Bicycle History

The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze, and consumers, including women, were buying bicycles in large numbers. Despite critics who tried to discourage women from trying this new sport, women took to the bike in huge numbers, and mastery of the bicycle became a metaphor for women’s mastery over their lives. Spurred by the emergence of the “safety” bicycle and the ensuing cultural craze, women’s professional bicycle racing thrived in the United States from 1895 to 1902.

The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly out of pace with our age of smartphones and ridesharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a bicycle planet. Across the world, more people travel by bicycle than by any other form of transportation. Almost anyone can learn to ride a bike—and nearly everyone does. In Two Wheels Good, writer and critic Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous machine, an ever-present force in humanity's life and dreamlife, and a flashpoint in culture wars for more for than 200 years.

Dennis Wilson (Sticks) takes you on a gripping tale of life in the Projects. What began as innocent kids in a bicycle gang eventually became something much more. But family is not always what it seems in this raw, entertaining mystery. The body of a local drug dealer is discovered, Detective Faye-Lynn Johnson assigned the case, and everyone becomes a suspect, including her boyfriend. Conflicting facts soon emerge as she grapples with this baffling mystery.

When more than 100 men or women go racing down a road, inches away from each other, in all weather, over all kinds of roads, the opportunity for a brilliant win or a terrible accident is always there. For more than a century, bicycle racers have sought glory, but have often found only misery. There can be only one winner, and even that triumph can be mixed with terrible loss. Fausto Coppi, coached by a blind man, set the World Hour Record in Milan during the war while the city was being shattered by bombs.

This book includes all of my columns published in the San Francisco Chronicle from 1985-1988. It is divided into Equipment (63), Repairs (16), Tours (34), Racing (17), Politics (11), People (13), Commuting and Safety (7), and Health (3). About 100,000 words. Includes the author's photos, or public domain. 22 photos.

The Bicycle Shop is a front for running a safe house in Kansas. The visitors coming and going are humans from other worlds and visit this world to learn and move forward. The “ranch” is run by a colorful older woman, and the program manager is the owner of the bicycle shop.

A History of the Transportation Revolution covers the history of the evolution of major modes of human transportation. The book provides interesting events in the development of walking, roads, airships, bicycles, aviation, kites, railroads, jet engines and rockets. Additional sections cover the history of canals, boats, ships and more.

'The Green Bicycle Mystery' is Jepson's account of a true unsolved murder case. Bella Wright was found lying dead beside her bicycle on a lonely country lane in Leicestershire. She had been shot through the head. The last person seen in her company was a man on a green bicycle. When months later a green bicycle is dredged from a canal, the police are hot on the track of the mystery man.