Historical Article
Bicycle Riding In The United States (1881)
Taken from
Appendix VII in A Bicycle Tour In England And Wales. Alfred Dupont Chandler, Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1881, pp. 138-139
"It is a mistake to suppose that highways in England are universally superior to those in the United States. There are many roads in this country equal to the very best English roads, and there are roads in England quite as poor as our worst roads. The following is from an article on roads in an English publication:--
"The adjectives 'good' and 'bad' are quite useless in such conjunctions as these, since what a Yorkshire rider might call good, a Surrey man would be very likely to characterize as infamous, not to say unrideable."
Englishmen are well aware of the fact that English highways have not altogether that degree of superiority which for some reason Americans will claim for them. A lumpy English macadam is abomidable, and a slippery oölite is exasperating. Nowhere in England or Wales has the writer found roads superior to many of those in the vicinity of Boston, Massachussetts. But there is this manifest advantage in an extended tour in England, that there good roads are found more or less all over the kingdom, whereas in Massachussetts, for instance, they are in and near a few large cities and towns, and not through the State at large, so that one can, upon the whole, do better in England on a tour than he can in New England; yet for circular runs of from ten to fifty miles, by selecting the route with care, one can find roads about Boston equal to the best in England.
In using the bicycle almost exclusively for hygienic [health] purposes, the writer has ridden over four thousand miles through the following counties in Massachussetts: Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Worcester, Hampden, Bristol, and Plymouth, and into the States of New Hampshire and Rhode Island. In all the above the bicycle can be ridden, although the roads in the eastern part of Massachussetts are by far the best.
The use of the bicycle is now so well established that the number of riders throughout the United States increases at the rate of several thousand a year."
"The adjectives 'good' and 'bad' are quite useless in such conjunctions as these, since what a Yorkshire rider might call good, a Surrey man would be very likely to characterize as infamous, not to say unrideable."
Englishmen are well aware of the fact that English highways have not altogether that degree of superiority which for some reason Americans will claim for them. A lumpy English macadam is abomidable, and a slippery oölite is exasperating. Nowhere in England or Wales has the writer found roads superior to many of those in the vicinity of Boston, Massachussetts. But there is this manifest advantage in an extended tour in England, that there good roads are found more or less all over the kingdom, whereas in Massachussetts, for instance, they are in and near a few large cities and towns, and not through the State at large, so that one can, upon the whole, do better in England on a tour than he can in New England; yet for circular runs of from ten to fifty miles, by selecting the route with care, one can find roads about Boston equal to the best in England.
In using the bicycle almost exclusively for hygienic [health] purposes, the writer has ridden over four thousand miles through the following counties in Massachussetts: Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Worcester, Hampden, Bristol, and Plymouth, and into the States of New Hampshire and Rhode Island. In all the above the bicycle can be ridden, although the roads in the eastern part of Massachussetts are by far the best.
The use of the bicycle is now so well established that the number of riders throughout the United States increases at the rate of several thousand a year."
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