An American Cycling Odyssey, 1887
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: September 1, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 200
ISBN-13: 9780803224087
Subjects: Biography & Autobiography; History of specific subjects; c 1800 to c 1900; Cycling - General; 18th And 19th Century Description And Travel; Cycling; United States; Biography / Autobiography; Nellis, George W.,; Travel; USA; Cyclists; Sports - General; History / United States / 19th Century; 19th century; Essays & Travelogues; 1865-1948; Biography; History
Description: "In 1887 a twenty-one-year-old newspaperman named George Nellis (1865-1948) rode a bicycle from Herkimer, New York, to San Francisco in seventy-two days, surpassing the transcontinental bicycle record by several weeks. He averaged fifty miles a day pedalling a fifty-two-inch, high-wheeled Columbia Expert "ordinary" bicycle with a tubular steel frame and hard rubber tires, and he lost twenty-three pounds in the process." "Drawing on Nellis's letters and media coverage of the trip, Kevin J. Hayes recreates in compelling detail this amazing trip and the many ordinary and extraordinary faces of late-nineteenth-century America that were once revealed to a young bicyclist."--BOOK JACKET.