The place There’s A Wheel, There’s A Means. The place There Are 2, Issues Can Get Bizarre : NPR

A rider cares for his elbow and pride after a fall. Cycling was rough in the beginning – but this gentleman was lucky. He could have been at the Tour de France, where competitors broke their bikes on broken glass thrown by loud fans. Library of Congress hide caption

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A rider cares for his elbow and pride after a fall. Cycling was rough in the beginning – but this gentleman was lucky. He could have been at the Tour de France, where competitors broke their bikes on broken glass thrown by loud fans.

Library of Congress

This week the Tour de France riders spent three strenuous days in the Pyrenees. Once again you have made the curious decision not to just get off your bike and get on the bus like sensible people.

Anyway, the Alps are yet to come, and there is still a lot to pedal before they sprint to Paris on July 26th.

So while fans are waiting for the triumphant return home, there’s no better time to turn to know-it-all journalist AJ Jacobs. He takes NPR’s Scott Simon on his own tour and talks about fun facts with a little bit of cycling knowledge.

Interview highlights

In the scandalous first Tour de France in 1903 and the dangerous second

The 1903 winner was a former chimney sweep named Maurice Garin. And during the race, Garin is said to have crashed a rival’s bike. And then Garin got off his own bike and stomped on the poor guy’s back wheel until it was destroyed. So not quite as subtle as Lance Armstrong. …

The next year was worse. The fans were hooligans, and they threw broken glass and nails on the street to hand out tires they didn’t like. The leader of the race was actually attacked by four masked men. There was riots, broken fingers, gunfire in the air, racing drivers secretly taking trains. …

I’m sure it was very entertaining not to get shot.

With the early bike models that were a little less comfortable

The first bicycles in the 1860s were called boneshakers. So they had an iron frame, iron tires. They weighed over 40 pounds. And you rode her over cobblestones. So it wasn’t for the faint of heart or, as they said at the time, for the faint of heart.

On the role of the bicycle in the women’s movement

Cycling was actually a big part of the women’s movement. And Susan B. Anthony said that cycling has done more to empower women than anything else in the world because it gives them freedom of movement. And it helped them get rid of those huge, flowing dresses.

But there were men who thought it was a serious threat to women’s sexual purity. And so they designed the so-called “hygienic saddle”, an uncomfortable seat that would keep women really chaste. So we can thank these guys for saving western civilization.

About Annie Londonderry, one of the first female cycling superstars

She was a Jewish mother of three from Boston. And in 1894, based on a bet, she decided to ride a bike around the world in 15 months. And she went with a pearl-handled revolver, a change of underwear.

She did it. She was thrown in the Korean prison [but] she did it. There is a wonderful book about it called Around the World on Two Wheels.

She also became a big focal point for women’s rights because she ended up wearing men’s clothes. Apparently a bystander saw her in pants and ran away screaming.