From spin classes on the Titanic to some very racy home-made videos, a bike lover’s paean to pedal power
What combines the rise in spin classes, heroic 19th Century endeavours across frozen landscapes in pursuit of gold, the environmental movement of the 1970s, kinky home-made videos, social mobility, the Titanic, the pandemic and women’s liberation? If I told you it’s a book about bicycles, would you believe me? Either way, the author of Two Wheels Good manages to corral unusual, surprising and even eyebrow-raising stories in tracing the machine’s trajectory across more than two centuries in a way that might make you think differently about the rise, fall and rise of pedal power.
Rosen, an American journalist, says he wanted to ‘de-quaintify’ the bicycle and, to entertaining effect, he brings the history of this world-changing invention to life via the people and movements who have been shaped by the bicycle – as well as those who made it what it is today.
From the first Laufmaschine, a pedal-less contraption invented by a minor German nobleman, Karl Drais, in 1817, it took decades to evolve, via the daredevil Penny Farthing, into one of the most efficient machines for human travel, the safety bicycle.
When this machine finally took shape, it was advertised as otherworldly and high-tech, with advertising posters showing semi-nude ladies gliding to the stars in ecstasy – evoking the feelings of liberty and flight that the bicycle continues to inspire today.
Much has changed, and nothing has changed. The bicycle itself is little altered from early designs, while many disruptive, controversial elements of cycling, the flashpoints for culture wars and moral panic, remain. Using medical and academic journals and news articles, one chapter brings to life the backlash to the ‘bicycle mania’ of the late 1800s. Some century-old pieces, written by columnists of the time, echo some of today’s columnists decrying the ‘scorching’ behaviour of cyclists rushing about the streets.
One newspaper piece runs: ‘Mr Dennison contends that his wife is a bicycle fiend, and offers, with proof, the following letter: “My Dear Husband – Meet me on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue and bring with you my black bloomers, my oil can, and my bicycle wrench.”’
There are also incredible feats of daring on bicycles. Like the story of 19-year-old Max Hirschberg, a gold prospector travelling across a frozen Yukon in early 1900. Injury and illness delayed his plans to sled to rumoured rich gold fields, so he set out on a bicycle. Wrapped up against the cold, he followed the narrow and snow-obscured paths left in the wilderness by sled runners. He fell into the river several times, once becoming sandwiched in freezing water between sheets of ice. Breaking his chain in one fall, he ‘stripped off his mackinaw [woollen coat], pinned a stick between his back and the garment, and let the tailwind fill the coat like a spinnaker’.
Rosen’s book takes us from the use of cycles as stealthy and efficient transportation in war zones, to cyclists’ role in campaigning for networks of roads, paving the way for cars.
It ranges from an embarrassing tumble with trick cyclist Danny MacAskill to a visit with Mohammed Abul Badshah, a rickshaw driver in Dhaka, Bangladesh. And from the indoor cycling or spinning craze, which Titanic passengers briefly enjoyed on board, to a mass cross-country adventure across America that brought two cyclists together in an idyllic marriage.
We also learn of the remote country of Bhutan’s fascination with, and love for, the bicycle – despite it being the last place on Earth bicycles reached.
There are the curious stories of bike kinks, displayed in home-made videos, and the prurient fascination of early commentators on the impact of cycling on women’s bodies.
Rosen also reminds us that cycling’s best applications aren’t limited to wealthy European families with cargo bikes but masses of everyday users in the global south, Latin America, Asia and Africa, where cycle rickshaws and sturdy bicycles provide an essential livelihood and transport for the poorest in society. With the growth in ebikes,
and the pandemic cycling boom, the bicycle’s star continues to rise. Cycles, he argues, play a key and an often overlooked role in the global economy, not least with an estimated 40 to 60million working tricycles worldwide. He says this calls into question the quaint parochialism’ around the bicycle which, he says, ‘signifies labour not leisure, livelihood not lifestyle, or quality of life’.
Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews, and fascinating historical tales, Two Wheels Good will expand your understanding of what a bicycle is and what it can do.