Fun!

As I lurched down Broad Street on Friday, my Indego bike seat sliding inexorably downward, my knees at my ears, drivers behind me honking to raise the dead, and drivers in front of me deploying the one-finger salute, it occurred to me that following a bike route recommended by my own paper in 1897 might not have been the wisest choice.Still, I felt that Alphonse Estoclet, the Gilded Age Inquirer columnist who came up with the route, would have sympathized with my plight. The paper’s first bicycle columnist,  “The Inquirer Roadster,” started riding bikes at a time when people would throw tacks in the road to deter speed demons like Alphonse on their newfangled cycling machines.