Spin

by Peter Zheutlin

  Now surely you are thinking, “What an indirect route you were taking!” After all, Albany is just a hundred and fifty miles west of Boston, a distance I could have covered in a few days had I ridden there directly at the outset. Instead of reaching Albany in early August, taking nearly six weeks in the process, I could have been there in early July. With only fifteen months to make a circuit of the earth, I’d taken a whole month just going from Boston to Albany! As I said, planning was not my forte; improvising was, and I was, in every sense, making it up as I went along.

  The reason the well-worn cycling route from New York to Chicago took riders north to Albany instead of across New Jersey and Pennsylvania is easy to understand when you consider the terrain. Instead of hundreds of miles of hills, the cyclist could, all across New York State, ride the Erie Canal towpaths that paralleled the canal and along which teams of horses and mules would, in those days, pull barges along the canal. Sometimes cyclists startled the animals, to the chagrin of the teamsters. But the riding was easy, it was impossible to get lost, and one could find camaraderie with other cyclists.

  In the cities, such as Utica and Syracuse, I bargained a few hours of labor, making beds, folding linens, and such, for hotel lodging. But several nights I chose simply to sleep outdoors, under bridges or in barns, sometimes with permission, sometimes without.

  One morning, outside of Syracuse, a farmer nearly tripped over me on his way into his barn to milk his cows. I thought he would yell and run me off, but he was so startled by the sight of a woman and a bicycle in his barn, he was rendered speechless. I apologized and explained myself and spent the first part of the morning collecting eggs from the hens and carrying milk cans in exchange for my breakfast. Remember, I was obliged not to accept any gratuity, though, as a practical matter, who would ever know? The farmer, a man named Reilly, and his wife mostly looked at me as if I had landed from outer space, but I kept up a constant banter, regaling them with tales of my adventure thus far, most of which I made up on the spot—of nearly drowning in the canal when a team of runaway mules forced me off the path, of highwaymen who robbed me of my coins near Canajoharie, and of hanging from a railway bridge with one arm, my other clutching my bike, as a freight rolled by. They stared at me with utter astonishment, but it was, for me, a way of testing out stories for future audiences, especially reporters whose thirst for the sensational never waned.

  What did start to wane between Syracuse and Rochester were my spirits. Late-afternoon thunderstorms, typical in summer in western New York, often left me drenched to the bone. It was hard enough slogging mile after mile when my clothes and the path were dry; when they were both wet it was a misery. My clothes took on extra pounds and chafed against my skin, slowing my progress considerably. By the time I reached Buffalo I had been gone two months and ridden not quite five hundred miles. Simple math will tell you that I had used up more than 10 percent of my allotted time, traveled less than 5 percent of the miles required under the terms of the colonel’s wager, and was not even halfway between Boston and Chicago. The prospects for my success seemed to dim by the day.

  In the little town of Westfield I spotted the small office of the local newspaper, stepped inside, and spoke to a young reporter there about my venture. When he asked of my life in Boston I told him I was a student at Harvard. Why Harvard, aside from the fact that everyone knew the name Harvard?

  Four months before I left Boston, a Harvard student named E. C. Pfeiffer, using the assumed name Paul Jones, left Boston on a bicycle to go around the world without so much as a change of clothes, ostensibly to settle a wager of five thousand dollars, earning money as he went. Two weeks into his effort he admitted it was all a fake; that he was just out to get some notoriety and earn a little money. The story fascinated me, especially because a credulous press had given Pfeiffer, or Jones, so much attention merely for proclaiming his intention to make the journey. Not to be snakebitten again, some of the Boston papers, reporting on my impending journey, referred to me as a “female Paul Jones,” suggesting that I, too, might not be legitimate. But when that reporter asked me about my life in Boston, I thought of Jones and “Harvard” popped into my head and right out of my mouth. I often operated that way, dear. I was always impulsive.

  * * *

  The roads along the Lake Erie shore from Pennsylvania into Ohio were pleasant and flat, often crossing over farmland and through towns such as Ashtabula, whose streets were lined with large trees and handsome homes. But I was road weary and exhausted, and my progress was slow. By the time I had crossed Ohio and Indiana and arrived at last in Chicago on September 24, I had been on the road three months. I had vastly underestimated the rigors of the journey and vastly overestimated my physical abilities. And my arrival in Chicago just as summer turned to fall laid waste to my plan to get across the continent before winter would take hold in the plains and the mountain West.

  Once eager for publicity, I realized with some consternation that several of the Chicago newspapers had learned of my arrival in the city, meaning whatever I decided to do was sure to bring some notice, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could go on. In that case, the limelight would be nothing but an embarrassment.

  The Inter Ocean, one of the major papers, described me as being “in prime condition” for continuing the journey, but in truth I was plain exhausted and would have been happy to never again place my rump in a bicycle saddle. I’d lost nearly twenty pounds since leaving Boston, a large amount for a small woman, and I was a mere one thousand miles from where I’d started. I had now used up 20 percent of my time to cover but 10 percent of the required miles. Being exposed as lacking the fortitude and strength to continue the journey would be humiliating to say the least. In Chicago, Annie Londonderry and I had some big decisions to make.

  Six

  By latching on to the debate over women’s equality in my quest to make a name for myself, I had, in a sense, laid myself a trap. Though I was far from a big celebrity at this point, some of the most widely read newspapers in New York and Chicago, the two biggest cities in the country, had reported on my venture, and many smaller papers in between had run their stories, too. And the letter Susie sent me in New York was a reminder that there were stakes larger than my own personal success or failure. Failure would surely be used as a bludgeon by the forces of chauvinism to beat down the idea that a woman was in any way the equal of a man. Maybe I would fail in the larger effort, but surely I had to make a better showing than merely managing to pull myself into Chicago after three months on the road.

  My first inclination, when asked about the road ahead by the reporter from the Inter Ocean, was to say that I would from Chicago head south to warmer climes and make my way to the Pacific coast across the Southwest. Such a route was, in fact, the only plausible alternative without risking being caught in the northern plains or western mountains in winter. Snow falls in the Rockies even in summer; by late fall and early winter, passage would be impossible, especially given the lack of anything resembling decent roads in the 1890s. Thomas Stevens, less than a decade before, had pushed his wheel up and over mountain passes, along foot trails and railroad tracks in the American West in winter, and his trip around the world had taken nearly three years. I now had but one in order to claim victory and the prize money. It seemed an impossibility. To save face I told several reporters I now had a different objective in mind—to set the speed record for a woman riding from Chicago to New York. But, really, I wasn’t at all sure where I was going or when or how.

  I rented a small room by the day in a boardinghouse just off Michigan Avenue near downtown. With my bicycle in the room, there was barely enough space to turn around. There was a communal bathroom down the hall. I needed a few days to decide on my next move.

  Over the past two years I had read much about Chicago because of the World’s Columbian Exposition that opened there in May 1893 and drew visitors and exhibitors from all corners of the globe. Photographs of the “Great White City,” the exhibition
halls, pavilions, and other structures built on the lakefront to house the fair, were everywhere and it must have been quite a magical sight, all whitewashed and illuminated at night. The fair closed in October of that year, and early in 1894 a terrible fire destroyed the White City. I had missed seeing it by just a few months.

  For several days I simply walked the noisy, crowded streets of Chicago. They teemed with activity. People poured into the city every day on trains from all parts of the country, some seeking jobs, some on business, some just drawn by the great metropolis by the lake. It was a city with a throbbing pulse, like New York.

  I found the city exhilarating, even in a way that New York was not. New York was, for all its tumult and dynamism, an establishment sort of town, a global center of finance, the arts, and industry, a place where strangers came to assimilate and were swallowed up by Gotham. By contrast, Chicago felt like a place that was still in the process of becoming, of inventing itself, with each new arrival ready to make his mark on the city rather than the other way around. If New York was the middle-aged parent, Chicago felt like a rambunctious teenager. Even the ever-present stench that wafted over the city from the stockyards just south of downtown didn’t dim the effervescent mood of the place. If the Midwest was America’s breadbasket, Chicago was its meat locker. It seemed that hardly a head of cattle raised on the Great Plains or the farms of the Midwest didn’t find its way by rail to the Chicago stockyards to be slaughtered and packaged for sale.

  As I wandered around the city I became aware of a growing conflict inside myself. I had adopted a new persona, but I had not yet become the new woman I aspired to be, and so as both Annie Kopchovksy and Annie Londonderry wrestled with the decision of what to do next, I was torn. Annie Kopchovsky was worn out and deflated and suffered nagging bouts of guilt about the family she’d left behind. Annie Londonderry, on the other hand, was determined not to surrender to the hardships of the moment and desperately wanted to avoid the humiliation of giving up, disappointing Colonel Pope, losing the prize money, and letting down her sex. This argument raged inside my head for days. I slept fitfully and spent my waking hours distracted by the inner voices pulling me in different directions. I’m not, as you know, someone given to belief in the supernatural, but with no reconciliation in sight, I started hoping for a sign, some fortuitous event, that might nudge me one way or the other, and it came, perhaps not surprisingly, in a bicycle shop.

  * * *

  About a week after my arrival in Chicago I chanced to pass a bicycle shop selling the Sterling brand, well known as a high-quality machine and widely advertised with the motto “Built Like a Watch.” I went in just to have a look and to compare the Sterling models to the Columbia that had carried me from Boston. A nattily attired gentleman approached.

  “Are you interested in a wheel, madam?” he asked. “All the women are riding them, you know.”

  “Thank you, no. I am just looking,” I replied. “I have a wheel already. In fact, I have ridden it here from Boston.”

  I expected to be laughed at in disbelief, but to the contrary, the gentleman looked at me intently.

  “You aren’t Miss Londonderry, are you?” he asked.

  “I am indeed.”

  “Well, this is a pleasure and an honor,” he said, extending his hand. “I have been reading of your adventure in the Inter Ocean.” He seemed excited to be in the presence of a celebrity. “I read you were in the city, but I never expected to meet you in person.” He bowed politely.

  “The pleasure is mine, Mister… I don’t believe you have told me your name, yet you already know mine.”

  “Higgins,” he answered, “Jeremiah Higgins, but you may call me Jerry. All my friends do, and as you are a woman of the wheel, I consider you a friend.”

  “And you may call me Annie,” I countered. “The pleasure is mine.”

  “Tell me, Miss Londonderry… I mean Annie… how has your Columbia served you so far? It is a quality machine, I believe.” He explained that he had read I was on a Columbia.

  “It is a rugged machine and I have had no failures since leaving Boston, not even a flat tire,” I answered. “Of the quality I have no complaints. But it is quite a heavy thing to be pedaling over great distances.”

  “Let me show you something, Miss Londonderry.” Jerry simply couldn’t get comfortable calling me Annie. He was a little starstruck. He led me across the showroom to behold a new arrival, a beautiful cream-colored wheel with a handsome leather saddle, wooden rims lacquered to a shine, cork handlebar grips, and chain rings that looked as though they had indeed been fabricated by a Swiss watchmaker. It was a work of art.

  “Perhaps you should be wheeling around the world on this,” said Jerry. “It is the lightest wheel we have ever made. Just twenty-one pounds. Probably half the weight of the beast you are riding now.”

  I ran my hand along the frame, admiring the simple beauty of the thing.

  “Perhaps I should!” I replied. “But this is a wheel built for a man.”

  “So it is. But what of it? I have never understood why we expect women to ride a wheel in long skirts. It’s wildly impractical, is it not?”

  “I have a thousand miles behind me that says it is so,” I answered.

  “You are surely familiar with the divided skirt,” said Jerry.

  “Bloomers, you mean? Of course. But I am far too modest for such radical attire.” I was wearing bloomers underneath my long skirts, but had never worn them alone as outerwear.

  “Nonsense. A woman willing to take on the world by wheel cannot be modest. In bloomers you could easily ride a man’s wheel. And imagine the freedom of movement it would bring!”

  “It is a novel idea, but I haven’t the means to purchase a new bicycle. Besides, as you have probably read, I am promoting the Columbia wheel on this journey.”

  While Colonel Pope surely expected I would make the journey on his brand, in fact I had no obligation under the terms of the wager to remain on a Columbia. Perhaps it was an oversight, but that was not among the conditions. The idea of riding a wheel half as light, in clothing far better suited to distance riding, had great appeal. There was little chance at this point that I would win the colonel’s wager anyway, having frittered away three of the fifteen months just getting from Boston to Chicago. But any chance I had would depend on my making better time, and a lighter bicycle would be of great help.

  “Miss Londonderry, I don’t just sell the Sterling wheel, I have a high position with the Sterling Cycle Works,” Jerry said eagerly. “I am the company treasurer. I am sure I can convince my colleagues that putting you on a Sterling would be good for business. And we could advertise with your image on our wheel and pay you something for your endorsement. Have you seen our ads featuring Miss Oakley?”

  From his pocket he withdrew a thick card with a photograph of Annie Oakley, the famed marksman, or markswoman, I should say, sitting sidesaddle on a Sterling while aiming her rifle. “Annie Oakley Rides a Sterling,” it read. I had not seen it before, but it was a clever way to advertise, attaching your brand to a famous personality, a lesson not lost on me. After all, I had carried the Londonderry brand on my wheel since leaving Boston.

  “Think it over and come back in two days’ time,” Jerry said. He was very self-assured and persuasive. “I will secure the necessary permissions by then, and if you agree, we will send you off from this city on this beautiful wheel, albeit one better sized to your small frame.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Higgins. Jerry. I will do that.” I extended my hand. “You have given me much to think about. Thank you. Until Thursday, then.”

  “Until Thursday, Miss Londonderry. Until Thursday.”

  * * *

  It didn’t really take much thought. The colonel would likely be furious if I switched mounts, but it would give me perhaps my only chance at winning the wager for him and the prize money for myself. And, as I said, nothing required me to make the circuit on a Columbia. I figured he would rather have me win the wager on a
Sterling than lose it on a Columbia, though I might well lose it either way. And so I resolved to make the decision on my own without communicating with Alonzo. A Sterling it would be the rest of the way, however long that proved to be.

  Seven

  You are probably wondering what was happening at home in Boston at this point. I’d been gone three months. For my part, I wondered little. The occasional letter from Bennett or Grandpa reached me, for every so often I wired Bennett telling him where I expected to be two weeks or so hence; many letters no doubt missed me, arriving at the local post office after my presence in a given town was already a memory. The letters I did read, and I confess I reached a point where I often never opened them or tossed them away unread, were filled with familiar mundane details of daily life that were of little interest. The fact is, I was trying to shed an old skin and grow a new one, and being tethered, even faintly, to home didn’t serve that purpose. This isn’t to say I was completely oblivious to the burdens, emotional and physical, I imposed on those I’d left behind, and going through my boxes in recent weeks I came upon several letters I did save, though why I chose these particular ones I cannot say for sure half a century later. I suppose they struck a chord at the time. There was one exception, however. Every letter from Susie that reached me I saved.

  I don’t mind sharing some of the letters from home with you now, for they will help you complete the picture of the forces that shaped the life of the family into which you were born. I have numbered them so you can read them more or less in the order I received them on the road. Here I will share two. The first is from Bennett, received in Chicago while pondering how to proceed now that it was apparent that riding west was out the question. It bore the shocking news that my sister, Rosa, just sixteen, was about to marry, and I knew in my gut my leaving her had something to do with it. She was bereft, Jake was gone, and now I was gone. I am sure she hoped marriage would bring solace, though solace eluded her all her life. The second is from Susie, also received about the same time in Chicago. It is intimate, but you are now thirty years old and, I presume, wise to the world.