PULL OVER, DA VINCI, THERE GOES TUROWSKI!

Some of the following was culled from “Bicyclopedia,” a compendium of two-wheeling facts and folklore, and what I now believe to be the funniest reference book since the Congressional Record.

Bicycles.

The world’s first bicycle was my Schwinn Cruiser, and not the prototype sketched in 1493 by Leonardo Da Vinci. Because his model lacked a chrome fork, steel handlebars, balloon whitewall tires, rubber block pedals, two-tone paint, Phantom grips with multi-colored tassels, fender and rack mounts, and a 3-spring padded saddle, it doesn’t qualify.

And, frankly, I don’t see the genius in inventing something 300 years before the technology needed to build it existed. Am I a genius because I once had a great idea for preventing the fractured hips suffered when navigating New Hampshire's icy winters?

The first "human airbag." Here, an encircling, waist-mounted inflatable doughnut would be barometrically pressure-activated in milliseconds when its wearer stumbled and fell. He could then be rolled, unhurt, back into a warm house, where he should've stayed in the first place. Genius?

(I now learn that some guy in China came up with this last year, and actually made one. No offense, but I first had the idea in 1964 after falling off my bicycle. More on that shortly.).

As for official pedal power, in 1861 Pierre Lallement invented the first two-wheeler known as a "bicycle." It had tandem but mismatched wheels, pedals on the front, and was dubbed the “Boneshaker.” My Schwinn Cruiser was later reworked as same, when I spent a summer riding on the rims after “Double-Flatting” the tires.

Another early 19th Century version was the “Swiftwalker.” It was “propelled by a rider striding along the road while straddling the frame.” About this time, the first grievous bicycle-related groin injury was also recorded.

Injuries. Any abrasion from a bicycle fall is known as “Road Rash.” Small patches of this are “Cherries.” Road rash inflicted on an upper extremity is “Pizza Elbow.”

From childhood, I recall once attempting to rest my feet on the front hub while trying to outrace my buddy down a steep hill. I was a “Scorcher,” AKA a “Hammerhead,” (fast, reckless rider) and my fellow idiot was the “Wheelsucker,” a derogatory form of a “Tail-End Charlie,” (last rider in an event).

The toes of my hightoppers caught in the spokes and my feet whipped around until they met the front fork. The resulting radical air & ground braking then combined with the elements demonstrated in bicycle wheelies known as “Coasters, Floaters, and Marathons,” and produced not only bilateral Pizza Elbows and multiple Cherries, but an all-over Road Rash of my own inventions: “Chili Chin, Fettuccini Forehead, and Hamburger Buttocks.”

High Speed, indeed. On July 20th, 1985, John Howard became the first human ever to exceed 150 mph when he reached 152.284 mph on an obviously highly-modified bicycle. It had “a 376-inch gear, a 58-degree head angle, motorcycle wheels, hydraulic forks, and first had to be towed to 60 mph. He rode behind a 600-horsepower car with a large tail section, and had to work with a psychologist beforehand to overcome his fear of the high speed.”

It’s not known how long he had to stick his tongue out, or how many packs of playing cards and clothespins on the spokes it took to produce the VROOM sound one needs for such impetus.

Bicyclopedia also neglects to mention the unofficial record of 3,421.603 mph set in June of 1964 on Watson Hill in Gilford, New Hampshire, when your host, still seated on the 3-spring padded saddle atop his Schwinn Cruiser, went flying butt over bandbox and bounce-flew into a roadside briar patch.

As we begin the dog days of summer, there are “Bicycle Games,” you might consider just for fun. Trust me; people are really out there doing these:

DERBY: This informal event began in California in the 1970’s (didn’t everything?). There are no rules, but a common course of play is everyone riding fast in a figure-eight formation. The “Hot-Box” is where the traffic crosses. Riders then “attempt to knock each other over by pushing, pulling, ramming, etc.” A downed rider "can be attacked or ridden over, and the game goes on until everyone decides to do something else.”

This game is usually played on mountain bikes by people without helmets. Enough said.

BALACLAVA MELEE: Male participants wearing fencing masks adorned with feather plumes ride around and attempt to whack off their opponents’ feathers with canes. This was stolen and modified from the British version (wasn't everything?) where it was once staged by men on horseback in Victorian England to entertain the Queen.

Winner, then and now? The last feathered man, or the last one with a recognizable face.

And, lastly, the two-wheeled event that seems to make the most sense:

BICYCLE TOSSING: I don’t know where I’ve been all my life, to have missed this. Even a cursory look through the search engines reveals that folks all over the country do this every summer at “sanctioned” bicycle gatherings.

A bicycle is “grasped by the rear wheel, whirled around, then let loose to fly as far as it will go.” In Bicycle Tossing, points are awarded for “distance, speed, originality, style, and the most parts coming off the bike.”

At an event held every year just up the road from here, someone once used a “spring-loaded catapult that tossed a bike 60 feet.”

Big deal. I'm sure I exceeded that record in the Summer of '64, when -- bruised, bloody and half-skinned alive -- I pulled myself from the briars, retrieved my double-flatted Cruiser and launched it into space.

If all this has you reeling and retreating to the safety of your couch, don't get too comfortable, and don't forget Marek Turowski, a 38-year old gardener. Last month, in England, he broke the Fastest Furniture Land Speed Record by racing his motorized sofa to 92 miles per hour.

I'll bet even Da Vinci didn't see that one coming.

Copyright 2007 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.