wherever night overtakes them, the more healthful the sport and the
more novel and independent the tour. You should know how to carry the
necessary baggage on your wheel. It is customary in ordinary wheeling
to strip a machine of every ounce of weight not necessary. Many riders
travel without even a tool bag, pump or wrench. The additional weight
of a few tools cannot be sufficient to make much difference to a
rider.

If you are a "scorcher" and are out to pass everything you meet, the
less weight you carry the better time you can make. But the wheel is
used by most boys for other purposes.

The pathway of the biker is not always straight and smooth, as every
boy who has ridden a wheel knows. The collision can always be avoided
by good eyes and reasonable speed, but no eyes are keen enough to
note, and no skill alert enough to avoid the broken glass, or the bits
of scrap iron that beset the path and puncture the tire.

REPAIRS

A friend assures me that he has mended a punctured tire with chewing
gum. Now I do not think well of the chewing gum habit, but if the
stuff can be found to have better uses, I am not the one to discourage
it. So it might be well to carry a supply to fill punctured tires.
This is said to be the way to use it. Let all the air out of the tire,
then with a flat piece of wood force the gum into the hole--of course
the gum must be "chewed" first to make it soft. Plaster some over the
hole, then bind the place with a strip of rag on your handkerchief.
This done, pump in the air and ride with care.