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
Thus far, in traveling twenty-six hundred miles or more over clay
ruts and mountain roads, I had taken only two tumbles, and was
beginning to think there was no such thing as headers when, in
gliding serenely across the street, in front of the Utah Central
Depot at Salt Lake City, I rode into a ditch, concealed with
fine sand, and instantly--that word makes the time altogether too
long--my nose and chin were scraping along on the hard gravel. I
never took such a tumble. It was like a flash. And the knapsack,
as usual, unkindly butted me on the back of the head as the ground
suddenly brought the trip to a close. With the blood starting from
both nose and chin, and a loosened handle bar, that at first sent a
cold chill all through me with the impression that it was broken, and
with a knee so badly sprained that I could only limp into the cars,
these things, altogether, served to remind me that carelessness and
'cycling are incompatible.
On the way to Ogden we saw several headers at work on the wheat fields,
and these served to awaken me from the dazed condition in which the
only kind of a header I had ever known had put me. The field headers
are mowing machines that go along in front of the horses instead
of behind them, as is usual with mowing machines in the East, and
as it cuts the wheat down--it simply cuts off the tops or heads of
the wheat, hence the name header--the wheat falls on to a long cloth
roller that revolves at right angles to the direction the machine is
going. A large box wagon is driven along at the left of the header
and the wheat is carried up on this cloth roller and loaded into
this wagon. When full another takes its place while the first wagon
is being unloaded at the stack.
The Wasatch Mountains, a range that extends from below Salt Lake
City to many miles above Ogden, are not dwarfed, as is the case with
so many other ranges of mountains, by foot hills at their base, but
they stand out bold and black, excepting where covered with snow, and
are the most impressive of any mountains I have yet seen. At Ogden,
through passengers are delayed two hours between the arrival of the
Union Pacific and the departure of the Central Pacific trains. Half
of this time is a needless delay, for the mail, baggage and express
matter was all transferred long before the train left, but this is
only a sample of the manner in which both roads are run.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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