Touring with Raymond Spears 
Bicycles, Motorcycles and Shoe Leather—a Discussion of the Possibilities 
and Drawbacks of Each Method of 

HAVE heard many 
say “I’d like to go 
touring.” <A _ bicycle 
with a luggage car- 
rier would give one 
an astonishing ra- 
y dius. I used to go 
; into the woods on 
logging roads on my 
bicycle, carrying a 
rifle strapped along 
We had for public high- 



the frame. 
ways no such roads as now prevail. 
The road from New York City to Chey- 
enne, Wyoming, is hardly more difficult 
now than the trail used to be from 
New York to Buffalo. 
greater, that is all. 
I pedaled day after day from sixty 
to ninety miles over the rough country 
roads of 1898, carrying a light out- 
fit. Consider that the automobile on 
rough country roads should not be 
driven more than a hundred miles a 
day, and we have the fact that a bicycle 
is one of the most efficient vehicles ever 
invented. If one could find a bicycle 
made like those of 1898—carefully 
machined, with honest materials, cap- 
able of running light—he would prob- 
ably make the transcontinental trip as 
easily now as the same distance any- 
where in New York state in 1898. The 
difficulty is to find a bicycle as well 
built as the old safeties were. 
Motorcycles are costly, compared to 
flivvers, on first purchase. They make, 
however, fifty or sixty miles a gallon, 
and they have a charm for youngsters 
that is unrivaled. Even for a man they 
have a fascination. A rough-road rider 
can make wonderful journeys on one. 
I would say, off hand, that it is pref- 
erable to go in a flivver than on a 
motorcycle. The attractiveness of 
motorcycle touring, however, is not to 
be denied, and with a tent, nesting cook- 
ing outfit and time I suggest a bicycle 
or a motorcycle to the youngster who 
enjoys roughing it. 
The distance is 
SIDE-CAR on a motorcycle makes 
a hybrid automobile of it. The true 
skill of motorcycling is to go single- 
tracking on it. I have been in the woods, 
in the Dakota Bad Lands, and some 
thousands of miles on such a machine 
with three speed gears. The possi- 
bilities are immeasurable. 
Literally, I rode a jackrabbit run- 
way up a butte in western South Da- 
kota perhaps two hundred feet above 
538 
the prairie level. I went into the Bad 
Lands, and crossed Grand Ford, when 
I had to uncouple the exhaust at the 
top, because the cut-out and muffler 
both were submerged. I wrapped the 
magneto in rubber, so water and mud 
wouldn’t short-circuit it. I shot rab- 
bits from the saddle with a .22 single 
shot pistol. 
Motorcycle and bicycle skill is much 
the same. One rides in balance. The 
difference is of course in the fact that 
in one the power is furnished by an 
engine, and one drives himself with the 
other. For a boy, a youngster, a bicycle 
tour of a thousand or so miles would 
do wonders, a month or two of educa- 
tion that would be cheap at far more 
than the cost of the trip. 
A bicycle tour may not cost more 
ethan a dollar a day, camping out. The 
distance per day would be, perhaps, 
from fifty to seventy miles a day, aver- 
age. On the splendid roads east of 
the Mississippi, and north of the Ohio- 
Potomac, a bicycle circuit of two thou- 
sand miles should not cost more than 
$50, barring accidents. 
UCH touring is perhaps as expensive 
as automobile travel with four or 
five in a car—two cents a mile, say. 
But a motorcycle trip, aside from the 
cost of the machine, may be made for 
about the same price, riding single. 
Riding double—difficult with an outfit 
—it would be even less per mile. 
Of all touring, probably cycle car 
travel is cheaper. A machine giving 
forty miles a gallon, and with low tire 
repairs and upkeep, one could go on 
indefinitely at two cents a mile, pos- 
sibly less, or for $2.00 or less a day. 
Gasoline travel is cheaper than on 
shoe-leather. If one walks, it costs five 
cents a mile though one walks twenty 
or so miles a day. The pedestrians who 
sally forth to walk to San Francisco 
are mostly ignorant of the cost of self- 
maintenance for 3,000 or 4,000 miles at 
twenty miles a day, or else they assume 
that owners of cars will give them a 
ride. 
HOSE who give roll grafters a ride 
do so at their own risk and peril. 
More and more criminals figure that 
they can catch an automobile driver off 
his guard, rob him of his money, take 
his car, and make their escape. The 
result is a driver must be careful about 
picking up casual walkers beside the 
Travel 
highway. The impudence and ingrati- 
tude of some of the strollers is unim- 
aginable unless one has been a victim. 
The beggar of the highway is not al- 
ways dangerous, but he—and even she 
-—may be desperately dangerous to 
those who in their kind-heartedness 
load up their cars with some way-far- 
ing stranger. 
ALKING has, however, a fascina- 
tion of its own. The genuine 
pedestrian learns the highway as no one 
going faster can learn it. The trip 
that I recall most vividly, in its de 
tails was a “straightaway” stroll of a 
thousand miles to the mountains of 
southwestern Virginia. Such a walk 
through the byways and across lots, 
with the intimacies of wood-patch 
camps, and stream side meals away 
from the very paths—on a compass 
course—gives one view-points and ex- 
periences that a boy, especially, should 
know. 
Walking at times is deadly monot- 
onous. It may be a hundred miles 
across some uninteresting region, 
through colorless farms and bare roll- 
ing land. The streams have no fish- 
ing, the woodlots no game, and the out- 
look from the heights is ever the same. 
There may be no heights, as across 
parts of Ohio, Illinois or Indiana. 
And yet the tramper will recall inci- 
dents in such stretches, scenes and even 
monotonies as an experience, even an 
adventure. 
HE problem is to keep one’s load 
down. I carried from 57 to 60 
pounds hundreds of miles. On hunting 
trips, a pack not infrequently goes to 
nearly 100 pounds. But I should say — 
that even a stout youth had better keep 
his pack under 40 pounds. This is 
perfectly feasible, when the : 
camera weighs only a pound, 
the tent only three or four 
pounds, the blanket five, and 
the waterproof tarpaulin, or 
canvas spread, only two to 
five pounds (small size, of 
course). 









We can purchase, now, an 
outfit only half as heavy, but 
twice as efficient as those 
(Continued on page 569) 
