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The Man with Rubber Pedals
 

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

8/31/21 1:12 AM

The Man with Rubber Pedals

It seems not much has changed in the past 125 years. This was first published in the October 17, 1896 issue of the Australian magazine "The Bulletin".

p.s. My guess is that the letters "N.T.S." that appear in the fifth verse mean Not Too Slow:

The Man With Rubber Pedals

by Montague Grover

It has all the latest fixings — barrel hubs and narrow tread;
It weighs twenty pounds or under, is as rigid as the dead;
It’s the very newest pattern, and the very latest grade,
And it cost you all the cash that in the last three months you made.
You lead it from the agent’s, and your bosom swells with pride
As you lift it from the kerbstone and you start its maiden ride...
Like the lightning past the tram-cars, cabs, and everything you’ve sped,
When you see a man with rubber pedals plugging on ahead.

He is forty years of age, and on an antiquated crock,
Sitting upright as a soldier and as bandy as a jock;
He is wobbly, he is shifty, and he scarce knows how to ride;
His gear is less than fifty, and his handle-bars are wide.
From crank to crank his tread is eighteen inches, and his frame
Is a pattern that was popular when first the safety came;
And as you gain upon him you are thinking, “I must show
How a good man on a jigger that is up to date can go.”

You fold your arms and pass him in an attitude of grace,
When the beatific smile upon his open whiskered face
Makes your conscience somehow smite you as across his track you whiz
Lest you show him p’raps too cruelly what an utter mug he is;
And when you think that he’s about a hundred yards behind
That man with rubber pedals goes completely from your mind,
Till a darkness at your elbow and a rattling on your ear
Shows the man with rubber pedals still is battling in the rear.

Then you think with some resentment, "This is not as it should be;
This man with rubber pedals taking all his pace from me;
Such presumption is opposed to all the canons of the game,
And if I show him up he’s only got himself to blame.”
So you drop your arms and lightly touch the neatly-nickeled head
With some ankling calculated just to kill that fellow dead,
But after half-a-mile you are astounded still to feel
That man with rubber pedals hanging calmly on your wheel.

You argue out the question and you’re bustled to confess
That the man is what is technically known as N.T.S.
Still for such as he to push you is a thing you can’t allow—
He has asked for pace, and, Holy Moses, won’t he get it now?
You drop your head twelve inches, grip your handles tight and lift,
And as your calves and biceps swell, by Jingo, don’t you shift!
Then you reckon that you’ve left him and it’s nearly time to slack
When you hear the cursed rattle of his mud-guards at your back.

He can hold his own at sprinting—that is proved beyond a doubt,
So the only way to beat him is to simply wear him out.
You set a nice two-forty beat, and to yourself you hiss:
"That man with rubber pedals can’t stand many miles of this."
Then the townships travel past you and the mile stones rise ahead
Till your thighs are working stiffly and you’re feeling pretty dead;
Still you force your ped’ling even and your handlebars you clinch,
But that man with rubber pedals hasn’t shifted—not an inch.

At last, in view of “business” and the “fast approaching night,”
You decide ’tis best for you to take the turning to the right;
And as you swing around he passes upright as the just,
With that beatific smile of his still glowing through the dust.
Are you riding to Sans Souci? He’ll be there to “do you bad.”
He is on St Kilda Road; and on each Western camel pad.
Be you cycling in the country, be you cycling in the town,
That man with rubber pedals will be there to take you down.

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Andy M-S
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 3377
Location: Hamden (greater New Haven) CT

8/31/21 9:52 AM

Perhaps the inspiration behind this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayTJtVzHOLs&ab_channel=lrh1966

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

8/31/21 3:27 PM

Nice

Love it. Content is entirely different, bit in a way it reminds me of one of my favorite poems, from early childhood through the present, written around the same time, “Casey at the Bat”:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45398/casey-at-the-bat

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