[ARETE] Review of Cherry, Wheels

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find attached and below Jessica Cherry and Frank Soos,*.* eds., *Wheels
on Ice.*
Thanks
Duncan

Wheels on Ice: Stories of Cycling in Alaska.  Edited by Jessica Cherry and
Frank Soos.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022.  xvii + 273
pp.  Illustrations,
maps, list of contributors.  Paper $24.95.  ISBN 978-1-4962-3247-2.

Reviewed by Duncan R. Jamieson, Ashland University

To those of us in the “Lower 48” the title sounds like an oxymoron, and the
cover photo of someone in boots, ski pants and a fur-lined hooded parka
pushing a bicycle through deep snow looks less than appealing.  Even though
being so close to the Arctic Circle and battling cold and headwinds that
result in windchills of minus 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit in hours of
darkness, this is still better riding weather than when the summer
temperatures and sunlight turn the trails into swamps and bogs.

Rather than a dystopian novel, this is a delightful collection of
thirty-one accounts of men and women, who beginning in the 1890s braved the
frozen north’s brutal weather on bicycles to search for gold.  Though
little was found they continue awheel seeking fun and adventure.  I too
seek fun and adventure awheel, but I’m more in tune with dry paved roads
and temperatures in the plus 60s and 70s.   I have ridden in temperatures
below freezing on slushy, snow and/or ice-covered roads but not by
design.  When
I’d started out it was cold but clear and sunny, and I had to struggle home
to a hot shower because I hadn’t checked the weather forecast.

In her Preface, Jessica Cherry explains how cyclist and historian Terrence
Cole edited *Wheels on Ice: Bicycling in Alaska, 1898-1908* (Anchorage:
Alaska Northwest Pub. Co., 1985), long since out of print and virtually
unavailable.   Cole worked and cycled with Cherry, geoscientist and writer,
and Frank Soos, professor emeritus of English, University of
Alaska-Fairbanks, who follows with an Introduction exploring the origins
and development of the bicycle, including the more recent iterations of
mountain and fat bikes.  Cherry and Soos decided to expand Cole’s earlier
effort when they learned of his cancer diagnosis.  Sadly, Cole succumbed
before publication, and during the project’s final stages, Soos died in a
cycling accident, making this collection a labor of memory and love.

  While both the Preface and Introduction are informative, they lack a
metaphysical distinction between “necessity” and “desire” for the
bicycle.  Before
the bicycle’s introduction in the mid-19th century, the only options for
independent travel were limited to walking or using animals, which required
care and food.  Further, they tired over long distances and suffered from
injury and disease.  The bicycle, however, offered a mechanical alternative
that eliminated these impediments while offering faster transportation.  It
took riders where they wanted to go, accommodating their own needs and
schedules.  With the 1890s discovery of gold in the Yukon, adventurers
flocked there in the hopes of striking it rich.  For those who wanted to
participate but lacked the funds and skills to manage a dog sled, the
bicycle was a necessity, the only mechanical option.  Later, as the
automobile’s popularity spread in the early decades of the twentieth
century it offered another means of personal transportation, one that
required virtually no effort.  At this time, especially in the United
States, the bicycle lost its position as a necessity for independent
travels, but some still had the desire and preferred the satisfaction and
sense of accomplishment that came with the wheel.

Cole’s original work represents Part 1, cycling in Alaska 1898 to 1908.  Cherry
and Soos expand the scope with Part 2, which includes tales from the 1980s
and 1990s, and Part 3 covers the 21st century.  Unfortunately, there is no
mention of the interregnum, the seven decades between 1908 and the 1980s.
This is likely a time when any intrepid souls who went out on their wheels
failed to record their adventures.

For me, until I read *Wheels on Ice*, when I thought of sport and Alaska
Iditarod came to mind.  Since there are four essays focused on the Iditarod
Trail, an explanation as to its origins would have been helpful, even
though this falls in the interregnum.  In January 1925, a diphtheria
outbreak threatened the ten thousand people living in and around Nome,
Alaska.  Quarantine, which seemed not to be effective, meant a serum to
protect the inhabitants offered the only alternative to a massive disaster,
but the serum was hundreds of miles away with the weather preventing a
delivery by air.  The solution was a heroic run by relays of mushers and
dog sled teams, covering 630 miles between January 26 and February 1.  The
Great Race of Mercy, along with lead dogs Togo and Balto, became legend.  To
commemorate the event, in 1973 sled dog teams and their mushers competed in
a nearly one-thousand-mile race from Fairbanks to Nome.  That morphed into
Iditasport, a hundred-mile course for skiers to which was added a
two-hundred mile out and back race for bicyclists.  Describing the mental
and physical challenges in “Iditasport 1991” (51-53), Gail Koepf explains
why it “is a perfect event for women, an endurance event in which mental
stamina is as important as physical strength, in which small size and
lightness can be an advantage in floating those fat knobby tires over a
snowy trail” (52).  In “Iditabike 1987” (38-44), Charlie Kelly, one of the
midwives at the birth of the mountain bike, explores the camaraderie among
racers.  Two competing cyclists leading the race helped one another through
the hardships but realized “someone had to win this thing.  .  .”
(43).  Clinton
Hodges III, “The Iditarod Trail and Me” (156-167) is a cathartic piece
about his competitive spirit, the race and his acceptance of not winning:
“I left everything out in the swamps, lakes, and tundra of the interior”
(167).

Today’s riders enjoy multi-geared bicycles with improved frame geometry,
high-tech thermal clothing, GPS and cell phones.  The first purpose-built
mountain bike appeared in 1978 for off-road and trail riding.  A further
improvement, especially for those riding in Alaska, is fat bikes that will
accommodate five-inch-wide tires, improving grip and stability on snow and
ice.  Having none of these advantages in 1896, Edward Jessson went to
Alaska in search of gold.  When he saw both men and dogs worn down by the
weather, he believed the bicycle might prove a better option.  In “From
Dawson to Nome on a Bicycle” (6-23), he described his
February-March-thousand-mile ride in 1900. “The wheel stood the trip in
splendid shape and to my great surprise I never had a puncture or broke a
spoke the entire trip” (23).

More than a century later Martha Amore, MFA and Ph.D. in English and
psychology, commutes five miles one way from her home in South Turnagain to
the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Her essay, “A Winter Bike Commute”
(130-135), embodies the joy of cycling at its finest, focuses on the
morning commute, which is done in darkness most of the year, and for those
of us who dwell in warmer climes, in brutally cold weather.  When asked by
friends and colleagues why she bicycles to work regardless of the weather,
she patiently explains she rides because it lessens her impact on the
environment, it saves her money and she enjoys the exercise which is good
for her health.  “The truth, though, is that I simply love to ride.  I
always have” (133).  When I was at the University of Alabama I lived about
the same distance to campus and regularly cycled back and forth, out of
both necessity—we had only one car—and desire—I too love being so close to
the people and places I passed.  When I came to Ohio, though I live perhaps
half a mile from Ashland University, for decades I’ve ridden to campus most
days—for me extremely cold weather or snow and ice persuaded me to
drive.  Instead
of going directly I follow a route that takes me into the countryside to
give me a twelve-mile jaunt for exactly the same reasons.  A colleague in
the English department regularly rides over from Mansfield, about ten miles
distant.  Other colleagues ride in on occasion; when asked why their answer
as does mine parallels that of Amore.  This standard response has been
repeated from the earliest days of cycling.  In his 1887 *The Pleasures,
Objects, and Advantages of Cycling*, A. J. Wilson wrote “I venture to say
that there is no recreative outdoor exercise which awakens the finest
feelings in our nature to such an extent as does cycling” (60). To cite an
example from the middle third of the twentieth century, English civil
servant Bernard Newman would spend his summers bicycling through Europe and
writing of the experience.  Besides the love of traveling in the slow lane,
the sales from his books put “jam on his toast.”  Writing only for myself,
would I have done the same in Alaska?  I doubt it!  Being so far north the
cold—well below zero—and the lack of light, the reality is I’m just not
that adventuresome, but I thoroughly enjoy how Amore explains being that
close to people and the environment more than outweigh any discomfort.  While
she describes the commuters who travel by car—probably the greatest threat
to cyclists, as a woman she feels more trepidation about using an available
bike trail, a “gorgeous frozen coastline, ice covered creek, and spruce and
birch forest” (171) due to the realization that its isolation increases the
possibility of violence against women.  Amore recognizes her privilege
compared to the homeless huddled in doorways downtown.  Despite the
economic divide they exchange pleasantries while she waits for the traffic
light to change.

Alys Culhane, “The Books I Carried” (179-194) and Tom Moran, “The Magic Bus
on the Stampede” (244-251) are equally fascinating but for entirely
different reasons.  Both authors are committed cyclists engaged in multiple
outdoor adventures and both tie their work to other authors.  Culhane
recounts her June solo six-hundred-mile journey from Fairbanks to Valdez.  To
carry her essentials—clothing, tools, and food she towed a small trailer;
on her bike she carried her “non-essentials”—her journal and a copy of Tim
O’Brien’s *The Things They Carried*, his memoir of his combat tour in
Vietnam.  With a companion Moran rode thirty-eight miles of the Stampede
Trail in Denali National Park to “the closest thing the Last Frontier has
to a pilgrimage site” (244).  He had read Jon Krakauer’s *Into the Wild*,
the story of Chris McCandless’s ill-fated journey from the Lower 48 to
Alaska.  Viewing himself as an adventurer, McCandless hitchhiked to Alaska
in April 1992.  Planning to live off the land he set up camp in Fairbanks
Bus #142, which had earlier been towed to the location for use as a
dormitory for a construction team and then simply abandoned there.  Unprepared
and inexperienced, McCandless died there in August, likely from starvation.
In September a hunter found his emaciated body.  I’ve read both O’Brien,
using it as a supplement in my American history survey, and Krakauer, both
books of adventure and tragedy.  Culhane and Moran used them to good
effect, blending Alaskan bicycling with two other adventure stories.

*Wheels on Ice* clearly ends on a high note with Judge Earl Peterson’s
“Tell ‘Em About It” (251-264), low-key humor at its best.  He has a cycling
companion living in the Deep South, and they get together periodically at a
mutually agreed upon destination for some riding, this time in the Colorado
Rockies.  At the end of a day’s ride, they joined several others at a
brewery adjacent to a bicycle parking lot for some R and R and “to swap
lies and ribald tales of glory” (251).  The only Alaskan among the group of
psyclists (psycho cyclists) whom all could choose more paved roads within
fifty miles of their homes than the total of paved roads in Alaska, he was
in his glory playing “can you top this.”  While the other riders had
stories of dogs, deer and cool weather rides, the judge’s ripostes included
fat bikes with studded tires, handlebar pogies, moose, grizzly bears, deep
snow and temperatures well below minus 40 degrees below zero.  “Rest
assured, bicycling is alive and well in America’s trans-Arctic playground,
and to survive it all year round, Alaskan psyclists are tougher for it”
(262).

Duncan R. Jamieson
              Ashland University


Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. Dd
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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