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From the early 20th century, somewhere in the Northeast, comes this 4x5 inch glass negative with the caption "L.K. -- bicycles at spring." View full size.
No strong drink for me today but on the smaller version I see an old gnarly woman offering a skateboard to our bike hikers.
Tomorrow with the Thanksgiving cocktails I might be seeing the Andrews Sisters but as a sober man today I see the old woman too.
JohnHoward good eye. Didn't see that until after you pointed it out. Didn't see it at all when the image was enlaged.
Liking the carvings on the roots at the base of the tree. Looks like those are circa 1895.
I used to wear those kind of metal clips on my pants legs too when bike riding (so that said pants did not get tangled up in the spokes etc) Looks like they've been around for quite awhile...and is anybody else a bit baffled by the pose of the fella on the far left? He is semi-lying down while leaning both on his friend and his hand i.e. it looks both odd and quite uncomfortable!
"We'll have to wait until they invent the Mountain Bike to get across this"
JohnHoward, I wasn't going to say anything about it, but yes, I saw the "old woman" the instant I looked at this photo.
SPOOKY!
These look like pretty good bikes, but they don't seem to have any brakes unless they're coaster brakes. I've ridden track bikes where you had to resist the foreward rotation of the pedals to slow down, and it would really scare me to try the same thing on the open road. Is that what these bikes had?
JohnHoward - not the only one. It jumped out at me from the smaller view. Somewhat less apparent at full size.
3 bikes and 5 people with no fenders - where did everyone ride?
Am I the only one who sees the 'old woman' back beyond the fence, shawl over her shoulder, leaning forward with outstretched hand?
Here the lads stop to water their mounts.
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