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The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll, By H.G. Wells 1896

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NikeAjax

Look Ma, No Hands!
I started reading "The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll", written in 1896: it can be found here:


and here:


The later shows the illustrations...

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It's Wells' fourth book, and is comic tale of a man on holiday/vacation learning to ride his new-to-him, old bike:

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In the early days people would ride their bikes between inns, this is where motorcycle "cafe racing" comes from!

Jaybird
 
I started reading "The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll", written in 1896: it can be found here:


and here:


The later shows the illustrations...

View attachment 1613443

View attachment 1613444

It's Wells' fourth book, and is comic tale of a man on holiday/vacation learning to ride his new-to-him, old bike:

View attachment 1613445

In the early days people would ride their bikes between inns, this is where motorcycle "cafe racing" comes from!

Jaybird
...some of us are still very fond of riding our bikes "between inns".
 
I'm still getting used to reading 19th Century novels, jeeze, even those from the fist half of the 20th: the way they throw about all of those two-bit-words is maddening I tell ya!

From the sounds of it, Mr. Wells must have been a real bike-nut, as his use of jargon is spot on: as a writer, albeit one with moderate-dyslexia, I find the details very helpful. He even goes so far as to differentiate between the different frame types:

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This must have been very exciting at the time: it's reminding me of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", same time period too, in that he writes about state of the art science with things like Kodak-cameras and transfusions... My, how grand!

Jaybird
 
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