Following Our Cycling Foremother: Spinning Fiction on Two Wheels

I have traded my Bianchi in for a Sterling and my staid work clothes for daring bloomers. The cars have been replaced by rickshaws or carriages, the baseball caps pixelate out and return as flat-topped hats and bowlers. As fellow school-parents shout out their salutations, I think I am cycling through a cheering crowd and waving my arm in gratitude. 

Annie Kopchovsky, better known by her alias, Annie Londonberry.

Since reading Chana Widawski’s Lilith post in 2013 and then consuming Peter Zheutlin’s Around the World on Two Wheels soon thereafter, I’ve come to think of Annie Kopchovsky as my spiritual ancestor—and guide. A Jewish immigrant mother of three kids (just like me!), she turned herself into “Annie Londonderry,” by setting off on a mission in 1894 to ride around the world and becoming an international sensation. She was a modern-day Nellie Bly, a show-woman, an advertising maverick, and a paragon of the American ideal of self-invention. 

As it turns out, just as Cannon Hill Park can become the rainforests of South America on my commute, it would seem a lot of Kopchovsky’s covered territory was as fictional as the nom de plume Londonberry. Sure, she hopped on her bike and set off to travel the globe, but how far did she venture? How much did she see? “Was any of it true? Almost certainly not,” wrote Zheutlin of his great-aunt’s New York World depiction of the Sino-Japanese war. 

But, I think, what does it matter? She mounted her Sterling and escaped the challenges of three young kids who no doubt kvetched about taking a bath or going to bed or eating broccoli. Granted: she took 15 months for her cycling voyage; my commute is 15 minutes. And I suppose her kids didn’t scream, “But I’m in the middle of an attack!” during an all-important game of Clash of Clans, and she didn’t have to respond, “Turn off your iPad before I smash it to pieces!”, but I suspect needing an escape from motherhood has stood the test of time. And why not escape on two wheels, spinning fictions of faraway lands and encounters with warriors and worshippers? Isn’t it easier to then return to the “real world” of unmade beds and undone homework and take it as a rest from a thrilling day?