Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1879 — The Bicycle in Baden. [ARTICLE]

The Bicycle in Baden.

A recent Baden letter says: Baden, from being the most expensive of summer cities, is becoming one of the most reasonable. The views afoot in every direction are among the most cbtffmiug in Central Europe. The English makes the most of them, too, as may be imagined. Parties of these lusty trampers start every day toward all points of the compass. It is one of the amusements of the Germans, French, or other cosmopolite tourists, to see these hardly pleasure-seekers set out, the men in the coarse, durable clothing which the British of all ranks cover their big limbs with, and the women not a whit behind them in stuff gowns that shed rain aud don’t show dust or the travel stains of the road. Many of them come provided with the big bicycles which are now the mania of the English youth. These groups are, of course, compelled to confine themselves to the valley, where the smoother roads are found, though there are adventurous spirits who have actually traversed a large part of Switzerland on the precarious vehicles. The long legs of the race have necessitated enormous machines. I have seen these two wheels whirling like express trains along the Baden roads, even up the hills, sixty inches in diameter. Think of working the treadle of such a circumferuce! As now constructed, the bicycle is a far different thing from the clumsy “boneshatter” introduced in ten years ago. Great companies have been formed in England, which do nothing else but fabricate these extraordinary vehicles, and you hear young men talk about the superior speed of a “Coventry,” a “Sparraw,” or a “Stanley.” The fore wheel being sixty inches, the back wheel is so small that when the machine is in motion you can hardly see it. It is, by regulation, not two feet in diameter. Indeed, the appearance preseut, as these enormous flashing circles dash past on the smooth road, is that of a great hoop of glittering steel, with a human figure perched on the top of it. The spokes are thin cords of steel wire, trending into the wire from a very wide hub.