Does the Forgotten Realms have bicycles?

One thought on “Does the Forgotten Realms have bicycles?

  1. D. Walker says:

    “Think of wide tricycles with rear cargo beds and soft, squashy-fat-tires (no air)”

    Hang on there, Ed! It sounds like you’re describing the kind of tires that the earliest automobiles used. But those tires, and indeed most tires in general, require not only rubber, but specifically vulcanized rubber! Are you suggesting they have that (or an equivalent) in the Realms?

    I would think if they had bicycles, they’d be akin to our own earliest attempts such as velocipedes and dandy horses – which themselves substantially predate vulcanized rubber! They used wheels made of wood, metal, or both – much like wagon wheels in construction – and they certainly didn’t require paved surfaces!

    You can easily find old footage of people riding wholly wooden dandy-horses on unpaved dirt roads, with no great difficulty.

    And while rigid wheels on cobblestones certainly give a rougher ride, the technology for shock absorption has existed for centuries, and nearly every carriage drawn by a horse used such. If the folks in Gond could come up with a 19th century invention like the bicycle, they could certainly adapt existing shock absorption technology for it.

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