THE WHEELMEN. - The San Francisco Call, 31 Aug 1895
THE WHEELMEN.
R. L. Long, the Crack Class B Man, Joins the Bay City Wheelmen.
CLUB EVENTS TO-MORROW.
California Cycling Club - Try-outs at Oakland Trotting Park.
"The Daily Call" Bicycle Club - To Centerville.
Crescent Road Club - Road race, San Mateo to San Carlos.
Diamond Cycling Club - To San Jose.
Garden City Cyclers - To Lodi.
Golden City Wheelmen - To Woodside.
Golden Gate Cycling Club - To San Jose.
Olympic Club Wheelmen - To Lodi.
Outing Road Club - With San Francisco Road Club.
Reliance Club Wheelmen - To Lodi.
San Francisco Road Club - Blind run.
The racing circuit on this coast seems to have met with favor, but there are not enough good men following it to warrant the attention it has received. Still the races are well contested and exciting, and it needs only a few more entries of speedy men and somewhat better management to make it successful. Another trick like that played on Wilbur Edwards at Petaluma last Sunday, as told in THE CALL, would give it a setback it could not recover from. Properly handled it should help the sport and the racing men.
The Reliance Club Wheelmen's meet at Oakland on September 7, and the meet of the Garden City Cyclers at San Jose on September 9, both offer attractions which will bring out the best racing talent for miles around. Both are large and influential clubs, and have offered valuable prize lists and a varied lot of races. The club relay race at the Reliance meet should be well worth seeing. The associated clubs will all go to San Jose on September 8, and will be tendered a picnic run by the Garden City Club. There will be a competitive parade on the morning of the 9th. A ball at the Vendome on the evening of the 7th will attract many of the wheelmen socially inclined.
Robert L. Long, the great class B racer, has decided to withdraw from the Olympic Club Wheelmen, and his name is now up for membership in the Bay City Wheelmen. That he has contemplated this move for a long time has been known to his intimate friends, but it will come as a great surprise to most of his clubmates and others.
Captain P. Morrin has called a run of the Sunset Cycling Club to San Leandro to-morrow. The run last Sunday to the Cliff was well attended. The ladies' annex turned out in full uniform. Some expert lady riders have recently joined the club.
The road riders of the Association Cyclers are in active training for their five-mile race on September 21. The Y. M. C. A. will send a team of three men to Los Angeles to compete at the State field day in October. J. E. Edwards will go and possibly J. A. Keller, W. Ede or Percy Burr.
The California Cycling Club will hold a try-out at Oakland Trotting Park to-morrow to select a team of five men to represent the club in the relay race at the Reliance Club's meet next Saturday.
The Liberty Cycling Club will soon be ready to move into its new quarters on Folsom street. C. H. Hoag, H. F. Wynne, G. Whittaker and C. Marshall are the latest additions to the membership list.
The annual members' meeting of the Bay City Wheelmen will be held Monday evening next at the clubhouse, 441 Golden Gate avenue. A nominating committee will be elected at the meeting for the purpose of selecting candidates for directors and road officers for the ensuing year. Action will also be taken on several proposed amendments to the by-laws. It is important that all members be in attendance.
Captain L. L. Korn announces a blind run of the San Francisco Road Club for tomorrow. Members will assemble at the clubrooms, at 8:30 A. M. sharp. The Outing Road Club will be the guests of the club on this occasion, and their proposed run to Lake Chabot is postponed.
The Outing Club will have to elect a new captain, as Fred Davis has resigned and will leave for the East next Monday night. Several have been mentioned for the vacancy, but no choice has been made. On September 15 the club will hold a five-mile handicap road race over the San Leandro course.
The Bay City Wheelmen are enjoying a boom in the way of receiving new members, nineteen having been elected the past week. They are: Thomas McAleer, W. W. Hatton, J. E. Manning, Fred Haswell, George H. Toohy, Hon. Charles T. Conlon, A. A. Manning, W. J. Y. Ryfkogel, J. M. Pike, W. T. Johnson, A. L. Holling, Fred P. Simpson, E. F. Sellers, Charles A. Vanderbos, William J. Howatt, J. C. Weber, Edgar J. Mayers, Henry P. Poulin, Edwin F. Sagar, Horace L. Poulin and S. D. Sutton. The club only needs ten more names and its limit of membership will be reached.
A private road race, the result of which will be watched with a good deal of interest by the wheelmen around the bay, will be run next Saturday afternoon. The distance is from Oakland to San Jose, and the competing teams are members of the B. L. O. Club and "Our Sett," two offshoots of the Olympic Club Wheelmen. Each club has four members, and there has been considerable friendly rivalry between them of late as to who were the fastest riders. A dispute on this point led to a challenge from the club with the mysterious initials, which "Our Sett" forthwith accepted. The members of the latter club are: Wilbur F. Knapp, W. H. Stinson, J. E. Fagothey and L. B. Thomas. The B. L. O. Club is composed of Fred R. Butz, James W. Coffroth, Thomas S. Mulvey and Joseph F. Coffey. Each man will pay an entrance fee, with which a suitable prize for the winning team will be purchased. As the entire eight have reputations as speedy road runners it is safe to say the pace will be a hot one from start to finish, and possibly the record from Oakland to San Jose of 2 hours and 13 minutes, made by O. L. Pickard, June 10, 1894, will be lowered.
The annual election of the Acme Club of Oakland takes place to-day. It was the universal desire of the wheelmen to have Captain Kitchen succeed himself, but on account of press of business duties he was obliged to decline the honor. Mr. Kitchen retires after the most successful term of office any captain has had in the club. G. H. Humphrey has been nominated to succeed and as he is very popular with the members there will be no opposition.
THE CALL Bicycle Club will hold its first club run to-morrow to Centerville, leaving on the 8 A. M. broad-gauge boat. It is expected that about thirty members will attend. The club, though only a week old, already has a membership of over fifty and applications are coming in daily.
A. Warnekros and his son, William, arrived here Wednesday by wheel from Fresno, having made the trip in two and a half days. The distance is 205 miles. They had four punctures in their tires, but no other mishap. The heat was very severe though.
The racing board has issued its bulletin No. 19, dated August 28, as follows:
SANCTIONS GRANTED. August 29, 30, 31 - Rose City Wheelmen, Chico. September 7 - Reliance Wheelmen, Oakland. September 9 - Pleasanton Cycling Club, Pleasanton.
September 9 - Order of Scottish Clans, Oakland.
Transferred to professional class - William Lowery, W. R. Haigh, Harvey Fuller, Healdsburg; R. S. Lomax, Paso Robles; under clause A.
Transferred to class B - S. A. Beadle, San Jose; under clause B.
R. M. WELCH, Representative National Racing Board.
Members from the Olympic Club Wheelmen, Garden City Cyclers of San Jose and Reliance Club Wheelmen of Oakland will leave to-night by boat for Stockton. Tomorrow morning they will ride to Lodi, where a hearty lunch and a feast of water melons will await them. Then they will ride back to Stockton in time for the returning boat to the City. Captain Thornton of the Olympics has charge of the run, and has had a large number of applications for berths. The Golden Gate Cycling Club of this City and Diamond Cycling Club of Alameda will have a joint run to-morrow to San Jose, returning as far as Alviso, where they will take the steamer for this city. Both clubs will turn out in full force.
The California Associated Cycling Clubs meet to-night at the rooms of the Bay City Wheelmen, 441 Golden Gate avenue. The annual ten-mile road race in October will be discussed and other matters of importance. The next meeting of the Associated Clubs may be held in San Jose, though this is uncertain.
The San Francisco Road Club will hold a five-mile road race on September 29 and are wondering whether the San Leandro-Haywards or San Mateo - San Carlos course will be best. The fastest time has been made over the former course of late.
Under a head reading "Baggy at the Knees" Cycling, that newsy weekly devoted to the sport published at San Jose, says: W. J. Edwards has had enough of the circuit and it wasn't because the speedy San Josean failed to get a place at Petaluma, either. Edwards can accept defeat with the most marvelous grace in the world, but it was the treatment he received that convinced him that he was no firecracker. Edwards was to go an exhibition mile against time at the opening meet of the "hoop" and was promised a full corps of pacemakers and pacing machines. When the time came for the trial there wasn't a sign of quad., tandem or single, and Edwards inquired when the next train left for home. THE CALL is responsible for the statement that quite a number of riders returned after the first day, dissatisfied with the management, which seemed to be baggy at the knees. Edwards will ride at San Jose, however, and his little experience at Petaluma will no doubt teach him not to depend too much on flowery promises.
The story of how Edwards was treated was exclusively told in THE CALL last Sunday. Five days before the meet he received a letter from C. N. Ravlin saying all pacing had been arranged, and they expected him to be there and hoped he would enter in the open events also. Ravlin entered him without even asking him his consent. Three days before the meet, Ravlin (as he afterward admitted to Edwards), knew it would be impossible to get the pacing, and that the quad team would only pace their own man, Foster, but fearing Edwards would not go to Petaluma if he knew it, and the meet would thereby lose a great drawing card, Ravlin kept it quiet and only told Edwards an hour or so before the races began. It is such treatment as this which makes racing men distrustful, and meet promoters with honest intentions are made to suffer in consequence of the acts of individuals working solely for their own aggrandizement.
The Crescent Road Club of this City will hold a five-mile handicap road race tomorrow over the course from San Mateo to San Carlos. The entries and handicaps are as follows: H. Cohn, James Conlin, E. Cohn and Joseph Leve, 1-1/2 minutes; J. F. Forbes, E. Van Wynen and Maurice Justh, 1-1/4 minutes; James Hale and I. Peiser, 1 minute; H. Gunderson, 45 seconds; L. Bearwald, L. Sittenheim and W. G. Lee, 30 seconds; A. Bearwald, Thomas Brannen and W. E. Wehser, scratch. Appropriate prizes for time and place are offered and the race will be well contested.
The Golden City Wheelmen will enjoy a watermelon run to Woodside, San Mateo County, to-morrow. Woodside is about six miles out of Redwood City on the La Honda road, and as the club intends to ride the round trip awheel they will have completed a seventy-mile journey ere the day is over."
M. J. Geary, sporting editor of THE CALL, has just returned from a three weeks' hunting and fishing trip in the Sierras, and tells an amusing story of an adventure with a wheelman near Boca, Nevada County. Mr. Geary, with Donald McCrea and J. Sammi of this City, had been out fishing all day. They were near the county road and McCrea said he would follow it a short distance and look for some grouse for their dinner. So he took a gun and started off, going down the hill. A short distance off he met a wheelman coming up the grade. Now McCrea in his hunting togs is an entirely different looking individual from the stylish young man whom his friends know here, and he confesses he may have looked like a hard character in his high boots, overalls, sombrero, with a shotgun over his arm and two weeks' growth of beard on his face. Anyway, the wheelman was very suspicious, and as soon as he saw him he stopped and reached around to his hip-pocket as if for a revolver. To reassure him Mc called out, “See any grouse down there?" and hearing Mc's voice Geary and Sammi also stepped out into the road to see what was going on. This was too much for the now thoroughly frightened cycler, who turned his wheel around and sped down the hill as if the devil was after him. Geary says he never saw such a burst of speed before. The trio were laughing so hard they could scarcely do anything, but managed to shoot off their guns a few times in the air, at which the retreating cycler, enveloped in a cloud of dust of his own creation, redoubled his efforts and was soon lost from sight. As he wore a maroon sweater and corduroy suit, Geary thinks it may have been Tommy Atkins, better known as Merton Duxbury, who is touring across the continent and left here July 28, which would have brought him in that vicinity about that time. At any rate, whoever he was, he no doubt carries the impression that he narrowly escaped a hold-up.
The picture presented this week is of Herman Sternberg, the fastest rider in the Royal Cycling Club, of which he is first lieutenant. He is always on scratch in all their races, and on the road has the reputation of being a very speedy rider.
The Pastime Bicycle club will hold its first club run to-morrow to San Jose. Rather a long journey for an initial run, but as the members are all good riders they will make it easily.
