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Random street photo from the Netherlands by Henk Overbeeke easily meets the twin criteria of Super Cool and Neat Things on Bikes. Every time some bike "journalist" (i.e. press release regurgitator) tells you how the new fibre lay-up in this year's whizz-bang road bike makes it corner on rails thanks to the vertical compliance and lateral stiffness, send him this pic and ask if he ever gets it laid over that far.
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Quick mention of a friend cycling around the world currently:
https://halfashoestring.com/
Normally works as a travel journalist so the writing's pretty fantastic.
I'm jealous and in awe completely.
Most recent photograph looks very cold: (-19!)
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Yes, worth booking early--I'll try now, hope there are still tickets. I saw 'Half the Road' some years ago at Look Mum Mare Street but as little has changed, it's still going to be up-to-date enough.
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I went today--a very interesting event with a Q&A that was much too short. People initially seemed shy about asking questions and (I think) would have got into gear more had it been longer. I had lots but didn't ask any as there were so many little girls and teenagers in the audience (who I assumed were probably racing) and I felt it wasn't really my place. Only one of them asked a question in the end, though.
Not only little girls; I would say the significant majority of the audience was female. This was really different from all other events of this type that I've been to--mostly they seem to be 90% (older) men. @Emilia was there, too, and asked the first audience question.
There did seem to be a kind of exasperation about the way things had gone since that documentary--I remember seeing it a couple of years ago and there was a different atmosphere; people were hopeful that things might be about to change for the better, but nothing much seems to have happened. Nicole Cooke was good and said some interesting things (e.g., she has been talking to Julie Harrington, who's now the BC CEO), but she was considerably more vague, I thought, than Emma Pooley in the film, who would probably be a much sharper institutional operator if she got the chance (or at least that's how she comes across to me). Her verdict on Thomas Dekker, who was signed by her then team for €400k (or so) when he came back from a drugs ban (and the women's team then not being funded any more) was still the best sentence of the film: 'And he was rubbish!' It again got a big laugh.
It got me wondering what a good follow-up to the film now would have to look like. Brian Cookson, who looked so bad in the film (highly discriminatory), is gone from the UCI but one would guess there are plenty of equivalents in his place now, perhaps worse ones.
My main interest in it relates to what NC said in reply to a question about lack of ethnic minorities in the sport. She called it a 'self-sustaining situation' that people don't see minority riders and then many are consequently not inspired to start (needless to say, some people may be inspired by the exact opposite, but the point is that racism clearly exists). The 'self-sustaining situation' is obviously the same in women's racing, although there the lack of visibility relates mainly to lack of TV coverage. How do you break the chicken-and-egg situation that women's cycling could be a force to change sex stereotyping, but women's cycling doesn't get anywhere because of sex stereotyping? The various examples in the film still shock even if you've seen them before--Inga Thompson telling the story of how Hein Verbruggen wanted to introduce testing whether women racers were menstruating and then banning them from racing if they were.
Overall, since 2014-15 there's been a bit of tokenism and not much else.
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Oh, and, disappointingly, only one other bike outside--a yellow Joe Waugh. I suppose many parents came with their kids.
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Thanks Oliver, I was planningto go but was laid low with the flu. One of our members did attend.
Yes, we need to talk about diversity ..... -
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh7YYU9BmJX/?taken-by=urbanbixi
Pretty sure there's been many similar things posted here before but damn...
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See also here:
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Bit of a dredge Oliver. Thanks for posting this a year ago.
I've been speaking recently to some orthodox Jewish family members. One woman is Dutch and was allowed to cycle in Amsterdam.
Apparently Jewish women in the UK are not permitted to cycle since women cycling, or anyone cycling is not considered normal here.
I suggested that she asks a rabbi for an updated view on this.
csb -
Scottish Woman smashes round the world record.
Averaged 156 miles a day carrying all her kit. Jesus.
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A play about Beryl Burton:
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And we rather forgot to mention in this thread that Fiona Kolbinger won the Transcontinental Race this year.
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World's toughest cyclist IMO.
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I can't really picture how they managed this, but ...
An inspirational teenager who managed to bike 1200km home while carrying her injured father in the saddle has been offered a chance to try out for the national cycling team.
... it sounds as if her dad wasn't pedalling.
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Super cool women doing neat things on bikes
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4TOYjk1Jk