Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and AfootThayer, George B. (George Burton)
History
Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot
Thayer, George B. (George Burton)
Bicycle touring; United States -- Description and travel
For this trip, which covered a distance of 11,000 miles from Hartford,
Connecticut, circuitously to San Francisco, California, and return,
nearly 4,300 of which was made upon the machine, a forty-six inch
Expert Columbia, taking me across twenty-three States and Territories,
and through hundreds of the finest cities and towns in the Union, and
some of the most magnificent scenery in the world, I was equipped with
a blue cap that I wore throughout the whole journey with comfort,
brown blouse, thin undershirt, brown corduroy knickerbockers,
brown stockings, and low canvas shoes. The baggage in the knapsack
consisted of a coat, blouse, pair blue knickerbockers, three summer
undershirts, night-shirt, six pairs stockings, six handkerchiefs,
needles and thread, buttons, and plenty of stout string, a box of
salve, a bottle of tannin and alcohol, a bottle of Jamaica ginger,
razor, shaving brush, hair brush, tooth-brush, shaving soap, toilet
soap, leather strap with wire hook at one end, a sponge, long rubber
tube for drinking, knife and fork, shoe laces, piece of cement,
box matches, a candle, coil of pliable wire, two dozen pedal-balls,
pedal shaft, chain and Yale lock, pocket mirror, railroad maps, and a
good supply of stationery and postal cards. On top of the knapsack was
strapped a gossamer coat, gossamer leggings, rubber cap, and a pair of
rubber overshoes. The whole weighed a little over fifteen pounds. It
will be observed that among the articles enumerated no mention has
been made of any weapon of defense. Although implored by some of
my friends not to enter upon the Western wilds without a pistol,
I decided to maintain my habitual faith in the honesty and good will
of the average American and to depend upon diplomacy and conciliation
in the circumvention of the exceptional villain. I expressed a valise
along to different cities as far as Denver, but found I could carry
all necessary clothing in the knapsack, and so left the valise at that
place till my return from California, when I sent it directly home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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