around the world on a bycicle volume 1

by Thomas Stevens

From the Sierra Nevadas eastwards to Teheran. 1884/5 Thomas Stevens (December 24, 1854, Berkhamsted, Herts, England - 1935) was the first person to circle the globe by bicycle

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1887

About the author

Thomas Stevens was the first person to circle the globe by bicycle. He rode a large-wheeled Ordinary, also known as a penny-farthing, from April 1884 to December 1886 He later searched for Henry Morton Stanley in Africa, investigated the claims of Indian ascetics and became manager of the Garrick Theatre in London.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really finished with this book but I have to get off the bike, I simply cannot pedal anymore. When I started this book about Thomas Stevens and his 1880's journey around the world on his Penny Farthing bicycle, I thought it was a little over 300 pages long. This is because I had not clicked the proper edition here on GR when I marked it as Currently Reading. Turns out the page count varies from 320 to 596, depending on which edition you are reading. I finally figured out that the one I should have clicked on has 492 pages,and even now I am only a few touches over halfway through.

I missed more than two week's reading time since I set off from California with Thomas, but we eventually got ourselves into Turkey....into Angora goat country, to be exact. We had many interesting adventures along the way, and I enjoyed his writing style. Stevens is observant and witty, and I really did feel like I was pedaling along beside him, giving most of the people we passed their first view ever of a person on a bicycle. But no matter how much I wanted to get Thomas to Teheran (and the end of Volume I) I never seemed to be making progress. It is as disheartening to see that as it is to be at the bottom of a mountain with your bike and no way up except to balance it on your shoulder and start climbing. I caved.....I've saved my place, but I am abandoning Thomas to his fate for now. He will be stranded in Turkey with the goats until I find the leg power to pedal again.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

No, I haven't finished it yet. And yes, it really deserves five stars anyway. Stevens set out to circumnavigate the globe on a penny farthing bicycle in 1884. Yes, that's eighteen eighty-four to you, sonny, and you can pack away your visions of a 19th century progressive thinker with dreadlocks and spandex, because this bicycler was packing a revolver and he didn't hesitate to use it. Fortunately he didn't expend ammunition on the Mormons he encountered in Utah, some of whom were probably relatives of my close friends. My favorite aspect is Stevens' frustration at all the unpaved roads that forced him to walk rather than ride. He'd be living the dream today. If this story fascinates you, go to Youtube and search for "Joff Summerfield," who is recreating the penny farthing adventure, and journaling about it almost daily, as I write this review.

[Matt Heavner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this - the first person to ride a bike around the world! And not just any bike - a penny farthing!?!? (The single big wheel with a tiny back wheel bike.) The writing was a bit tortured so not the easiest read (it was written in 1887 - the language and some of the perspectives are dated). The book is a great bike story and a great travel story. I'm looking forward to volume II.

A few great quotes:

"At Westfield I learn that Karl Kron, the author and publisher of the American roadbook, " Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle" - not to be outdone by my exploit of floating the bicycle across the Humboldt - undertook the perilous feat of swimming the Potomac with his bicycle suspended at
his waist, and had to be fished up from the bottom with a boat-hook. Since then, however, I have seen the gentleman himself, who assures me that the whole story is a canard." (I've taken my bike on a swim across the Rio Grande. And I didn't have to get fished up from the bottom..)

"After one remains in the world long enough to find it out, he usually becomes less fastidious about the future of things in general, than when in the hopeful days of boyhood every prospect ahead was fringed with the golden expectations of a budding and inexperienced imagery; nevertheless, a thoughtful, meditative person, who realizes the necessity of drawing the line somewhere, would naturally draw it at impalation."

"Moreover, we are this morning bowling along the self-same highway that in days of yore was among the favorite promenades of a distinguished and enterprising individual known to every British juvenile as Dick Turpin - a person who won imperishable renown, and the undying affection of the small Briton of to-day, by making it unsafe along here for stage-coaches and travelers indiscreet enough to carry valuables about with them." (I really just liked this because of Dick Turpin and the Good Omens tie.)

"In such a case, would a wheelman be justified in using his revolver to defend his bicycle?" (An obvious question)

"One of the transient horsemen, a contemplative young man, the promising appearance of whose upper lip proclaims him something over twenty, announces that he likewise is on the way to Yuzgat;
and after listening attentively to my explanations of how a wheelman climbs mountains and overcomes stretches of bad road, he solemnly inquires whether a 'cycler could scurry up a mountain slope all right if some one were to follow behind and touch him up occasionally with a whip, in the
persuasive manner required in driving a horse. He then produces a rawhide "persuader," and ventures the opinion that if he followed close behind me to Yuzgat, and touched me up smartly with it whenever we came to a mountain, or a sandy road, there would be no necessity of trundling any
of the way. He then asks, with the innocent simplicity of a child, whether in case he made the experiment, I would get angry and shoot him."

"Refreshments in abundance are tendered, and the usual pantomimic explanations exchanged between us; some of the men have been honoring the joyful occasion by a liberal patronage of the flowing bowl, and are already mildly hilarious; stringed instruments are twanged by the musical
members of the great family, while several others, misinterpreting the inspiration of raki punch for terpsichorean talent are prancing wildly about the tent."

"Watching over this peaceful and gambolling flock of Armenian lambkins is a lone Circassian watchdog; he is of a stalwart, warlike appearance; and although wearing no arms - except a cavalry sword, a shorter broad-sword, a dragoon revolver, a two-foot horse-pistol, and a double-barrelled shot-gun slung at his back - the Armenians seem to feel perfectly safe under his protection."

"The cyclometer, affixed to the bicycle at Constantinople, now registers within a fraction of one thousand miles; it has been on the whole an arduous thousand miles, but those who in the foregoing pages have followed me through the strange and varied experiences of the journey will agree with me when I say that it has proved more interesting than arduous after all."

"I need not here express any blunt opinions of the different people encountered; it is enough that my observations concerning them have been jotted down as I have mingled with them and their characteristics from day to day; almost without exception, they have treated me the best they knew how" (And despite any and all adventures, that's how biking goes!)

"After telling him several times not to meddle with it, and receiving overbearing gestures in reply, I deliberately throw him backward into an irrigating ditch."

"Before reaching the garden a gang of bare-legged laborers engaged in patching up a mud wall favor me with a fusillade of stones, one of which caresses me on the ankle, and makes me limp like a Greenwich pensioner when I dismount a minute or two afterward. This is their peculiar way of complimenting a lone Ferenghi."

[Chris Sellers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the travelogue of a man riding a penny farthing bicycle around the world, starting in San Francisco in 1884 he rode across road, wagon trail, gravel path and across fields and forded rivers and upon arriving at Boston decided he might as well go the rest of the way. The entire book is a little over 1000 pages so it’s split into two, part one finishes with him having an over winter stay in Tehran. It is a diary effectively and nearly every day of his journey has an entry. The book really seems to come alive and hit its stride in Turkey. His familiarity with the U.S. and Europe makes them get a short shrift but it’s the strangeness of the middle eastern countries that really makes his words flow. A warning there are some really out of place eye-dialects and racist stereotypes in the first few pages that thankfully never appear again and in fact for a man of 1884 he has a very magnanimous view of foreign cultures. It’s a long read but his gift for words and his odd adventure was very compelling.

[Thomas Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be transparent I am related to and share the name of the author. This is a gem of literary genius. Clever nineteenth-century, real-life experiences of circumventing the world on a high wheel bike before there were decent roads. The feat is incredible, but the writing is even more so.

[Benjamin Elliott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The narrator is the quintessential 19th Century white male. (I'm pretty sure he's British, but he starts his journey in the United States). Everything about his prose feels dated and steeped in the arrogance of his time and culture. There are some interesting things contained herein, and the feat of bicycling around the world is impressive no matter what time period you are doing it in, but it's mostly lost in the slog of his writing. He is so verbose. My wife and I started this thinking it would be interesting, but have been quite disappointed; however, since we mostly listen to it in the car using the text-to-speech on my kindle, we have managed to let it wash over us to this point. With the end of the volume signalling a stopping point, it's going to take a force of will for us to pick it back up and get through the second half.

Update: my wife refused to have anything else to do with this narrator, but I did. It didn't get any better.

[Eva Seyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been slogging through this for several months now. Parts of it were interesting and the flowery language made me laugh out loud a good many times. Overall, though, it wasn't phenomenal and I'm in no gigantic hurry to do volume 2.

[Andrew Austin]

summer reading

[Deb]

Kindle Book

[Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An tale of an amazing journey across the USA over a century ago. The language is a little dated, but the story is timeless. Very inspiring.

[Clivemichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and amazing tale of pluck and courage with the usual arrogant bravado, racist and entitled attitude of the time. Too many erudite and perceptive statements to quote, occasional laugh out loud moments along with prescient sentiments and prodigious run on sentences; “ These pine forests, the pleasant greensward, and the lingering snow-banks, tell an oft repeated tale, they speak eloquently of forests preserved and the winter snow-fall thereby increased; they speak all the more eloquently because of being surrounded by barren, parched-up hills, which, under like conditions, might produce similar happy results, but which now produce nothing.”