Some 1913 Bicycle Accidents in DC

October 1913 had two bicycle accidents that received newspaper coverage, one that involved President Wilson and "the White House car" (as it was referred to) and another involving the then-highest ranking bicycle commuter in the U.S. federal government.

The Washington Herald of October 06, 1913 had this story about the follow-up after President Wilson's car (driven by a chauffeur) had an accident with a bicycle messenger.

WILSON VISITS BOY AUTO HURT - Calls at Hospital and Feels Robert Crawford's Pulse and Head.

LAD SHOWS PLEASURE - Particularly Happy Over President's Promise to Give Him Bicycle to Replace Broken One

"Laying on of hands" may fail to cure nine times out of ten in these days, but in the opinion of Robert Crawford, the messenger boy run down and injured by President Wilson's automobile Saturday, the soothing touch of the chief Executive's hands and his cheering talk worked miraculously yesterday when the President visited the little patient at Providence Hospital.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Young Crawford was assured that the President would see that he had another bicycle in place of the one that was demolished by the White House car. After giving the patient this assurance and telling him that he hoped he would be completely well soon, President Wilson left the sickroom and returned to the White House in his automobile.

A typical messenger boy with bicycle in Washington DC, 1912

This incident was of sufficient notoriety that it is mentioned in the Wikipedia article about "telegraph boys" - "The President sent his personal physician to attend Crawford. Later, he visited the boy in the hospital and presented him with a new bicycle. "I did not know it was the President's car that I ran into," the boy said. Wilson replied, "I rather thought it was the President's car that ran into you.""

Not long after that, the second highest official at the Department of State had a bicycle accident that was reported on in the newspaper by The Washington Times on October 14, 1913.

ADEE, ON BICYCLE, CRASHES INTO AUTO

Secretary's Machine Wrecked and He Narrowly Escapes Receiving Serious Injury.

Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Adee had a narrow escape from serious injury this morning, when he rode his world-famous bicycle, which was carrying him to his office in the State Department, into the automobile being driven by J. E. Baines. of Browning Baines, coffee manufacturers, as Pennsylvania avenue northwest. Mr. Adee'a bicycle was damaged to such an extent that he was unable to ride it. He escaped serious Injury, however, although miraculously. Following the collision, Mr. Baines jumped from the car, assisted Mr. Adee to his feet, brushed the dust from his clothes, and after making an inventory, found that the aged cyclist was practically uninjured. The accident happened at Sixteenth and Corcoran streets. Secretary Adee was going west on Corcoran, and was turning into Sixteenth when he came immediately in front of Mr. Baine's automobile, which was going south. Mr. Baines turned his machine about, but not in time to keep Mr. Adee, who had not till that time seen it, from colliding.

Alvey Adee in 1914, riding his bike to work, some time after the above-described crash

Bicycle: Around the World: Around the World by Linda Svendsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Other than the single page introduction, there is no text aside from captions that identify the location that each photograph was taken. The pages are unnumbered but the volume is easily an inch thick, so there are several hundred pages of color photographs, some running across both pages.

The goal is to show how bicycles fit into everyday life around the world. The focus isn't on the qualities of the bicycles themselves in the usual way for books that are heavy on photographs of bicycles. Some of the photographs are crammed with bicycles in some setting while others have just one that may be off in the corner of the photograph.

This selection of three photographs from the book gives some sense of what the book is like. There is no apparent attempt to include photographs taken in every country of the world - of the ~190 countries in the world, there are probably photographs of bicycles in around 40 (I'm guessing) but there are certainly photographs from each continent (not including Antarctica). They were organized in some order that presumably made sense to the photographer but I didn't discern any pattern - photographs from a particular country may run for several pages, then from some other country, and later one finds another photograph from the first country later in the book. It seems whimsical.

Many of the bicycles shown in the developing world have obviously been subjected to heavy use and are not emblematic of bicycles as works of art or engineering. In fact the only "iconic" bicycle, presumably included without a sense of its iconic nature, is a Jack Taylor tandem shown in California. Perhaps this is repeating myself, but this is not a book of photographs of bikes to be admired in the typical way that I might.

Most of the photographs do not include the riders with the bicycles; rather the bicycles are shown parked (sometimes laying on their sides, looking more discarded than parked), waiting patiently for their riders to return.

This is not a new book or likely to be found in a bookstore selling new books. I was able to find a used copy at Powells book store for $6.50 which seemed an excellent deal.

View my reviews of cycling books on Goodreads.

Classic American Bicycles - Book Review

Classic American Bicycles by Jay Pridmore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book, which is now 15 years old, is a good blend of readable text and color photographs of mostly iconic bicycles from the earliest bicycles in America through the 1990s. The book is published as part of as series titled, "Enthusiast Color Series" so the presumed audience would most be people like me who are already interested and know something about bicycle history.

The photographs are generally of bicycles on exhibit at the Bicycle Museum of America - most were taken outdoors in posed settings. There are a small number of reproduction period photographs, too. Perhaps the main drawback of this kind of book is that the photographs are all full shots of the bicycles at medium distance so that you usually can't make out particular details - it really takes a coffee table size volume to have lots of close-up shots, too, I guess.

Given that more than half the space in the 96 pages is taken up with the photographs, the text does a good job of being both engaging and informative, even though it can't serve as an in-depth description of the subject. Mr. Pridmore, whose other books include ones about Schwinn's history, seems well qualified to write this book.

A book like this, focusing on "classics," tends to emphasize the unusual - for the enthusiast these are often the most interesting. And for a so-called enthusiast, that's fine - such a person will get that. As a photographic history of American bicycles more generally, however, this wouldn't work very well.

I gave this book five stars because it fulfilled my expectations for such books very well - I bought it used from Powells Book Store - I like to have books like this to pick up and page through from time to time.

View my reviews of cycling books on Goodreads.

Additional comment: Having read this book, which credits the Bicycle Museum of America as a "collaborator" on the title page, I looked at their website. I assume there are any number of reasons why small museums like this provide somewhat inferior presentations of their collections online - for one, if one could see the bicycles well on the site, why travel to New Bremen, Ohio? And also such web presentations cost money. The "online museum" includes a timeline of bicycle history (that reflects many of the highlights in the book) and an alphabetical directory of bicycles, presumably ones they have on exhibit. Oddly the entry for Pierce Arrow misspells the company's name as "Piece Arrow" in not one but two places. The selected images in this directory of bicycles are small and not likely to take away anyone's desire to visit the actual museum.

Presta Valve Follies

A few days ago while putting air in a road bike tire before taking off to work, I managed to remove the pump head such that it snapped the front tire's Presta valve stem off. This is the second or third time I have had this happen - admittedly over something like 15 years, so not exactly an everyday thing. Still, it is annoying since I typically put air in the tires right before taking off. In this case, since the broken valve didn't let any air out but simply meant I could no longer put air in, I decided to ride to work and back before dealing with it - that is, replacing the tube with a new one with a working valve. So I wasn't slowed down on departure much.


The Presta valve - the part that should insert into the pump and open the tube to receive air snapped off

This situation was preceded by bending the stem at some point, which apparently creates a weak point. Then I suppose when I loosen and tighten the lock nut every time I put air in the tire, it puts some stress on the bend, or something like that. Then at some point as I pull the pump head off, it is at such an angle that the stem snaps.


Inner tubes with working Presta valves

The replacement tube I will use is at left - I an using the tube that was in my bicycle tool bag, which was in a bag with talcum powder so it will move around easily in the tire and not get trapped between the rim and the tire during installation. I will coat the newer tube at right in talcum and put it in the bike tool bag.


Schrader valve patent from 1892

Apparently the Presta valve is more suitable for high pressure situations than the older Schrader valve - or at least I think the Schrader valve design is older. In Google's patent database the Schrader valve carries the Schrader name from its being patented in the U.S. in 1892. The Presta valve is a little more mysterious.


Is this the earliest Presta valve-like patent? from 1897

According the Wikipedia article on Presta valves some Presta valves now have removable cores which is not something I had realized was even possible. It says, "removable core Presta valves have become more common" - perhaps, but not on the low cost (i.e., cheap) tubes I buy. (Schrader valves all have removable core valves - a slow leak with a tire with a Schrader valve can simply be that the valve is not tightly installed. A very useful thing is a Schrader valve cap made of metal that has a built-in valve core remover/tightener.)

End of Year Look at Blog Stats

Overview - 90,001 all-time pageviews (click image to enlarge)

No, I still don't get what happened when pageviews was shooting up and then went south for a while, and now sort of zigs and zags.


Posts

The top four posts are the four that are featured at the right as "popular posts" - once ensconced there they seem hard to displace. They have, however, changed in rank relative to one another over time.

The blog post that has the most page views that comes next is Kickstarter Reflector Sticker = Success - I don't understand at all why this continues regularly to come up. It is (from my point of view, writing it) the least substantive post I did about Kickstarter proposals. There is little predicting which posts will get lots of views.

I do like that several posts related to my 1982 Bridgestone Sirius are popular. (Another one is here.


Traffic Sources

The traffic mostly comes from Google searches, not reading of current blog posts (I think). The VampireStat spam numbers are fairly low, all things considered. Good.


Audience(s)

Not surprisingly most traffic is from English speaking countries. And an assortment of others.

Kickstarter Risk Example - E-Bike Co. Goes Bust

I suppose I should take care not to appear obsessed with Kickstarter . . .

For a while I have looked at the Bike Portland blog fairly regularly because I guess I thought of Portland as somehow advanced in its support for cycling. Now I'm not so sure "advanced" is the right word, but anyway, it is a source of bike related news that can be stimulating to read.

They just had a blog post about a company ceasing operation - the company, Conscious Commuter, was trying to bring a folding e-bike for commuter use to market. Although not evident from their web site, they have packed it in - the Bike Portland blog post quotes extensively from an email sent out from the company to its Kickstarter supporters.



So yes, in addition to other funding sources, this company sought and got $25,000 through a Kickstarter effort. Thirteen of the people who contributed were at the $1,395 level, for which the "reward" was to be, "You are pre-ordering and will receive a numbered, signed, limited edition folding e-bike, numbered in the order your Kickstarter pledge was placed. In addition to special pricing, you will get another pre-release offer -- a 2 year warranty!" (Estimated deliver - March 2012.) Anyway - no, that didn't and isn't happening, as it turns out. Instead you get an email more than two years later that says, "We appreciate your support of Conscious Commuter. We wish we had been able to raise the additional funds needed to continue what we believed was a very promising business- but after two and a half years filled with momentous achievements and challenges, financial issues have forced us to close our doors." Actually the email says a lot of other blather. At this point anyone who gave them $1,395 is probably not too surprised.

Since this proposal was made in 2011, Kickstarter has tried to clarify that there is some risk in such things with their "Kickstarter is not a store!" blog post, that requires proposal to include a "risks and challenges" section (which the e-bike proposal didn't have) but in my experience these never say, "there is risk we spend the money on something other than producing the thing you think you will get."

Just from the fifteen minutes or so I have spent acquainting myself with this effort (admittedly after the fact) it appears they had problems staying on track. Even the Kickstarter people say, "under-promise and over-deliver" - instead they seemed to have tried to come up with every conceivable variant imaginable - the same bike without the electric drive, the same bike with the e-drive but you don't have to (or can't?) pedal the thing, even a version in carbon fiber.


A slick video pushing a carbon-fiber variant

Most amazing to me, for a project that involves Kickstarter funding, is the "about us" page on the Conscious Commuter site. (This page is most likely going to disappear soon, but no worries, I used the Internet Archive's "archive this" functionality to make a copy for posterity, which is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20131222164759/http://www.consciouscommuter.com/pages/our-people-1.) I mean, good lord, the company describes nine different management or adviser types and nothing about anybody who puts their hands on a bicycle!! You know, to make one. The 25,000 bucks from Kickstarter, less the five percent to Kickstarter and the credit card charges, wouldn't pay for this crew's $ needs for very long. (Yeah, I get that maybe one of these people was focusing on this full-time - but still, can't they say something about someone who gets grease on his hands occasionally?)

Again, it's easy for me to look at this critically more than two years after they created their Kickstarter proposal. Perhaps there is something be learned here. Hmm.

A Modern Lugged Frame & 3D Printing

VRZ 1. a tack bike frame with 3d printed lugs from Ralf Holleis on Vimeo.

A clever use of 3D printing to create lugs for a bicycle frame. I am not someone who pines for a bicycle-as-work-of-art like this, but there is no reason I can think of not to use a technical approach like this to build a bicycle frame that would more pedestrian in appearance but good to ride.


From a bicycle "accessories" (mostly parts) catalog of 1900

The elegance of a lugged bicycle frame to me is that it is the way most good (and I suppose some other) bicycles were built for the better part of 100 years.


My 1982 Bridgestone with a lugged steel frame