I’m a speaker at a community event called Bikes n’ Brains. It’s here in London, Ontario at the end of the month. I agreed as long as I get to put a gender angle on it. 🙂

My plan is to talk about women and cycling, and what it takes to get more women out on bikes. For some, but not all of us, that’s cupcake rides but for pretty much everybody it’s safety.

But what makes cycling safe? There’s a tension between institutional solutions, like better cycling infrastructure, and individual solutions, like wearing helmets and bright colours.

I’ll actually set aside, for the purposes of this event, some of my skepticism about the usual individual safety tips.

Does high visibility clothing make a difference? No, actually. (See Why cycling in high-vis may be not as safe as you think : A study of motorcyclists shows head-to-toe fluorescent yellow does not always ensure you are visible and High vis clothing doesn’t make cars pass you more safely, says new study.)

And then there’s the debate on the internet that I hate having: Should bike helmets be mandatory?

For the record, I’m opposed to mandatory helmet laws for adults even though I never ride without a helmet and my children ride without a helmet on pain of losing their bikes.

Why? It’s complicated.

Here’s part of the answer. The biggest predictor of cycling safety is numbers. The more people who ride, the safer it is. Helmets put people off in two different ways. One, they contribute to the perception of cycling as unsafe, as risky. “Look you need special gear!” Two, they’re awkward and ugly and mess up your hair. Fine, whatever.

We don’t make joggers wear helmets even though they’d be safer if they did. I’ve got a friend recovering now from a pretty severe concussion caused by tripping on a curb when she was out for a run.

And, in the kind of crashes cyclists most fear, impact with cars, helmets often don’t make a difference.

Why do I wear one? Despite what I’ve said the answer is still safety.

I’ve “come off my bike” as cyclists say a few times. One time involved another bike. The other involved a car passing too closely and an unexpected pothole. Both involved visits to the hospital, scans of various sorts, and replacing my helmet. Mild concussion in one case, nothing in the second. In both cases, I was told by emergency workers that my helmet made a huge difference in the outcome.

That said, I don’t wear a helmet riding in European cities or even in large North Americam cities on rental bikes, in segregated bike lanes. There I’m riding very slowly, away from cars, and around thousands of other cyclists all riding without helmets.

So my safety focus will be more on infrastructure, less about individual behavior though I’ll always push individuals to wear helmets, remain attentive, and obey the rules of the road.

I love the contrast, by the way, between today’s bike safety posters and the ones from the 1940s, reprinted here from the blog The Retronaut. Enjoy!

We’d been planning this ride, the Halton Epic Tour, for quite awhile. Originally it was to be Kim, Eaton, David, and me and the 140 km distance.

But plans change. David has injured his elbow and so we dropped down to the 80 km. Eaton joined a new bike club in Toronto and had people from it to ride with so he stuck with the longer distance.

Personally, I’m glad the three of us swapped. The 80 km was fun but tough. David and I both agreed it was harder than the 125 km Niagara Falls Gran Fondo we’d ridden last year. On the Halton Epic Tour we climbed about 850 m over the 80 km. But it was pretty continuous climbing or descending, not much flat. Long slow climbs with rolling hills. That’s wearing.

At one point I saw people stopped by the side of the road, resting, and I was puzzled. These were just rolling hills, I thought. I like rolling hills. But about 10 km later exhaustion found me too. Yes they were rolling but they were trending up. I didn’t stop but I certainly slowed down.

The Niagara Falls ride had sharp steep bits but they came after lots and lots of flat so you were fresh when you got to them. That felt different somehow. These hills were more relentless.

But we kept on and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, the police escort through intersections, and the lovely country roads.

You can read the Garmin profile here.

Some further thoughts:

• Stopping versus not: We chatted in advance about our strategy regarding rest stops. On the one hand, one of the joys of the organized fully supported ride is the fully supported rest stops. Port-a-potties, yes, but also snacks, drinks, etc. Bike pumps and bike mechanics too. They had 5 rest stops on our route. The first was at just fifteen km. We decided in advance that we’d stop just once at the 50 km mark though a flat changed things a bit. See below.
• Cyclists can be very nice! At one point, after a hill, I lost sight of David and Kim. Both are better climbers than me. But no worries. A very nice man offered to let me sit on his wheel and draft so we could catch up to my friends. Whee! Zoom! In no time we’d found them. I like gentlemen cyclists.
• Or not! They can also be “muppets.” That’s a British slang term, I gather, for people/men? whose speed and bike price outstrips their bike skills. This is Kim’s term. New to me. It’s just rude, in the cycling world, outside of a race situation, to join uninvited a group of riders. We were riding pretty closely as a three person pace line when this guy joined us without even a hello. Argh.All fine until David noticed a huge pot hole in the road, a wheel killer, and did what sensible other regarding cyclists do, pointed it out and went around it. So too did the man we didn’t know. That is, he also went around it but without saying anything or signaling. Kim hit and I hit it. I was thankful all I got was a flat. David’s the fastest flat fixer of us three and the man we didn’t know sped off, of course. Grrr. I got it fully inflated at the next rest stop. All fine. Just annoying really.
• Beautiful scenery and quiet roads: Unlike the Niagara Falls Gran Fondo the roads weren’t closed for this event. That said, for much of the ride it certainly felt as if they were. There were very few cars and police shepherded us through all the intersections. Rarely did we need to stop. The roads were mostly in good shape, a wee bit of gravel, and the scenery was incredible. Also nice views of the city from the top of the escarpment.
• Another difference between this and Niagara Falls was the range of distances. There were lots of options: 5 km for kids, then 50 km and 80 km and 140 km and 170 km, the longest. Because they all had different starting times it meant that riders doing different distances could have time together at the event. All the routes were incredibly well signed. We took one map between us but there was never any need to consult it.
• We missed the timing chip: These mass participation cycling events are hard to define. The Niagara Falls motto was, “let the racers race and the riders ride.” It had timing chips, prizes for QOM and KOM and prizes for first man and woman across the finish. This described itself explicitly as a ride. Instructions at the start reminded us we weren’t racing. It’s tricky balancing the ride versus race. Our goal was to complete with an average speed above 25 km/hr. At least that’s the corral we put ourselves in at the start. And even with the hills we did it.
• That last hill!: 3 km from the finish. Right turn and then, argh. A steep longish hill. The “shut up legs!” sign didn’t help. Like 90% of the people around me I walked the worst of it. Once the steep bit was over I decided it was time to ride again and encouraged the people walking with me to do the same.
• Drones! This is the first sporting event I’ve done where there was a drone flying above our heads filming things.
• The other issue with these rides is the expense but I’d do it again. Maybe just one a season. They’re not cheap but there’s a lot of support, some of the money goes to charity, and it’s fun riding with that many people.
• I also want to thank Kim and David. They were both great fun to ride with. And drive with. Thanks for the yummy peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Yes, they waited for me at the top of hills but we rode together lots. I love the teamwork that comes with cycling. I feel semi inspired to go ride up and down some of the local hills now. 🙂 I’d certainly do the Epic Tour again next year.

My feminist book group read Men Explain Things to Me this month. I enjoyed the book but I have to confess that mansplaining–as it’s called–doesn’t much happen to me except in academic contexts, among men in my field. One tried to explain an argument in a sub-discipline in ethics to me recently, completely ignoring/not knowing that I was a major author in that particular debate.

The academic genre is so common that it even has its own tumblr: Academic Men Explain Things to Me

New to all of this? Wondering what mansplaining is? Here’s Urban Dictionary’s definition:

to delighting in condescending, inaccurate explanations delivered with rock solid confidence of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation

 

Even though he knew she had an advanced degree in neuroscience, he felt the need to mansplain “there are molecules in the brain called neurotransmitters”

 

 

I was shocked to encounter bicycle mansplaining at the Epic Tour a few weeks ago. I had gotten a flat and at the next rest stop was looking for a floor pump to fully inflate the front.

I saw the pump and got to work.

Enter this middle aged guy. He didn’t look like a bike mechanic. Just a regular helpful guy. I’m not even sure he was a cyclist.

When I got this far into the story with my partner, Jeff, he said that of course he wasn’t a bike mechanic.

A bike mechanic, said Jeff, would notice that it wasn’t a new bike. I’d likely owned it for a few years. The mechanic would notice that some of the components had been upgraded and that the wheels weren’t the ones the bike came with. That’s probably true. Mechanics are observant that way. And in my experience they’re mostly not condescending.

The meaning to be helpful guy then proceeded to try to show me how to inflate the tube.

How did he think I got air in it that morning? Every morning? For the past ten years. But never mind that. It gets worse.

“Oh, I see why it went flat. Your valve stem is open.”

“Yes because I’d started to put air in it.”

I then got a mini lecture about leaning my bike against things that could scratch the frame.

“That’s a nice bike, you know. It’s made of carbon fibre.”

Oh, really?

I didn’t say but after thought I could have had fun with it.

“Is it? Is carbon fibre expensive? Is that why it cost so much? I thought it was the pretty paint job.”

Oh, sigh.

Anyway, I didn’t. I was speechless. I let him put air in it and off we rode.

Classic.