It begins as low as one can go in the western hemisphere while still keeping your feet dry—at 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley. From there, it only goes up, with runners eventually finishing—or trying to, anyway—at Whitney Portal, 8,360 feet above sea level. As though such mileage and elevation gain weren’t strenuous enough, the race takes place in July, when temperatures may easily exceed 110 degrees. No one has ever died in the Badwater Ultramarathon, but between two and four out of every 10 runners fail to finish each year. The record time of completion is 22 hours, 51 minutes.
Western States Endurance Run. What began in 1955 in the Sierra Nevada as a 100-mile horseback competition shifted to a super-marathon foot race in the mid 1970s as men and women began to wonder if they, too, could trot for some 20 hours and 100 miles nonstop. Today, the “Western States 100” takes place every Saturday of the last full weekend in June as hundreds of the hardest-core runners in the world start on the notorious 2,500-foot climb over the first four miles and proceed on old mining trails that ascend a total of just over 18,000 vertical feet. The route goes from Squaw Valley to Auburn, over country so rough that only horses, hikers and helicopters can come to help, in case runners should fall ill or injured. The race begins at 5 a.m. sharp, and runners must cross the finish line by 11 a.m. The next day.
For many of us, a 30-minute jog will do. But this runner, just finished with the Western States 100, has been trail trotting for over 27 hours. Photo courtesy of Flickr user runnr_az.
Paris-Brest-Paris. Considered the great granddad of ultracycling endurance events, the hallowed Paris-Brest-Paris was first held in 1891, an 800-mile sprint from Paris, out to the coast at Brest and back again. Like the Race Across America, the PBP is a catnapping affair, with cyclists going nonstop and striving to complete the ride in less than the 90-hour time limit. But unlike RAAM, PBP is a ride, not a race—though it once was. The contest took place once a decade, until 1951. Now, the PBP occurs once every four or five years as a recreational ride, or randonnée. The most recent PBP took place in 2011. While the stakes in the PBP are far less than in pro racing events, cyclists must still abide by some rules. Notably, there is generally no vehicle support allowed, and riders are expected to make their own repairs, fix their own flats and, if they need an emergency recharge, stop for croissants and espresso on their own dime, and clock.
Crocodile Trophy. At more than 500 miles and self-touted as “the hardest, longest and most adventurous mountain bike race in the world,” this one just sounds awful. But the Crocodile Trophy, set in the low-latitude tropics in northeast Australia, is a stage race, offering food, rest and plenty of sleep every single day. RAAM cyclists may seem to have it rougher, but if Croc Trophy contenders had to do it all at once, the effort just might kill them. The late-October race is off-road, meaning gravel, rocks, ruts, puddles (potentially containing crocodiles lying in ambush), dust and lots of crashing. If this sounds like a pleasant way to see Australia, then sign up; the race welcomes men and women over 18 years of age and registration for the 2012 event is open until August 20.
And for a race that’s already underway, World Cycle Racing Grand Tour. Jason Woodhouse is burning about 11,000 calories a day—but unlike most pro racers, Woodhouse does not have a van shadowing him with food, gear and mechanical support. The 24-year-old from England is currently racing around the world in an unsupported journey that will cross every line of longitude on Earth, include 18,000 miles of pedaling and finish right where it began, in London. The fastest recorded time for the same ride is currently 164 days, and Woodhouse—who is carrying camping gear and racing against nine others—is planning to demolish that record with a completion time of 130 days. As he goes, Woodhouse is raising funds for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He also aims to demonstrate that the bicycle can be adequately used in virtually any trip shorter than five miles. On an itinerary that includes about 130 miles of cycling most days—plus a few airplane trips—his point is well made.
Want to train for an extreme race? Consider the Extreme World Races Adventure Academy, which offers five-day courses in long-distance adventuring in cold, icy, miserable landscapes. The academy is in Norway, and the session includes a three-day mini expedition on the ice and tundra. Bundle up, and enjoy the scenery if you can.
April 24, 2012
World Wildlife Hunt
King Juan Carlos, at right, stands with his guide from Rann Safaris as his dead Botswanan elephant lies propped against a tree.
The king of Spain visited Botswana recently, and on the famous savanna, teeming with animals familiar from the picture books we read as youths, King Juan Carlos shot and killed an elephant.
When I heard about the king’s outing, I decided to learn a little more about Botswana’s laws governing the protection—or lack thereof—of Africa’s most famous creatures. It turns out that many of them can be lawfully killed for those who buy the privilege. According to the website of Rann Safaris, the hunting outfit that guided King Carlos (who happens to be the honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund) it takes $6,000 to shoot a leopard. For $1,200, you can shoot a crocodile. For the pleasure of killing a hyena, you must turn over only $500. For a rhino, sorry, you’ll have to visit South Africa. But if you’re content to shoot an ostrich, stay on in Botswana, where the permits will run you $550. Short on cash? Then there’s always baboons, which go for a paltry $200 a pop. And to shoot the greatest land animal on the planet, the one that lives in matriarchal herds and mourns somberly when a family member dies, the one that’s been targeted by tusk-seeking machine gunners for decades and which you’d think should be a protected species—to shoot an African elephant, you’ll need to pay $19,000. It’s a princely sum, but nothing for a king.
The world is full of opportunities to shoot at its mightiest creatures, whether they’re good to eat or not, and here are just several animals that some of us would love to see and photograph—and that some people just want on the rec room wall.
Sharks. There’s nothing politically correct about shark fin soup, but an annual killing contest goes on in Martha’s Vineyard, where hundreds of sport fishermen gather every July to compete in the Annual Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament. The event’s website states that 98 percent of sharks caught in the derby are released (a change from prior years), but there are prize incentives to bring the largest fish in to the dock, where crowds gather expectantly to see dead and bloody “monsters” hoisted at the weigh station. Last year, the biggest sharks landed and killed included 630-pound and 538-pound thresher sharks, a 495-pound porbeagle and a 278-pound mako. In 2005 a fisherman took a tiger shark weighing 1,191 pounds.
Big cats. The African lion has declined in numbers from possibly 100,000 in the early 1990s to a current population estimated to be as low as 16,000 individuals. Yet hunting of this vulnerable species is legal in parts of Africa. By some reports, in fact, the number of lions killed by licensed trophy hunters each year is on the rise. In California, cougar hunting was banned in 1990—so when a member of the state’s Fish and Game Commission got the urge to kill one this January, he went to Idaho, where hunting the cats is legal. The hunter, Dan Richards, posed gleefully with the cougar in his arms, sparking an explosion of anger among animal rights activists and trophy hunting critics. The controversy centered on the question of whether a man charged with, among other things, protecting cougars in one state should go and hunt them in another. Richards pointed out that he and his friends ate cougar the evening after the hunt—an excuse often voiced by trophy hunters. If you want to put food on the table, shoot a rabbit or a deer—but please, not a top predator.
Dan Richards, of the California Fish and Game Commission, went out of state to shoot this Idaho mountain lion.
Bears. They reportedly taste vile if they’ve been feeding on salmon or marine mammals, but that doesn’t stop Alaskan hunters from killing brown bears. In fact, these animals usually aren’t eaten—just skinned and beheaded, as Alaska state law requires. Alaskan black bears, too, are often killed only for wall mounts. The state, to its credit, prohibits one from using the meat of a game animal for purposes other than human consumption, yet exceptions are generously granted to bear hunters, who can at certain times of the year (like during salmon runs) use a black bear’s flesh as pet food, fertilizer or bait. (For wolves and wolverines, the meat does not need to be used at all.) Elsewhere in the world, bear hunters sometimes participate in controversial “canned hunts“—such as the one in 2006 in which King Juan Carlos, our mighty elephant hunter, shot a tame, drunk Russian brown bear named Mitrofan, who was fed honey and vodka prior to being prodded into an open field, where the crowned noble had an easy shot. Even imperiled polar bears are still legally hunted for trophies.
Baboons. I’m almost reluctant to discuss this one, so similar are the animals to us and so grisly the nature of this hunt, but the fact that men and women shoot baboons for kicks needs recognition. Landowners consider baboons pests in some places and welcome trophy hunters, who often use bows to kill the primates. The animals are known to react dramatically when hit, and—much like a human might—a baboon will scream and holler as it tussles with the shaft protruding from its torso. Even hardened hunters reportedly grow queasy at the sight of a skewered baboon panicked with fear. If you have the stomach for it, look through this Google gallery of “baboon hunting” images, showing proud hunters with their trophy kills, or for some less graphic insight into the minds of the people who would kill baboons for the joy of it, read through this baboon hunting discussion. Here is a sample from the conversation: “Seems kinda twisted but given the chance I’d shoot one. Cool trophy.” And: “Good Luck, Hope ya get one. My next time back I’d like to kill one as well.” Someone get me a bucket.
Wolves. While this top predator reproduces relatively rapidly and can be naturally resilient to some level of persecution, sport hunting the gray wolf still stinks. To justify the hunt, wolf hunters describe the animals as having negative effects on deer and elk herds. In the Rocky Mountain states, where wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s, they are already being hunted again. Some wolves are baited into shooting range, others pursued via snowmobile, and in a few places wolves are shot from airplanes—like on the Kenai Peninsula, where a government predator control program is drawing fire from wolf allies. Wolf pelts, not the flesh, are the goal of the game, though cast members of the film The Grey reportedly ate wolf stew in order to prepare for a scene in which the actors, including Liam Neeson, would pretend to dine on wolf meat. Most of the cast vomited during their meal, donated by a local wolf trapper, though Neeson returned for seconds.
More top targets of the trophy hunter’s hit list:
Billfish. Anglers may eat sailfish sashimi or braised marlin, but let’s keep things real: These fish die for their swords.
And crocodiles for their hides.
And walrus for their tusks.
And hippopotamus for … honestly, I really can’t imagine.
This just in: King Juan Carlos has publicly apologized for killing his elephant. “I am very sorry,” he told the press on April 18. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.” Sure, now that he’s got his tusks.
March 20, 2012
The World’s Best Uphill Bike Rides
The author and his bike stand about 850 feet above San Francisco on Conzelman Road. Repeated 10 times, this little hill amounts to a world classic of climbing.
On St. Patrick’s Day, my brother and I rode our bicycles to the top of Conzelman Road in Marin County, and from the overlook above San Francisco, with a view of the Golden Gate Bride, we drank a strong ale from our local Lagunitas Brewing Company. A man, just out of his car and camera in hand, said, “You guys earned your beer, eh? Makes me feel lazy.” We nodded but didn’t have the heart to tell him that we’d actually pedaled to the top, gone back to the bottom, and repeated the mountain ride nine more times. The four-hour stunt was our birthday gift to ourselves (we’re twins)—a 35-mile ride in which we gained more than 7,000 vertical feet. Not bad, but at the end, we were dizzy with the numbing repetition of the feat, and we knew one thing for certain:
“We need a bigger hill, Andrew,” I said to my brother.
Because for hill climbers like us, long, steady, unyielding climbs are the holy grail of athletic conquests. Climbing such roads on a bicycle delivers endorphins to the brain, strengthens muscles and calms the mind. It works like yoga, asking concentration while allowing meditation. Big climbs mean health, nourishment and prolonged youth. We thrive on them, and hill climbers like us can’t help but measure the worth of a landscape by its rise over run. And so we scorn Holland and its tidy flat bike paths, and we dream of mountains and those rare roads that go upward for thousands upon thousands of feet without pause. But where are these monsters—and how high do they climb? The following list includes just a few of the best uphill bike rides in the world. You needn’t be a hill climber to love them, because they’re equally thrilling to ride down. Just check your brakes and wear your helmet.
Haleakala, Hawaii. Rise Over Run: 10,023 feet of climbing in 35.5 miles. The road up the Haleakala volcano delivers one of the longest highway ascents, with the most vertical gain in one push, in the world. It is also one of the most downright difficult rides, as there is virtually no flat or downhill ground once the climbing starts. Moreover, the air grows thin with the altitude, heightening the difficulty as cyclists struggle to catch their breath. Not surprisingly, some tourists come to this mountain for only the thrill of going down it. Maui Easy Riders, for one, offers what is billed as one of the longest guided downhill bike rides in the world.
Khardung La, India. Rise Over Run. 5,566 feet in 24 miles. Elevation measurements seem to vary in the Himalaya depending on the source, the country, the website and the altimeter, but still, cyclists agree: Khardung La out-passes nearly every other highway pass in the world. It offers only half the vertical gain of Haleakala, but it leads cyclists to unsurpassed heights of more than 18,000 feet above the sea. Supposedly, no “motorable” road goes higher than the one to Khardung La. Before going down, bundle up against the chill.
Mont Ventoux, France. Rise Over Run: 5,303 feet in 13.6 miles. Three roads lead up this famed climb on the western edge of the Alps. Each is tough, but the steepest is considered one of the most challenging bike rides anywhere. The climb has gained notoriety as a recurring feature in the Tour de France, often as a dramatic mountaintop stage finish, with all cyclists sprinting for the summit on the steep home stretch. But during the 1967 Tour, Mont Ventoux reminded cyclists that hill climbing is not all fun and games. Legendary British cyclist Tom Simpson died on the way up due to heat exhaustion, dehydration and, possibly, a combination of drug and alcohol use. Romantics may prefer to believe it was simply the mountain that took his life.
A cyclist fights gravity and grade on the final miles to the top of Mont Ventoux, one of the most legendary cycling climbs in the French Alps. Photo courtesy of Flickr user The Pingus.
Sualmaz Pass, Turkey. Rise Over Run: 5,540 feet in approximately 25 miles. This climb from the Mediterranean Sea into the Toros Mountains does not make the lists of the world’s great rides, nor is its statistical info posted on any online cycling forums, nor do teams of Lycra-clad road bikers blitz up and down it on warm weekends. I know of the Sualmaz Pass only because I know the pass personally, and it’s got all the charisma of a world classic. It begins in the town of Anamur, roughly at sea level, among groves of banana trees and subtropical sun. Then, inland several miles, the ascent begins. The lush valley floor drops as the mountains soar overhead. Bring food and water (I ran out of both when I climbed it in 2010) and start early (I got a late start and arrived in the town of Ormancik after dark. I slept in a vacant lot and finished the climb in the morning). The magic of this road is the near absence of traffic, the dramatic climatic change one observes between bottom and top and the novelty of being the only cyclist for miles. People will stare at you and cheer and honk their horns in encouragement. Soak up the glory.
Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Rise Over Run: 13,597 feet in 43.1 miles. This biggest of big climbs should top the list, but it comes with a disclaimer: The final three miles are unpaved dirt, ash and gravel and are reportedly almost impossible to ride on a road bike. On the asphalt, which terminates at 9,200 feet above the sea, the highway slants to as steep as a 17-percent grade in places. If you reach the top, savor the strangeness of being in a frigid, treeless Mars-like moonscape—in Hawaii.
Mount Washington, New Hampshire. Rise Over Run: 4,586 feet in 7.6 miles. If bang is elevation and buck is overall mileage, then this route may offer more of the former for the latter than any other paved road. Unfortunately, this legendary climb, considered by many to be the world’s most difficult feat in uphill cycling, is not open to just anyone. The road, which averages 12 percent in grade, is private and is closed to bicycles except during two organized races each year, in July and August. Currently, the July event is open for sign-ups. Note: Registration requires a fee. Cyclists must also arrange for a ride down afterward, as the road is considered so perilously steep that cycling downhill from the summit is prohibited.
Organized bike rides and races that will bust your butt:
The Everest Challenge, Nevada and California. 29,035 feet of climbing in 208 miles, 2 days.
The Death Ride, California. 15,000 feet in 129 miles, 1 day.
The Leadville 100, Colorado. 16,165 feet in 99.3 miles, 1 day.
The Cape Epic, South Africa. 53,460 feet in 488 miles, 9 days.
The Steepest Streets:
Steep city streets are a much different sort of challenge than long highway climbs. They are short, usually a standard city block, but they can be really, really steep, allowing those who go up them some no-joke bragging rights. Consider these nasty, slanty city slopes:
1. Broderick Street, San Francisco. 37 percent.
2. Canton Avenue, Pittsburgh. 37 percent.
3. Baldwin Street, Dunedin, New Zealand. 35 percent.
4. Eldred Street, Los Angeles. 33 percent.
March 6, 2012
Great Walks of the World
Meadows, lakes, snow and granite are the enduring elements of California's John Muir Trail, which leads through 211 miles of some of the world's most beautiful alpine wilderness. Photo courtesy of Flickr user peretzp
After cycling for weeks, now I’m thinking about walking. Foot travel has been the way of the wayfarer since men and women were still dragging their knuckles. The fact that people still opt to walk today, in the age of the wheel and the combustion engine, tells us there is something virtuous and irresistible in the plodding of one foot forward after the other. And without question, walking works. Using their legs and feet, many people have moved thousands of miles overland, and in many places the trails they wore in the earth are used by modern recreational trekkers who follow in the footsteps of their forebears. Following are five of the world’s great walks—with more to come next week.
Appalachian Trail. Leading 2,181 miles through 14 states and the historic forests and backwoods shanties of Appalachia, the Appalachian Trail was conceived in 1921, and by 1937 it was ready for walking. Today, 4 million people walk parts of the trail every year. Those attempting a through-hike number in the thousands, and only one in four finish. From Maine’s Mount Katahdin to Georgia’s Springer Mountain, the whole package takes as long as six months as hikers accumulate a total elevation gain equal to climbing Mount Everest 16 times.
John Muir Trail. This path through the high Sierra Nevada of California immortalizes the landscape that naturalist John Muir worshiped. And at just 211 miles long through beautiful alpine country, it’s both epic and doable. From the south, the JMT begins at the lower 48 states’ highest peak, Mount Whitney; crosses mountain passes more than 13,000 feet in elevation; traverses some of the world’s most beautiful high altitude wilderness; never touches a road and finally lands hikers in one of the world’s most esteemed natural places, Yosemite Valley. The trail generally requires three weeks from start to finish. If you happen to have a little extra time on either side, you could walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, of which the JMT is just a small part.
Coast to Coast Walk. A walk that doesn’t demand superb physical condition or half a year to complete, this 220-mile path crosses Northern England and leads through the evergreen verdure of the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks, from the Irish Sea to the east coast of England. Writer and walking enthusiast Alfred Wainswright devised the trail and suggested that hikers touch their toes in the Irish Sea at St. Bees before starting and step right into Robin Hood’s Bay after 10 or 20 days of trudging. Or else it doesn’t count.
Great Wall of China. No, you can’t really see it from space. That was a myth more or less debunked in the past decade or so by astronauts. However, while the Great Wall of China no longer plays a role in international affairs, it makes one heck of a walking platform. Unlike the heavily trammeled Camino (see below) or Appalachian Trails, the Great Wall demands ingenuity, craftiness and durability in anyone who attempts to plod the length of it, which is broken, crumbled or gone in many sections. Australian Mark Scholinz walked the wall in 2007. He encountered frozen steppe country, wolf tracks, endless hospitality and a whole lot of rice and tea.
Camino de Santiago. Once a path of the pious, this European network of trails converges toward its terminus as it leads many thousands of walkers each year to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Though founded by deeply religious pilgrims more than a thousand years ago, “the Camino” today is simply a recreational venture for most making the pilgrimage. It is also hardly an adventure anymore, as every step of the way has been walked a million times before, with many miles of pathway paralleling freeways and cutting through suburbs and farmland. One highlight of the trail is certainly the Cruz de Ferra, a 25-foot-tall cross which pilgrims have built by depositing knickknacks and trinkets and stones. Today, the rockpile is is almost 20 feet high, a sacred midden built over centuries. It’s truly a wonder just to touch it.
The Cruz de Ferra, surrounded by an ancient mound of stones left by pilgrims, is one of the marvels to be found along the Camino de Santiago. Photo by Alastair Bland
Reading About Walking:
Don’t feel like walking the walk? The armchair is one of the comfiest vehicles of travel we have. You’ll need a good book, and here are several classics of adventure travel.
The Snow Leopard. In this sober account, we find author Peter Matthiessen to be a man of Buddhism, western science, literature and a love of big cats. In 1972, when biologist George Schaller invited him on a 200-mile trek into the Himalaya to track the rare blue sheep, Matthiessen, now in his mid-80s, accepted, unable to resist the opportunity to see a snow leopard. It was the fall, and their trip led into one of the most mysterious, dangerous yet peaceful regions of the world under blue skies and a warm sun. By November, frostbite and blizzards were ever-present dangers. The two Americans, accompanied by Sherpas and porters, do eventually see the blue sheep, while all along the high and rocky trails lurk the haunting signs of the snow leopard.
Danziger’s Travels. English author Nick Danziger points out early in this book that he was not interested in walking a record distance or cycling across a continent when he took up the old trade route of the Asia-to-Europe silk traders. Rather, he utilized whatever local means of travel were available in China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey—and often he was walking. Danziger’s travels lasted 18 months, for part of which time he went disguised as a Muslim. The book is an adventure account almost as simple as the travel genre gets, but few are better.
The Places in Between. Journalist Rory Stewart walked for 16 months through Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal in 2000 and 2001. Then, in the virulent months following the September 11 attacks, he found himself facing Afghanistan. The month he spent walking across it would produce, eventually, one of the best modern travel books I’ve found. Stewart survived on the food and shelter of kind strangers, but many Afghans, hardened by war and the desert, were downright vicious. Stewart was determined to walk, and he firmly refused rides across known danger zones. For part of the way, a trio of Afghan soldiers escorted him. But it’s the many miles he walked alone (and with a great shaggy dog adopted along the way) that make readers marvel, at times, that Stewart lived to write about the trip.
A Walk in the Woods. He’s pudgy. He’s brainy. He has a strange penchant for stupid knickknacks and trivia from his Americana Midwest childhood. And for some reason, late in the 1990s, he decided to walk partway across America. In the end, comic Bill Bryson only completed, in bits and pieces, 800-some miles of the Appalachian Trail, but it was enough to provide him with the fodder he needed to write one of the funniest travel books of our time.
December 1, 2011
Books on Bike Perfection and Women’s Bike-Won Freedom
Sue Macy's Wheels of Change
Sue Macy‘s elaborately illustrated 2011 book, Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way), describes the surprising role that the bicycle played in freeing women—both physically and spiritually—from the oppressive and conservative constraints of 19th century America. Bicycles at the time were clumsy, heavy things made of iron and wood and sometimes called “boneshakers” until rubber tires softened the ride. But men were getting a kick out of them, and women wanted in on the fun. Their clothing was a problem, as Macy points out:
Imagine a population imprisoned by their very clothing; the stiff corsets, heavy skirts, and voluminous petticoats that made it difficult to take a deep breath, let alone exercise…How suffocated women must have felt. And how liberated they must have been as they pedaled their wheels toward new horizons.
To efficiently ride a bike there was only one thing to do: Take it off. Skin-tight lycra and tube tops were still some years down the road, but women were, at last, freed from the ridiculous layers that had physically anchored them to house, porch and trimmed Victorian lawn for ages. They swung their legs over the frames of their bikes and pedaled off on adventures, often with male companions. Macy tells of one bitter curmudgeon named Charlotte Smith who said in 1896 that “the alarming increase of immorality among young women in the United States” was a product of the bicycle. Smith also said that the bicycle was “the devil’s advance agent morally and physically.”
Other people, Macy tells us, saw the virtues of the bicycle.
“A girl who rides a wheel is lifted out of herself and her surroundings,” declared one Ellen B. Parkhurst. “She is made to breathe purer air, see fresher and more beautiful scenes, and get an amount of exercise she would not get otherwise.”
(Sounds like Parkhurst had the spirit of a bike tourist.)
The bicycle impacted the world in measurable ways in the 1890s. Cigar sales took a nosedive, Macy reports, as the collective preoccupation with cycling replaced smoking in stodgy reading rooms. Use of morphine, popular at the time as a sleep inducer, declined as people discovered how a little vigorous exercise could induce relaxation and sleep. Pastors and priests even observed that church attendance began dropping as more people opted to spend their Sundays jerseyed up, sipping off their CamelBaks and shredding sweet singletrack.
Well, riding bikes, anyway.
Cycling, unarguably, was fun, and voices of the conservative naysayers were drowned out as the American bicycle industry exploded. For instance, 17 manufacturers and a 40,000-bike output in 1890 increased to 126 manufacturers and the production of nearly a half million bicycles in 1895. Already, in fact, bike builders were customizing designs to accommodate women.
It was official: Ladies were on board. Critical mass had been reached, and there seemed to be no stopping the craze.
Some women engaged in competitions that lasted days as they pedaled hundreds of miles around oval tracks. For other women, just cycling somewhere, anywhere, was enough—and they began touring. In 1894, Annie Londonderry rode 1,300 miles between New Hampshire and Chicago. Later she would travel by boat and bicycle around the world, finishing with a ride from San Francisco to Chicago. Macy doesn’t tell us if lionhearted Londonderry camped out, how much weight she lost, what was the highest pass that she tackled, if she ever ran out of food or if she saw grizzly bears out West, but adventurous spirits, plainly, were taking flight.
Macy’s book ends abruptly and with a sad shocker: The bicycle craze curled up and died, for the automobile had been born. “By the turn of the century,” Macy writes, “the bicycle’s heyday was over and a new mechanical wonder promised to transport men and women faster and farther than ever before.” Great. Cars, traffic and suburbia were coming. But on bicycles, women had gained a huge spurt of momentum in gaining basic rights, and so they stepped off their bikes, straightened their dresses and went off to pursue other liberties.
Free at Last: This Sicilian, touring in Greece, may owe her liberty to the women's independence movement of the 1890s, described in Sue Macy's Wheels of Change.
In another book published this year, It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels, the history of the bicycle goes on into the 20th century. The book is author Robert Penn’s account of his personal quest to find the perfect bicycle. Along the way he describes some of the same history of which Sue Macy writes. For example, Penn adds to our growing accumulation of bike trivia that Annie Londonderry carried a revolver in her saddlebag. What a lady! But mostly, Penn tells the history of the machine and the development of its many components—complex products of engineering that today allow us to scale mountains, freewheel back down, stop on a dime, keep at it for hours without getting a sore rear end, and so on. He talks frames, wheels, saddles, gears, hubs, derailleurs and chains. He looks at fixed-gear bikes, road bikes, mountain bikes and hand-built bikes so dashing that it seems foolish even to ride them. He chitchats with bike builders who are constantly pushing the improvement of every nook, cranny and corner of the bicycle.
Penn recalls for us, too, a great Ernest Hemingway quote that every cycle tourist should know: “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them…you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through.” And I’d always taken Hemingway for the sort who just writes short sentences in Parisian cafes. Seems he would have made a fine touring partner.
In one humorous encounter in a Welsh village, where Penn had just moved in, he describes the locals’ inability to comprehend why a man would choose to ride a bike unless he had to. In a pub one evening, a fellow asks Penn if he had lost his driver’s license. Penn tells the man that he simply loves riding and does so by choice. A year later in the same pub, the same man takes Penn aside once more.
“‘I see yor on the bike still, boy,’ he said. ‘A long time to be banned now, see. You can tell me…did you daw something tehr-ribble in a car? Did you kill a child?’”
We’re reminded that many people still regard the bicycle as a toy and by no means a valid form of transportation. But, as Penn writes, “The cultural status of the bicycle is rising again…In fact, there is a whisper that we might today be at the dawn of a new golden age of the bicycle.”
