Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/454

 bicycle obstacle race is frequently run on; while an artificial obstruction in great request is a wooden flight of stairs up over and down which the competitor must carry his machine, unless he be foolhardy enough to try to ride over, as has been more than disastrously attempted. The attempt has not always been a voluntary one, for the stair-flight is a magnificent trap for the hasty young man who rides at his best pace and can't always pull up at the right moment. So is the cluster of chairs, barrels, and benches wherewith the committee ofttimes make his career a grief and weariness unto him. For it is necessary to select an advantageous opening among those chairs and sundries, and then to dodge gingerly between them. Now, it is commonly found that the widest-looking opening leads into the most impossible "no thoroughfare," the biggest and hardest pieces of furniture, the most grievous spills; so that not always he who is first among the chairs is first out of them, and he who tackles them with the boldest rush is likely to sprawl among them with the most bruises.

The diresome tarpaulin, too, is spread in the path of the unhappy rider, with just such greater awkwardness to him than to the pedestrian, as may be calculated from the encumbrance of his bicycle. Often the place of the tarpaulin, however, is taken by a series of scaffold poles, fixed across the course at about two feet from the ground, under which the sufferer must crawl