We take a break from our Albuquerque-focused news today because when you find the brass band performing on bicycles story, you’ll go to the ends of the Earth. Or at least to St. John, Michigan:

The “Safety Bicycle” with wheels of equal size was sweeping the automobile-free nation, reaching beyond St. John, Michigan to potentially everybody and anybody, even out here in the pre-Statehood hinterlands.

In “fact,” by April 23, 1895 the Albuquerque Morning Democrat (later Journal) could, or at least did, make sweeping, unscientific, and very possibly untrue statements about ABQ cycling like…

See. Albuquerque IS a great cycling town if we just get rid of the cars/trucks/SUVs or go back in time before they existed. The cycling Albuquerque Eden ended in 1900 when Robert L. Dodson drove his new “Locomobile” down from Denver and ruined everything as the first automobile in town. Interestingly, Mr. Dodson had been a long-established bicycle dealer here before making his deal with the internal combustion devil.

One hopes Mr. Dodson gets to hear, endlessly so, the 1886 St. John, Michigan brass band play while on bicycles down in Hell.