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John Kelly did reply to my email. That was sometime in 2000, I believe. As I recall, he told me that he had suffered a heart attack and had put the Lenz project on the backburner. I confirmed that I intended to write a book on Lenz. I didn’t get an answer. I assumed that he probably wasn’t pleased but had no grounds to object. When my book finally did come out, a good ten years later, I reconnected with John. I had my publicist send him a copy of The Lost Cyclist. He was quite gracious about it and even wrote an amusing article in his Washington Post column alluding to our earlier interactions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090503166.html?nav=emailpage
But it wasn’t long before I, too, put the Lenz project on hold. I had reached out to Yale University Press,. I met with Lara Heimert, an acquisitions editor and a former bike tour leader. Lara responded positively to various bicycle-themed proposals, including a book on Lenz. But she told me there are two questions in publishing. First, What’s the topic? Second, Who’s writing it? She said I should write a general history of the bicycle first to get my name and credentials established. Since I had already devoted years of research to early bicycle history, Lara’s advice made sense to me. That was the genesis of my first book, Bicycle: the History (Yale University Press, 2004).
I did not truly get back to Lenz until late 2005, And Lara’s advice seems to have paid off. I had little trouble enlisting a top-notch literary agent, Scott Waxman, who was eager to float the proposal to a variety of big-name publishers. I fervently hoped to get enough of an advance to pay for the sort of intense research I knew the Lenz story demanded. The delay was also fortuitous in a most unanticipated way. The Internet was expanding at a remarkable pace, giving me far more research tools than I would have had even a few years earlier. I was amazed by what I would eventually dig up.
Of course I wanted to see Lenz’s scrapbook! Or, more precisely, Petticord’s scrapbook. Charlie Petticord was Lenz’s bosom buddy and constant cycling companion (they rode thousands of miles together on their high-wheelers). Petticord, in fact, should have gone with Lenz around the world but backed out at the last minute. He planned, nonetheless, to meet up with Lenz in Europe for the last leg. Lenz evidently was sending photos back to Petticord in Pittsburgh, as he made his way around the world. Petticord, in turn, assembled them into this scrapbook. The present owner, John Herron, acquired the heirloom from his grandfather, though how the latter got it was unclear. The scrapbook had about 80 pages, with three or four photos per page. They were evidently taken in the US,, Japan, China, India, and perhaps Burma, and arranged in rough chronological order. Petticord wrote a few lines here and there, but for the most part the photos were unlabeled. Many were badly faded. A few corresponded to images published in Outing magazine, along with Lenz’s travel reports. At this point I was beginning to think that maybe I myself should write a book about Lenz. I was becoming captivated by his story, and encouraged by the growing body of information I was acquiring. I wondered if that journalist was still working on a Lenz book. I felt that I should contact him to let him know of my intentions.. But it had been several years since I had met with him, and I couldn’t even remember his name. I recalled that he had had a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. After contacting the program administrators, I figured out who he was and got his email address. I sent him a note to discretely inquire about the status of his Lenz project, while gingerly revealing my own growing interest in the subject. I sincerely hoped that he would not object too strenuously…
About a dozen years ago, a journalist approached me at my home in Boston to find out what I knew about Frank Lenz, an American cyclist who disappeared in Turkey in 1894 while trying to complete a round-the-world journey on a new-fangled “safety” bicycle with inflatable tires. I was already known as a bicycle historian, thanks primarily to my research on the early development of the bicycle. The inquirer, John Kelly, explained that he was writing a book about this forgotten pioneer while on leave from the Washington Post. I understood that he had already dug up considerable research on Lenz, from the old State Department files at our National Archives.
At that time, I didn’t have much information to add, although I had regularly come across Lenz’s name in the cycling literature of the boom era.
A few years later, however, I came across a revealing interview with Lenz, published in the Pall Mall Budget.. A British journalist had come across the beleaguered cyclist in the center of China in the spring of 1893. Lenz had just survived a clash with the local peasants and appeared to be in a reflective mood. The article included a number of photos recently taken by Lenz himself. It occurred to me that John would be interested in this article, but I had already lost his contact information. Since I was the midst of preparing an exhibit on the history of the bicycle, however, I decided to make good use of my discovery. I reproduced an image of Lenz and his bicycle, surrounded by curious Chinese spectators. Some time later, after the exhibit was up, I got a call from a young man who had noticed that photo. “I have Lenz’s scrapbook” he told me. “Would you like to see it?”
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