If there’s any symbol for the transformation that had occurred in the lives of American women as they approached the twentieth century, it ought to be the bicycle.
–Gail Collins, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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I had made myself master of the most remarkable, ingenious, and inspiring motor ever yet devised upon this planet.
–Frances Willard on learning to ride a bicycle, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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Good health to all, good pleasure, good speed,
A favoring breeze – but not too high
For the homeward spin! Who rides may read
The open secret of earth and sky.
–Anonymous, Scribner’s Magazine, June 1895, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
And today I must add: my knee is getting better. I’m out of PT and back on the bike, on shorter road rides (yesterday I got up to 3 hours, although it was depressingly challenging). Today is a happy day: I am off to Huntsville State Park for my first mountain biking in almost 3 months! Cross your fingers for my knee and my fitness level. 🙂 If I’m not too unhappy with my performance I’d love to race the Dave Boyd Memorial Huntsville race in a few weeks…
Those are my two-wheeled thoughts for the day.
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On silent steed of steel she rides
Past nature’s beauteous bower;
Life’s moments spent while thus she glides,
To her seem sweetest hours.
–M.S., The American Jewess, June 1896, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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when springtime’s buds are flowering through the land;
while summer’s bloom is strewn on every hand;
and through autumn blows
or the chilly wintry snows,
she drives her airy wheel so free and grand.
–Ariel, The Bicycling World, February 16, 1894, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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away on the road where the dusty clouds whirl
away with a spirit ecstatic
goes the cool-as-an-icicle, bicycle girl
bestriding the latest pneumatic;
she heeds not the scoffers who scorn,
though knickers her kickers adorn,
the cool-as-an-icicle, bicycle, tricycle maiden by no means forlorn.
–London Judy, Buffalo Illustrated Express, July 29, 1894, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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In olden times the women rode
As fitted one of subject mind:
Her lord and master sat before,
She on a pillion sat behind.
But now upon her flying wheel
She holds her independent way,
And when she rides a race with man,
‘Tis even chance she wins the day.
–A.L. Anderson, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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the maiden with her wheel of old
sat by the fire to spin,
while lightly through her careful hold
the flax slid out and in
today her distaff, rock and reel
far out of sight are hurled
and now the maiden with her wheel
goes spinning round the world
–Madelyne Bridges, Outing magazine, September 1893, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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I got an amazing wealth of bicycle-and-women-related quotations from Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride, by Peter Zheutlin. I shall be sharing you with them here periodically. Two-Wheeled Thoughts will not always be feminine but will always be bicycle-related, of course.
On that simple machine she rode like a winged victory, women’s rights perched on the handlebars, and cramping modes and manners strew on her track.
–Fairfax Downey, as quoted in Around the World on Two Wheels
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It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and can coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motorcar only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.
from Battle for Paris, printed in Collier’s on September 30, 1944
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