Dear Charles,
...
Tonight I attended a meeting to organize a wheel club. Dr. Churchill elected president, lawyer Barnes vice-president. Today a strange thing happened to me while I was downtown. I stepped into the Cycle Co's store and saw Turner from Townsend there. He is a wheelman and came over today to see his wife off for Boston. We got to talking wheel and in the course of the conversation I turned to Bullock, manager of the Cycle store, and said, "keep your eye out for a man who wants to go to Chicago awheel. That's a trip I want to take." He turned to Turner and said, "That's your man now." Turner had just been talking the same thing to him.
I had not really been seriously thinking of it, but Turner and I began comparing notes. He wants to start three weeks earlier than I could probably go, but he says he'll wait. He is thoroughly in earnest and says he will go through to Boston, or bust. We didn't have much time to talk but I will see him in two weeks when I go over to Townsend to take the civil service exam. I think we shall be able to make a go of it. Probably he will want to do less sightseeing than I, but we can likely get together on some compromises. He wants to make it through in 40 days. I have already written the Cleveland Wheel people to see if I can make some little deal with them. I shall also write the Cleveland Leader to see if I can place three or four Sunday articles with them and I think I can get a dollar or two out of the P.I. I want you to see Hamp Secheverell next time he is in Jefferson and post him on me for I shall refer to him in my letter to the Leader. I think Secheverell will remember me; I met him in Remcik's office last summer.
I haven't had time to fully digest the full meaning and results of such a trip, but there are still two months to do it in. I wish to take in the Yellowstone route, and a Kodak ought to be part of the little baggage to carry.
Perhaps it would be well to say nothing about it in the East, especially to Father and Mother until the trip is assured. Let me know what you think of it. I have known Turner for seven years, fine fellow, weighs 135 lbs, has good wind and would make an excellent comrade. Would not the trip be worth two months of a man's life, even if it cost as much as a railroad trip? The hardest part would be through the mountains.
Turner is going to do some corresponding with wheelmen along the line of the N.P. to find out the state of the roadway, and I shall do ditto with the G.N.
...
Will
Copyright (c) 1996 by Dennis Bell. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.