I’ve got books by Thomas Stevens, an American who did a round the world ride on a pennyfarthing in the 1880s and a book by John Foster Fraser who did it on a standard “safety” bicycle in 1896. Both are rollicking reads.
I personally rode around the world in under ten seconds while on assignment at the South Pole during the Antarctic summer of 2000. I pedalled a bicycle around the pole itself, crossing every line of longitude “en route” in my sub ten second circumnavigation. Weirdly enough the record keepers don’t recognise my “effort”!
