In January, fired with a New Year's resolve, I was determined to get on my bike and commute more often. The very first day I got in a tangle with a pedestrian and broke my forearm. I was off the bike for a couple of months; so much for resolutions!
Since I couldn't ride, I did a lot more walking instead. This worked well as basic exercise, but it's not the workout that cycling gives me.
After the long layoff I tried to get back into it, but the enthusiasm wasn't there. Once Melbourne moved into bitterly cold weather - a deeper winter than we've seen for more than a decade - my resolve was snuffed out.
I've been reading a book lately called The Lost Cyclist, by David Herlihy. Now here is a book guaranteed to shame the slothful. Set in the 1890s, it's about cyclists at the dawn of the modern cycling era, who set out on some truly jaw-dropping bike rides. The book tells the story of Frank Lenz, an adventurer who set out to cross the world on his bike. At the start of the book, Lenz is a young and avid racer, dedicated to riding his "ordinary" - what we refer to as a penny-farthing. Lenz covered huge distances on unmade roads, often in appalling conditions. None of this fazed Lenz, who was fired with a passion for riding and to make a name for himself.
One of Lenz's contemporaries was William Sachtleben. With his colleague Thomas Allen, Sachtleben had succeeded in riding his bike across Asia, from Constantinople to Peking. Think about that; these men rode their bikes through countries where bicycles had never even been seen, along uncharted roads, far from the protection of law and order. Sachtleben and Allen even crossed the Gobi desert on their primitive bicycles. On their return to America they were rightly feted as heroes.
Lenz was determined to follow this example, and to exceed it. He decided to ride around the world solo, east-to-west. Trained as a photographer, he was sponsored by a cycling magazine to send them exclusive stories of his ride.
Lenz rode across the USA, Japan, Burma, Persia, China, Afghanistan and other parts of the East. With most of the danger spots behind him he was heading through Turkey to Europe when he simply disappeared.
The search for Lenz took a long while to get going and was ultimately entrusted to Sachtleben, on the grounds of his prior experience in the region. Sachtleben encountered massive frustrations and considerable risks in searching for Lenz in Turkey. He continually ran afoul of local politics and tribal loyalties, and was caught up in the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks.
When one reads about the challenges these men took on in an era when penny-farthings were still popular and the pneumatic tyre was a novelty, the ride from the suburbs to Docklands seems like a mere doddle, even in the foulest weather. Heck even the super-athletes currently racing around France aren't tackling anything as tough or as risky as the globe-girdling these riders were attempting on their boneshakers.
After reading The Lost Cyclist I was amazed, and ashamed at what a wimp I am. Time to get back on the bike.
Greg.
The Lost Cyclist on Amazon
Sachtleben and Allen's book
