If the increase continues, the time is not very distant when not to own and ride a bicycle will be a confession that one is not able-bodied, is exceptionally awkward, or is hopelessly belated.

-New York Times, July 13, 1895

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The bicycle ranks among those gifts of science to man, by which he is enabled to supplement his own puny powers with the exhaustic forces around him. He sits in the saddle, and all nature is but a four-footed beast to do his bidding.

Why should he go a foot, while he can ride a mustang of steel, who knows his rider and never needs a lasso?…

The exhilaration of bicycling must be felt to be appreciated. With the wind singing in your ears, and the mind as well as body in a higher plane, there is an ecstasy of triumph over inertia, gravitation, and the other lazy ties that bind us.

You are traveling! Not being traveled.

-San Francisco Chronicle, January 25, 1879

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A well-known riding teacher says that most of his women pupils take their first lessons in skirts on a woman’s wheel. They go out on the road this way from three to ten times. They then come back to him in bloomers, learn to mount and dismount from a man’s wheel, which is a great deal harder than the other way, and never again can be induced to ride a woman’s wheel.

Girls who ride for pleasure like to ride with men, of course, and the only way to do it is to keep the pace they set. It cannot be done in skirts on a woman’s wheel, and a man, even a polite escort, cannot be expected to ride slow forever, and so it happens that men’s wheels grow more popular with women every day, and after awhile when people stop talking about it and the small boys stop hooting it will all be very charming and agreeable.

-San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 1895

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When you have attained a proficiency which enables you to take out your handkerchief, wipe your nose and replace the mouchoir in your pocket without slackening your pace, you have fairly graduated…

For fun there is nothing like cycling, and before many years two or three family wheels will be as much a part of the ménage as the modern range and sewing machine are now.

-San Francisco Chronicle, 1896

(Quotes and photo via SF Streets Blog)

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