Cycling.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 137, 11 June 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

Cycling.

[By Dagonet.] It is said that there is likely to be a dearth of rubber, owing- to a decline in the year?a rubber crop. Tho price of crude rubber has advanced during the past cix mouths nearly 30 per cent., chiefly because only about one-half the usual amount of raw material has been imported this season. Wind-burned faces are the result of many a woman's cycling against strong winds. A mixture of equal parts of olive oil and vaseliuu proves a healiug remedy for the skin when burned in this way. Soft linen cloths dipped in water iv which baking soda has boen dissolved and laid upon cheeks and foreheads will give prompt relief. To keep a cycle well oiled is to add to its life and keep it in good running order. Of course, you can over-lubricato, but it is a rouoh better fault than not oiling enough. When too much oil is put in it runs out, and may possibly soil tho clothes ; but when too little is used the bearings will not run freoly, and very often rust when the machine is left in a damp place. The oil, after being in the bearings for a time, thickens and ologs, and requires to be removed by a solvent, which is found in paraffin, which should be freoly injeoted, and the bearings ruu rapidly, fresh paraffin being put in and the thickened mixture wiped away as it runs out. The machine should then be ridden or put by for an hour or two, and then carefully re-oiled. An occasional wash-out in this way will make a vast difference in tho running of a machine. The advantages of placing the saddle too far back do not compensate for the disadvantages thereof. Fatigue of the arms, | hands, hips, and loins, with difficult breathing, owing to the compressed chest and fatigue of the joints from exoessive bending, will result ; while for the machine, overloading the driving wheel will cause increased friction and resistance. All this will result in difficult steering, due to lessening the weight on tho front and increasing the probability of side-slips on wet roads. Of tho many hurts done to a maohine by a i.U the most common is the bending of one of the cranks, jfever ride a machine the cranks of which are not perfectly true. Withdraw the cotter-pin, carefully putting that and its uut where they will be found, and take the crank from the spindle. Now, select a flat surface of wall, or road, or gate-post, and, first laying a piece of thick rag on the improvised bench to save the plating of the injured' member, lay the crank on this bench with the convex surface upwards. A few smart taps with a rag-covered wrench or large ( stone should be enough to straighten the crank, and it may be again put into position. But before mounting the machine make certain that the crank turns ' truly ' on its spindle. 'Do thyself no harm,' sounds the keynote of tbe wise adjustment "of cycling to every individual requirement. That • one man's meat is another's poison' is only true ho far as they bavo become different in constitution. A ride that may be like the weight of a feather on a man when in the pink of condition, and such as is only attained by weeks and months of careful and graduated practice, would be like a mountain in a nightmare upon the same man if he made Mich a ride his opening run of the season. Thus, if cycling were practised with the same moderation as walking it would be no more hurtful than the latter, even to the victims of heart trouble. Four or five miles an hour could be done by a delicate person with less fatigue than one mile could be covered afoot, and the greater exhilaration of the riding would make it more beneficial. Cycling is pleasure, while walking is drudgery ; but just as walking when it merges into foot racing would be hiirmful to an invalid, so would cycling when it becomes • scorching.'