And any (horseback) riding instructor will scold you if you try to mount from the right (off) side rather than the proper left (near) side. Western or hunt (English)seat.
Makes me think of those cylcing salons in the 1880s and 1890s where instructors would teach cycling. The drawings I've seen from such a salon i n Paris show instructors teaching the left side mount, and it's a good guess that it was carried over from horseback instruction. The bicycle was a new kind of horse that had to be mounted to be ridden.
Mitch Harris Little Rock Canyon, Utah
On 1/10/06, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> The standard story is that when swords were the primary weapons, men wore
> swords on their left hips, making it easier to draw the sword with the ri
ght
> hand. Mounting a horse from the right would have dragged the sword or it
s
> scabbard across the horse's flanks, perhaps causing him to bolt. Mountin
g
> from the left avoided this. Supposedly, the practice carried over to
> bicycles. This brings up the question as to whether cultures where sword
s
> were not used, like the aforementioned Sioux, also mounted from the
> left. Although I'm not really a horseman, it is my understanding some
> horses will resist being mounted from the right. This is no doubt a matt
er
> of conditioning, with the animal simply resisting unaccustomed behavior.
> If one were enough of a contrarian to insist on mounting from the right,
no
> doubt one could train a horse from a colt to be mounted that way. (Might
> provide some protection against horse theives in fact.) Likewise, there
are
> always a few contrarian cyclists
> about who will experiment with left hand drive bikes. If I'm not
> mistaken, that ultimate contrarian Pino Moroni built at least one such bi
ke.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, TX
>
>
>
> Martin Appel <martin@camelot.de> wrote:
> >Might this have to do with horseriding? Don't you mount a horse from
> >the right hand side?
>
> not if you're a Sioux...
> My 2c: it is a convention. Right handed persons intuitivly do that, its
> like aiming a rifle at something: you automatically just hold it to
> your cheek, some people to the left one, others to he right one. And
> right-handedness was/is considered to be the norm, thus it influenced
> the way bicycles are built. There's millions of examples for this in
> daily life.
>
> Martin Appel
> lefthanded guy from Munich, BY, Germany
> who would mount a horse as he mounts his bicycle: from the left side
> (if he could ride).