Behind the Scenes Minis: Bicycles and Miracles

Tracy and Holly discuss the difficulty of remembering what topics have and haven’t been covered on the show. They also talk about group dynamics during arduous travel, and the miracle of the Hume and Hovell team’s survival.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy
Vie Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. This week on the show,
we talked about Kiddy Knocks. Uh. This is the last
episode that we are recording in the calendar year two,

(00:24):
even though it's not coming out until and I feel
like we even though we did not have the kind
of absolute marathon year in recording sessions that we often
have at the end of the year, I still feel
like I just struggled to say words. We are both
punchy today. I think that's a fair statement. So when

(00:45):
I started researching this topic, I was like, Okay, I
think we're gonna need to talk like some context about
why why there was this bicycle craze at the end
of the nineteenth century. And as I was taking all
of my notes about bicycles and how they did eloped,
I was like, I swear we have done this exact

(01:06):
episode before, and the only things that I could think
of her we really talked a lot about cycling were
Annie Londonderry and Frank Lentz, and I looked at both
of those outlines and while they did have like well
snippets of things that it was not like a full
on overview of the history of bicycles. And so then

(01:29):
I just questioned, like, what how did I get in
my head that all these particular points that it doesn't
seem like we talked about where things we talked about,
because that's what happens when you do a thousand episodes.
You just can't. I don't remember episodes I have done.

(01:51):
Yep I I just did a big some some housekeeping
of our our old outline that I keep file of
all of them because sometimes they come in handy later.
And there were a couple of things that I was like,
I don't I don't remember this thing that I researched
and wrote myself all the time. It's just too it's

(02:17):
too much. My brain is tiny. Yeah, I did have
to laugh because I can't help but invoked Deadwood yet
again in a behind the scenes because there's an episode
did you watch Edwood? Oh so good? But there's an
episode where Seth Bullock, so Timothy Elephants character his son,

(02:40):
it's really his brother's son, but he has taken him
as his son has an unfortunate ride on a bone shaker,
and there's it's like this fun, exciting thing that happens
and then it's very bad suddenly. Um. But that's what
I thought of when we talked about the early bicycles. Yeah,
they were apparently very not fun to ride on and
at all, but we didn't talk about the addition of

(03:03):
like some kind of springs or other suspensions to bicycles,
another thing that made them smoother, but that also helped
a lot. For some reason, I had never quite grasped
why Penny Farthings were designed the way that they were,
and then I was like, oh, that totally makes sense. Um.
And when I was talking to Patrick about what I

(03:24):
was researching, he was like, are you going to talk
about why those bikes had that really big, weird front
wheel on them because they looked so silly, And I
was like, in fact, we are, and I'm glad I'm
not the only person who had never really thought through
why they would have been built that way. I feel
like my dad, who is very mechanically minded, gave me

(03:45):
a long discussion about it once when I was a
kid because I had said something offhanded about maybe said
the bicycle so weird. He was like, well, the real
differential and then yeah, yeah, but did again. I can't
remember an episode that I wrote in the last year
or so, most of that fell out. Yeah, uh, this

(04:05):
was an episode that I actually So occasionally we will
be asked to come up with some ideas for an
episode that we might do that would then be sponsored,
and like the episode is in our control, the topic
we choose like in our control, but like it's would
then be sponsored once it's actually live. Um. And so

(04:28):
the themes that we were working around was basically about, uh,
the outdoors and having the outdoors be more accessible to everyone.
And that was where I first found the name Kitty Knocks,
as I was trying to come up with topics that
had something to do with that, and then that ideal
never happened, and so I've just had I've just sort

(04:51):
of had her name kind of on a back burner
for a really long time, UM, wondering if I would
be able to have enough information to do it, because
she did diet at an early early age, and we
do know so little specifically about her beyond what was
reported on her her cycling and her great outfits that
she made herself, UM, which are very fetching in my opinion. Um,

(05:14):
so I'm glad that even though that that sponsorship did
not happen, that we did do the brainstorming for it.
There are I mean, it's no secord that I love
clothing from this era. And I don't know if I've
ever told you that cycling outfits are like my favorite. Yeah,

(05:34):
I love them heaps. Um. They're so cute and they
just look so adorable, and I love the functionality of
them that still retains the style of the era. Um,
They're so great. This made me wish that I lived
in a more um bicycle friendly neighborhood. Yeah. My, the
city where I live has made some steps recently to

(05:57):
have some more bicycle infrastructure. Getting to it from my
house though, is just like first go down a notoriously
dangerous road where a lot of people have gotten killed. Um,
and I'm like, no thanks. Plus Also, Patrick was was
He's fine, everything's fine. But but when Patrick was a child,

(06:19):
he was hit while he was carefully crossing the street
walking his bike across it. And so like riding bikes
on public streets is just a hard not for him, Yeah,
And like causing my spouse terror so hard no for me? Um,

(06:42):
We've got some like pretty great, longer distance dedicated bike
paths that are in the works. Um. Some of them
are like and then I could bike to the ocean.
That would be great. Um. So as things develop and
like there's some more dedicated a protective, protected way to
get from one or to the other, I'm sure at

(07:03):
some point it will be like time for a bike,
got a ride on the bike path? Yeah. The hard
part for my lazy but donc is that I want
to be able to take my bike. I don't own
a bike to take my theoretical bike out of the
garage and get on it and bicycle away. I don't
want to put the bike on a bike rack on
a car, drive someplace out else, take it off the thing,

(07:26):
even though I know lots of people in Atlanta and
the surrounding area do that all the time and it's
probably not that big a hardship, but my brain is like, Nope,
tell me when there's a path that starts right outside
my door. I'm very fond of not getting in the
car to do a lot of stuff. Um, And so

(07:47):
I like, if I were going to go on a
very long bike ride, I can sort of imagine a
scenario where there might be a like load the bike
onto a car, but it would be my vast preference
to not have a car be involved in the whole thing,
which is also why I am in favor of our
public transit that has been having some struggles lately. Hopefully

(08:12):
we'll get better. Yeah, uh yeah, I'm still a car person.
I love my car. I like road trips, which is
part of that. Well, and if I do have, like
like when I go to visit my parents, there's gonna
be a car to get from the airport to their house,
Like that's the option, um, and I do not mind

(08:34):
like the highway drive and then the back country road
drive to get to their house. Um. There are a
whole lot of streets in the Boston metro area that
are just a nightmare to drive on, though, and they
make me very anxious, and I need to do it
for some reason, um, which overwhelmingly is like I can't

(08:57):
walk there, and if I were to try to get
there on transit, it would be uh an hour and
a half for something that would take twenty minutes in
the car, and also uh like not really safer reasonable
ways to get there by the theoretical bike that I
don't have, especially now that it gets dark at four pm,

(09:19):
which is what happens in Massachusetts in the winter. Do
so anyway, bikes? Yeah, Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad that
Kitty Knocks has gotten some more local recognition. Um does.
I don't think it rivals the national reach that her
name had in the end of the nineteenth century when

(09:41):
she was just sort of a regular figure in a
lot of bike publications, but um, she's the name that's
come up more locally more recently. Uh We the Human

(10:02):
Hovel expedition this week, which tickled my fancy because it
I came across it as someone mentioning it in a
group of explorers who were um ill tempered. And it's
interesting to see how both of these men have been
characterized over the years. Like for a long time, if

(10:24):
you read earlier accounts, they tend to favor um Hovel,
I think because he was older and like a more
established dude. And then over the years the tides have
kind of turned, and now Hume is really the one
that most people recognize as being the leader of the
whole thing and and really the person whose knowledge their

(10:45):
success hinged on. Although I also think most of them
acknowledged that he definitely had an ego and like their
two personalities were not great together obviously. Yeah, it's sort
of Um. I kept thinking about our episodes on Shackleton, uh,
and how this didn't necessarily work out all the time,

(11:07):
but sometimes he was making decisions based on can these
men get along? Yeah? Um, and if like if you
thought somebody was going to cause a big problem, whether
the problem was going to be, like if I leave
this person here on the unattended they're going to cause
a problem, versus like, is this group together going to
be a problem, like trying to make sure. Yeah, the

(11:31):
group dynamics of something like that are important. Right, you
are alone with these seven other people in this case
where you have to depend on each other and you
have to trust each other, even if you are mad
as hornets at one another. That's a lot to go through.
I mean, I think it's a miracle they all made
it back. Um. We didn't talk about it in the episode,

(11:54):
but all of the men that that went with them,
with the exception of one, I think I'm going from memory,
so um lived quite a long time after that. I
think one of them died a little bit earlier than
the others, but like I know, UM, I think it
was Henry Angel. His conviction was taken off the books essentially,

(12:16):
like he was released from his sentence UM, and he
actually did additional additional expeditions with Hume. And like the others,
had various you know, like one open to hotel, you know,
one got married and had a bunch of kids and
lived on a farm. They lived to a pretty good
old age, which I'm always startled when that happens after
someone has been through something like this, which UM, I

(12:39):
would pursue could have potentially long lasting impact on your health. Um.
You know, if you are malnourished for four weeks, like
that's a long time. And these guys were out there
for four months, traveling, not always getting great meals, So
that always seems like kind of a miracle. Yeah. UM.

(13:04):
There are a few interesting notes. I didn't go into
all of them, one because some of the languages just
black and I didn't want to constantly have to be
rewriting it. UM. About their interactions with Aboriginal and Indigenous people,
there were a few that were really interesting. One was
that um, none of the indigenous people would drink the

(13:26):
water from Lake George, but their team did, and other
colonists had and never had any issue with it, and
they could never figure out what was going on there.
Why uh, the indigenous population was like new Um. They
never figured it out. There is a very fun story though,

(13:46):
where Hovell noted he wrote a lot. His journals are prolific.
Even on their very worst days, when he seems like
he has had the worst day of his life, he
writes just pages and pages and pages, and a lot
of it is about how great he is, but he
owed it. In many cases like that, I think the
natives have seen us. I can see smoke from their villages,

(14:07):
but we didn't see them. But I'm sure they saw us.
And then there are instances where that was confirmed by
later expeditions who Um ended up talking to Aboriginal communities
and some of them had very clearly seen human Hamilton's
and would act out like they're um caricatures of those men,

(14:30):
and they were apparently uncannily accurate, so they had watched
them for a while. I never saw anything that indicated
that they acted out any of the fights, but I wish,
I wish that could have been the case. But most
of them apparently really loved to mimic Hume because he
carried his his gun as he went and he had

(14:50):
like a very um, a very confident and kind of
blustery walk about him. Uh, And so a lot of
them like to do that, and they thought it was hilarious,
which I think it's very funny. Um. There were a
couple of other stories I didn't include. There's one on
the way back, you know, they were hustling and at
one point, Hume's horse, which was a mayor, got bit

(15:13):
on the nose by a snake. It was very, very sick,
but they all recognized that she was like one of
their most valuable animals. She could handle rough terrain, she
kept her cool, she didn't startle easily, and so they
basically gave up almost all of their remaining meds that
they had to treat her, and the men took turns

(15:33):
walking her all night because if she settled down and
went to sleep, they were scared she would die. But
she survived and made it back with all of them.
But that just seems like a harrowing, you know, veterinary
emergency to be out here nowhere and not know what
to do. A very interesting thing that happened that ever,

(16:00):
was explained. This is almost Halloween grade. As they were
leaving what they thought was Western Port but was not.
But as they were leaving to start their return trip,
all of them except for Hume, heard what sounded like
a cannon shot. Hume didn't hear it because he was
starting to have hearing issues. He eventually really lost a

(16:21):
lot of his hearing. But they told him and he
believed them because seven other guys are like, no, we
all heard it. They never found out where it was from.
Hugh wanted to go investigate, and the rest of them
were like, we're just can we just go home please?
And also, someone has a cannon we don't want to
see them. So they never figured out where that cannon
shot came from, if that was indeed from some other

(16:44):
colony they didn't know about that had come around the
Southern Shore, or what they never found here is what
blows my mind. I think we've talked about this before
when we talk about expeditions like this, but this one
really struck me. You and I have both done half marathon's. Yeah.
I did the Goofy once, which is a half marathon

(17:05):
on one day in a marathon the next day, and
I barely managed it. These dudes were doing like a
marathon a day and some pieces, particularly on the way back,
when they're already malnourished. They don't have real shoes, they
don't have real clothes, Like, I don't know how you
do what. They had to look like they were made

(17:25):
of rope by the time they got home. Yeah. I
only did the one half marathon. Uh. And I injured
one of my feet. It was not clear that I
had injured myself until like the next day. Really, like
I finished the half marathon with no problem. We talked
in a in a behind the scenes recently about like
me following a bunch of through hikers on TikTok who

(17:47):
were doing like the the Applelachian Trail or the Pacific
Criss Trail or whatever. And I was astonished and how
many of them were doing like twenty mile days every day, um,
which is almost almost a marathon every day. Um. And
I don't know. I was just baffling to me the

(18:11):
being able to keep up uh that number of miles. Yeah,
I have similarly, No, I mean I have to laugh.
I will invoke my my BFF Dawn, who after after
I did the marathon. She had texted me a couple
of days later, like the next week, and she was like,
I just drove twenty miles and I was thinking about

(18:32):
how long it was, and then I thought, marathons are
twenty six How do people do that? Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know how I ever managed it, but I couldn't.
I don't think I could do it again. I couldn't
do it right now for sure. I UM, I think
I enjoyed the half marathon experience. UM I did not

(18:54):
enjoy training for it. It's a lot um and I
didn't train nearly as much as you were training because
you were also you had done a lot of other
half marathons besides that one, but like that was the
one where you were doing the full marathon the next day,
so it was like you had trained a lot more

(19:15):
than I had. But it still was a lot. Like
the training process was so much. And a thing that
I discovered all I guess more reinforced about myself was that, UM,
I do not enjoy running. I do enjoy being able
to run a five k without stopping, but getting to

(19:36):
the point of being able to do that I hate
and I if I stopped for any amount of time,
It's gone and I'm back to square one of like
working up to being able to run that far. So yeah,
you lose it fast. I mean, I will say I
did like intervals. I never once we got to those
longer distances. I mean, I think the longest I've run

(19:57):
where I ran the whole race was a ten k,
and it was pretty I was. It was a shuffle
in some spots, but like for me, the intervals actually
really help where you run for a while, walk for
a while, especially during the marathon, because you are switching
gears muscularly right, so like some muscles are getting a
break for a minute. And it got to the point
in those last couple of miles where like when I

(20:18):
would change from one to the other, it felt amazing,
even if I was changing from walking to running, just
because it was different muscles activating for a minute. But
then that would wear off quickly. I ran a five
k the day before the half marathon without stopping, like
I ran the whole thing, but also the the half

(20:38):
marathon itself was intervals, with progressively shorter intervals farther we went. Listen,
we made it, but I could not do. I could
not do an expedition like this where I have to
make my own shoes out of the cattle I just
killed so that I can eat and survive and then

(20:59):
take their hot like I there's no way, there's no
way I am gonna just I'm not asking for anyone
to explain how this works. I don't have a lot
of knowledge about how to like take an animal skin
from it is containing the living body of an animal too,
it's shoes, But in my head, there is like a

(21:22):
curing step or a tanning step of some sort in
between there that takes time. And so what I'm imagining
they did was that they just put some fresh animal
hide on their feet, and that sounds so gross to me. Um,
this short answer is that there's a lot of scraping
involved to get just to the right, and then I

(21:44):
think you can't do a quick salt cure in desperate times.
But in any case, I would not want to walk
any amount of distance in shoes that I just made
out of an animal hide, Like I wouldn't want to
walk to the mailbox, not be because like of any grossness,
but just because like there's no support. Like again, obviously

(22:04):
we live a very cushy life. We have all kinds
of technology that makes all kinds of shoes. Yes, barefoot runners.
I know you're out there, but for me, that's a nopelope.
That's not anymore more support and cushioning than that. So
in summation, don't go on a big expedition without people

(22:27):
that you really know, you adore and get along with
and have a good temperament to complement each other and
not get in a screaming match where you threaten to
cut the tent in half. And also, um, just uh,
we're not cut out for this. I mean, by the
time we do a very cushy, like seven day trip somewhere,

(22:49):
I am ready to go home just because I'm tired
and I I want to lie down for a while
and not do anything. No, no such option when you
are trying to get home with like racing your rations essentially. Uh.

(23:10):
If this is your weekend coming up, I hope you
don't have to, you know, undergo horrible, horrible misery just
to get your meals and transportation handled. Um. I hope
you have lots of rest and relaxation on the books.
If it's not your weekend, I still hope you find
some rest and relaxation and that um, maybe something delightful happens.

(23:31):
Just always hope that for everyone. Every day. We will
be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and
then on Monday we'll have a brand new one Wednesday too.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,

(23:52):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.