Baby’s First Naked Bike Ride
The Chicago Naked Ride has been on my calendar for the last three years, easily.
I’ve never gone.
On the same exact calendar, usually a month or so out, there exists a reminder that it’s coming—all caps-lock and alarmist. I did that for a reason. To me, that was to call to my attention that I needed to get my body ready, or change it, if I hadn’t yet.
Now, the majority of human creatures are aware of the world around us and particularly the way it ties to our bodies. As women, we get that message all the clearer, the louder, the unrelenting. I was one of those girls who stayed small in height as my body buckled under the pressure of puberty at an age earlier than the peers that surrounded me.
Read MoreYet another tragedy on the streets of Chicago
Bobby before a touring ride in 2010. Photo from DNAinfo.
It is with very heavy hearts that we offer our condolences to the family and friends of Bobby Cann, 26, who was struck and killed last night while riding his bike home from work. The crash happened on Clybourn avenue, just outside of Yojimbo’s Garage. Bobby was active in the Chicago cycling community, including riding in Chicago Critical Mass. Tomorrow night’s Critical Mass ride will pass the site of the crash, and potentially set up a ghost bike memorial as well. Please attend to honor his memory. 5/31, 5:30 PM, Daley Plaza, Dearborn & Washington.
More information from DNAinfo.
More information from the Chicago Tribune.
More information from the Chainlink.
Tomorrow’s Critical Mass route.
Read More#bloodycyclist, indeed
By now you all have probably heard about a remarkably dumb young woman in the UK who knocked over a cyclist with her car and later gloated about it on Twitter. Thanks to her gloating, word got around, including to the police, and her life has been made rather difficult as a result.
So far, her apologies have been more along the lines of “I’m sorry I tweeted about it” and less “I’m sorry I was driving a 2,000 lb vehicle irresponsibly, hit a vulnerable road user, did not stop to render aid, and was rather pleased with myself over the whole thing.”
Pretty much everyone can agree that the woman is careless, dangerous, and dumb. So the Metafilter thread on the subject has, like any online discussion about cyclists, turned into the typical “but bikes blow stop signs!” bullshit that frankly makes me so angry I really should be stepping away from the computer rather than reading more of it.
Fair warning, this post is basically republishing some of my comments from MeFi bike threads over the years, though hopefully honed down to come to some sort of point. Maybe. Whatever, I built this website and I’m gonna rant on it.
Fuck No to this image, Fuck Yes to Surly’s response
I want to give a shoutout to Jules of Surly Bikes for doing a really good job of responding to this extremely problematic photo and caption that was posted by an online bike retailer over on the Surly blog.
You don’t get legs like this pushing a gas pedal!
You don’t get legs like this pedalling a bike, either. Let’s delve a little more into why this photo+caption pairing makes blood vessels in my eyes start bursting, and why Jules’ response was so spot on.
Read MoreTiny Fix Moms, part 1
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
Hercules Bicycles, 1949 catalog (from flickr)
My mom’s first bicycle was a 3-speed Hercules. It was blue, was a women’s style (suitable for wearing a skirt), with fenders and had a generator hub to power a headlight. They called these bikes “English Racers” because they had skinny tires and more than one gear. She rode it around her neighborhood in Washington DC, and up and down the rolling hills of Rock Creek Park with her brothers, when she was 11 or 12 years old. She didn’t ride much through high school or during college, but started riding again in the early 1970s when she was living in the Bronx, newly married to my dad. At that time she rode a Japanese road bike called a Velosolex. She would go out for exercise on the bike paths of the Bronx, to City Island and the bridges to Queens. Despite the reputation of the Bronx at that time, she felt safe enough on a bike; on the paths she was away from the cars, and never had much concern about a dangerous person lurking in the bushes somewhere.
Mom’s Bianchi
Once she moved to the suburb of Port Chester, NY, she upgraded to a Bianchi and began to ride longer distances. She rode mostly with a male friend who had taken up cycling after being laid off from his teaching job. He raced for the Toga Bikes team in NYC and would go north for hill training. They would ride 30-40 miles a few times a week. through the hills of Westchester County and Connecticut. When I was growing up, my mom was often out riding 30-50+ miles with her friend on the weekend. I never went with her, because I was both lazy and nowhere near fit enough to keep up.
The sport of cycling in the 80s was still primarily dominated by guys. She didn’t have any female friends who rode bikes and she didn’t feel compelled to join a club or start racing in order to find riding partners. The cycling clothing was for men. The shorts were considered “unisex” and she wore them, size small, with a T-shirt. Cycling shoes were like stiff narrow sneakers designed to fit into toe cages. Helmets weren’t widely used, or even available at that time. There weren’t very many cyclists on the road and people looked at them, dressed in their tight kits, like they were total weirdos.
She started wearing a helmet in the early 80s, switched from toe clips to the first Look clipless pedals in the mid 80s (as soon as they came out), invested in jerseys and bicycle specific clothing, but rode that same Bianchi, which had since been outfitted with a full set of Campagnolo components from a friend’s bike which was wrecked in a crash, until 2008. Speaking of crashes, in the late 80s, she was involved in her only serious crash. We had gone on a family vacation, and she was coming home from a long ride, when she had a catastrophic quick-release failure and went down rounding a corner. Thankfully she didn’t get hit, but did fracture her elbow and wreck her fork.
On a ride in Central Park, 2010
In 2008 I was getting into cycling and started shopping for my first road bike. She went on a few test rides and after realizing the differences between a modern, carbon fiber, women-specific bike with brake shifters and her trusty steel Bianchi, she immediately bought a new bike, a Specialized Ruby Comp Triple, which has perfect geometry and gearing for long hilly rides in NY. We rode together on the weekends through lower Westchester while I was in medical school. When I was an intern in Manhattan she would put her bike in the car and come downtown to join me on rides in Central Park. She continues to ride 100+ miles a week during the warm months. When she visited me in Chicago, she rode my (too big) road bike with my (too big) road bike shoes on the Lakefront Path. She rode my fixed gear on a family ride around the neighborhood (my dad rode my cross bike!). Perhaps her biggest recent achievement was getting her certification at Chicago Velo Campus, the south side velodrome known for its impressive (and frighteningly steep) 50-degree banking through the corners. She had no problem riding a brakeless track bike and maintaining speed around the track, even getting the hang of pacelining in the velodrome!
Mom riding the 50 degree bank at Chicago Velo Campus
So what’s next? Goals, aspirations?
“Not so much. Summer’s almost here. Just lots of riding.”
What do you think about on a ride?
“Pushing as hard as I can, trying to get my average speed up. I try not to let my mind wander, I’m very, very aware, like hyper-aware of what’s going on around me. You can’t think about anything other than cycling. And catching up with the cyclist in front of me. Constant pushing, good cadence, smart shifting, not too much coasting. Maybe a passing thought about what I’m going to eat when I get home.”
Your thoughts on riding fixed gear bikes in the city?
“It’s a preference. I have no attitudes as to whether it’s stupid or smart. It depends on people’s abilities. In a way, it’s a more pure form of cycling, but you have to know what you’re doing.”
How has cycling changed for women in the last 20-30 years?
“Obviously there are way more of them doing it. The sport of cycling has adapted to women, with women’s specific bikes and all the other gear for them. It’s a great sport for women because it’s so low impact. You don’t destroy your body, you make it better, you become more heart healthy, and it’s a great cross-training sport.”
Do you think cycling is a masculine sport or a boy’s club?
“No.”
Mountain biking in Colorado
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The Myth and Truth of the Super Secret Chicago Bike Community
Photo at Velo Cult by Patrick Barber
I’m part of an exclusive club whose meetings can be spotted by a tangle of bikes locked ten deep to a rack. House parties are decorated by covering the front fence with bicycles, hung by their u-locks like Christmas garland. Our limbs are covered in bright tattoo ink, our jackets are waterproof and packable with articulated shoulder pivots, our jeans are cut off above the the knee to allow for the bulge of a farmer-tanned quad. We have chili nights and bar nights, alleycats and races, house parties and backyard barbecues. We are bike kids.
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