Continued from Bulletproof
(part one)

Bulletproof:
Michael Flannigan's Last Gunfight

Part Two: The Parkhill Shootout

Despite the general furor that followed the second Diamond Meet, Flannigan and his niece continued to be enthusiastic about bicycles. Emily, in particular, was in love with the conveyance as she notes in this journal entry, April 15, 1892:

"Ah, spring, and a young woman's fancy turns to the passion of the wheeled set. The swish of petticoats as your legs pump harder and hard, the thrust of acceleration as your effort is assisted by the "spring-wound rotary propulsion thingy", the lovely bumping and grinding on London's uneven streets. Oh, I am fond of riding!"

The sport was healthful, fun, and saved the expense of caring for a horse. And after the psychotropic disaster of the Diamond Meet, Flannigan found another lubricant for his
Mechanically Assisted Racing Snoorg, thus saving the citizens of London, Ontario from repeated and impromptu performances of Wagnerian opera. (1)

Emily developed some prowess as a cyclist, and took to racing through the streets of London with Thudgar Lawrason, a strapping fellow of Norwegian descent, whom she had rescued at the second Diamond Meet (and who was a cousin of the champion high-bicycle rider, S. F. Lawrason.) To say they raced through the streets is a bit misleading. In the early 1890s, London's roads were not good; they were constructed of a hodgepodge of materials -- dirt on one side of the street, gravel on the other. Some of them were brick, covered with asphalt and giant potholes; in the downtown area, roads were paved with cedar blocks. In other
words, they were a mess. (2)

History might have recorded this incident, if it hadn't occurred in the middle of the Parkhill "Be A Crank Days" (celebrated from 1888-1892).

So Emily and her Norse paramour used the city's sidewalks, which were paved with planks of wood, as their own personal velodrome. (3) Eventually they got more adventurous, and would leave the city itself, favouring the old planked roads that led north and west.

Flannigan would trail behind them in his Flannigan Flyer, and at least once a week, the three would travel to Parkhill, where Flannigan had business dealings with the H.C. Baird Foundry. (4)

Parkhill was a successful little town in those days, with a population of 2,000 (more than twice what it is now). In fact, Parkhill had electric streetlamps long before London did, partially due to Flannigan's work with the Baird Foundry. Luckily for the citizens of Parkhill, Flannigan could not convince the Baird organization to try his patented, "methane-gas power generator", and instead had opted for more conventional fuels to make electricity.
Flannigan's inventive mind had improved the power-plant's efficiency, without the usual cranial trauma.

While Flannigan helped tweak the power output at the foundry, Emily and Lawrason would race up and down the lovely Parkhill sidewalks, made of solid 4" rock elm plank.

Continued on the next page . . .>

Notes:

(1) However, the name never caught on. Even Emily did not call it a Snoorg, and referred to it by a cheeky acronym, the MARS Probe. (More often she called it simply, The Ride.) [back]

(2) A condition that exists to this day. [back]

(3) The fine for this activity was between 25 cents and the outrageous sum of $3, but the pedal-freaks usually escaped with a warning, and a peck on the officer's cheek from Emily. [back]

(4) Emily refused to ride behind the Flyer because the exhaust from bat guano and uric acid was, as Emily put it in her journal: "more offensive and rank than Vicky's mouldy old quiff." [back]