When Stanford opened its doors in 1891, students’ preferred mode of transportation was the pogo stick. Faculty members who worked on the Quad grew displeased at the amount of bouncing and bounce noises outside their offices, so arcades were built over the walkways to prevent pogo-ing. Only one student rode his pogo in the arcades and he, of course, died of a head injury.

March 19, 1892 was the first Big Game against Cal, which Stanford won 14-10. At this point, the football players were so cocky they decided they were above pogo-ing and bought horses. They got to class more quickly on horses and looked cooler doing it. There was always the risk that drunken Paly kids might steal the horses at night, but they were still the offensive line’s first choice for transportation.

In 1893, Leland Stanford, Sr. died. No longer dominated by her United States Senator husband, Jane Stanford hopped on the bicycle bandwagon as many liberated women were doing in the 1890s. In fact, it was during this time that bikes become known as “freedom machines.” As an emancipated woman, Jane even bought cardinal-colored bloomers with “Stanford” printed across the ass to wear while cycling around campus.

In a matter of weeks, all of the Stanford women had switched to bicycles. The football team remained on horseback and the average Stanford man kept to his pogo stick to make up for other lacking qualities. It was around this time that American men grew wary of the newfound independence that the bicycle afforded women. Doctors started spreading rumors that bicycles were bad for women’s health because the cycling motion promoted masturbation. Back then, masturbation caused blindness, gonorrhea and nighttime “headaches” whenever husbands wanted sex.

Since male doctors were right about everything (except that strychnine poisoning caused Jane Stanford’s death), Jane began enjoying her daily bike rides even more. She and her husband were celibate for the first 18 years of their marriage, conceived little Leland and then continued their celibacy for the last 25 years. What Jane didn’t know was that during his eight years in the Senate, Leland had several young Congressional pages hard at work. He even exchanged sexually explicit telegrams with them. This exertion may or may not have led to his untimely death at the age of 69, but it certainly led to Jane’s connubial neglect.

In the 1910s, Henry Ford made horses obsolete. Football players started driving Model T’s to class. The administration was forced to put up bollards to reduce the number of dead squirrels lying about the Quad. Bollard jumping became the number one cause of pogo stick injury. It was clear, therefore, that bicycles would be the best mode of transportation for all. In 1915, to signal the end of the horse era, ichthyologist and eugenicist David Starr Jordan, chancellor of the University at the time, had Leland Sr.’s favorite horse, Electioneer, dipped in bronze and placed in front of the Red Barn.

By the early 1930s, bicycles were so popular that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night” was the book upon which the very first IHUM, “The Human and the Machine,” a.k.a. “Dick Diver, You a Bicycling Dick,” was based in 1933. [See Robert Wexelblatt, “F. Scott Fitzgerald and D. H. Lawrence: Bicycles and Incest,” American Literature, Vol. 59, No. 3. (Oct., 1987), pp. 378-388.]

In the 1950s, bicycles, which were used instead of cars in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba and Mississippi, were seen as a communistic influence. They were banned from campus.

Bicycles use no gasoline, which is why riding them in the arcades would be like letting the terrorists win. It wasn’t with this in mind that the Stanford administration instituted a bike ban in Sept. 2006.

In the same spirit of social activism displayed in the 1960s, some Stanford students tried to almost, sort of, not really hold a bike protest yesterday, Oct. 26, 2006, by planning to park their bikes in solidarity on the Quad — as if to say, “Fuck you professors trying to exit your offices, fuck you blind students who trip over our bikes, or students who can’t get to the handicapped-labeled automatic button door opener because we parked our bike in front of it and fuck you Mark Foley for taking attention away from real issues, like the serious denial of basic rights to us — Stanford students — the most-wronged group in the world.”

To find out about Kathryn McGarr’s exploits as a Congressional page in George Bush, Jr.’s office, email her at kmcgarr@stanford.edu.