PEDAL AND PATH
Across the Continent
AWHEEL AND AFOOT,
GEORGE B. THAYER.
[Member of the Connecticut Bicycle Club,]
HARTFORD:
Evening Post Association.
1887.
PREFACE.
Close confinement to mercantile business for a dozen or more years
brought on a feeling of discontent with the monotonous routine,
that I at length tried to drive away by taking a little recreation
on a bicycle. The machine, I found, was not only a source of great
enjoyment, but it soon became a thing of practical value to me in the
transaction of business. I took intense delight in riding the wheel
a dozen miles to Hartford buying goods, quite content to let those
who would sit inertly riding by me in the cars, and it was not long
before the idea of taking a short vacation presented itself.
A vacation of more than a day was a pleasure of which I had denied
myself for so many years that it was a question with me whether the sun
would not stand still if I ventured out of the little orbit in which
I had moved so many years. But I finally decided to run the risk. At
the end of five days, after riding one hundred and seventy-five miles,
I came back more than ever pleased with the mode of locomotion and its
advantages in sight-seeing. So intense had become my desire to travel,
to visit the places of interest here at home, that I then made business
arrangements which would permit a more prolonged absence, and took a
three weeks' trip of five hundred miles, and soon after a six weeks'
trip of one thousand two hundred miles through the most interesting
parts of New England.
Instead of quieting my rising passion for sight-seeing, these
delightful journeys only added fuel to the flames. They showed clearly
to me the possibilities of a trip to California, the independence and
economy possible to such a trip, and the good results to be obtained
from such a mode of traveling in preference to any other. So with no
desire or intention of making or breaking any records, or covering the
whole distance on the wheel, the trip was started and carried out with
the sole object of taking all the pleasure possible and of acquiring a
knowledge of the country and the people who live in it. An account of
the trip across the continent was written in occasional letters to the
Hartford Evening Post, as whose representative I was everywhere most
courteously received. Although this little volume is to all purposes
a binding of those letters, with considerable revision, in book form,
I have been able when seated quietly at my own desk to give fuller
details at certain interesting points, and to round out a narrative
which was sometimes rather meagre from having been written out in the
fields to escape too curious observation of passers-by, in a friendly
barn which sheltered me from the rain, on jolting freight-trains,
in the cloud-enveloped house on Pike's Peak, on one of the dizziest
points overhanging the Yosemite, on a tossing steamer on the misnamed
Pacific, and while waiting for the regular spouting of "Old Faithful"
in the Yellowstone, as well as in many other situations not conducive
to the production of comprehensive and artistic literary work.
To the wheelmen of the country, Greetings! The fraternal feeling
everywhere manifested between them has, I believe, not a parallel in
any social or secret order. To their spontaneous and unfailing kindness
was due much of the pleasure of the trip, and if any wheelman should
want a more detailed account than I have given, of any portion of
the route taken, I should be only too glad to furnish him with all
the information I possess.
G. B. T.
CHAPTER I.
WESTWARD HO! THE BEGINNING OF A SEVEN MONTHS'
WHEELING TOUR ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
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.
After anxiously waiting for the frost to be taken out of the ground
by a warm rain that finally came, I started out on the 10th of April,
1886. The roads to Berlin were full of hard, dry ruts, and through
Wallingford sandy as usual. This, in addition to the fifteen pounds
of baggage in my knapsack, the soft condition of my muscles, the
thirty mile ride the day before,--first one in four months,--these
circumstances, taken together, had the effect to make me somewhat
weary, and after reaching New Haven, and completing over fifty miles
that day, I was tired. Those wheelmen who envied me the trip in the
morning would have changed their feeling to pity had they seen me
groping along in the dark from North Haven nearly fagged out. The
next day, Sunday, was certainly a day of rest, but Monday I rode up
the gentle grade of the Farnham drive to the top of East Rock in the
morning, and in the afternoon about the city with a Yale student,
Mr. Geo. Kimball of Hartford,--a fine rider, who struck a gait
that outwinded me and that would have used him up in a day or two,
I think. For variety, I spent a couple of hours looking over the
fine specimens of ancient life in Peabody museum, and afterwards
made the acquaintance of Messrs. Thomas and Robbins of the New Haven
Club. Tuesday, a drizzling rain prevented a start till nearly noon,
and the ride around Savin Rock to Milford was anything but enjoyable,
especially when wearing a rubber suit which retained the perspiration
like a hot house, which it really was for me. It was the bitter
with the sweet, and the bitter came first, for the roads improved
to Stratford and Bridgeport, at which latter place the open-hearted
J. Wilkinson, a dealer in bicycles, accompanied me through the city
and on to Fairfield, showing his nationality by characterizing places
in the road as "beastly." A decided fall in the temperature was now
followed by a thunder storm which drove me under shelter for the
night at Green Farms.
Inquiries for a wheelman at South Norwalk, the next morning, brought
out in reply, "There is a man down at the carriage-shop, beyant, that
could fix your fhweel, I guess"; but not looking for that kind of a
wheelman, I soon found one, Mr. Chas. Warren, who piloted me along
to Stamford, where I had a pleasant chat with William A. Hurlburt,
the well known State representative. At Greenwich I met three riders,
two of whom it was plain to be seen by the dusty condition of one side
of their suits had taken recent tumbles. One was Consul E. W. Reynolds,
another Dr. E. N. Judd, vice-president of the Greenwich Club, and I
did not learn the name of the third. So with this unknown quantity it
is safe to leave the reader to ponder over which two of the three took
headers, for I could not be so base as to give a clue to the names of
the unfortunate ones, all three of whom were very fine gentlemen. Other
wheelmen soon came up, meat carts and express teams stopped on the
corner, small boys gathered around, and innumerable dogs filled in
the chinks, till fearing the knapsack would soon be arrested for
obstructing the highway, I reluctantly dragged it away and carried
it along to Port Chester, where, with a parting look at the Sound, I
started across the country to White Plains and to Tarrytown. The roads
improved all the forenoon, and from the Sound to the river were very
good. It was nearly dark at Tarrytown, but having some acquaintance
with the accommodating landlord at the American House, Sing Sing, I
kept on by the monument that marks the spot of Major Andre's capture,
down into "Sleepy Hollow," made memorable by Washington Irving,
and up to the Old Dutch Church, built in 1699. With a mania which
I shall never entirely outgrow, for finding the oldest dates in a
grave-yard, I opened the creaking iron gate, and walked in among the
tipsy tombstones, and, with the scanty aid of the twilight and the
full moon, found many dates nearly as old as the church itself. The
iron latch snapped back into place with a remarkably loud click, it
seemed to me, as I came out, for everything was wonderfully still,
even for a grave-yard, and as I went slowly on through the woods,
meeting Italian organ-grinders, passing bands of gypsies camped out by
the roadside, and coasting silently down unknown hills in the dark,
I really think I must have looked like a genuine goblin astride of
a silver broomstick. But there was a novelty about it that I rather
enjoyed.