Weekends with Womack

Fit is a Feminist Issue: the Sunday Boo-Boo edition

Some of you who read this blog often may know that I write a regular Sunday column, called Weekends with Womack. But this week, my column appeared on Saturday instead.

Oops!

oops

I hit the wrong button (publish instead of preview), and sent it out on its way to the cyber-feminist-fitness community. And I couldn’t figure out how to get it back.

runaway

So in honor of my mistake, here are some pics of bike-related boo-boos. To err is human, but please don’t ride with these.

A (somewhat) common mistake is a bike constructed with the front fork facing backwards. Here’s what it SHOULD look like:

mtb

In this picture, however, the front fork was installed backwards. This is not good.

fork-backwards

By the way, most of the pictures come from this website; many of them are only funny to serious bike geeks, but check it out and see what you think.

This bike is fine, except that the handlebars were installed upside down. This means you can’t really use the brakes. Uh, oh.

handlebars

Someone brought this bike into a bike shop, complaining about how the brakes didn’t work. The mechanic had to explain gently that wedged between the brake levers was a suboptimal storage place for the giant kryptonite lock.

lock

Sometimes people accidentally put their helmets on backwards; I’ve seen this in nature, and it’s well documented online. There’s this guy:

guy

This picture below is actually from a website that is supposed to explain proper helmet use. Unfortunately, what the site says is that her helmet is improperly adjusted.   If by that they mean “the parents totally put the kid’s helmet on backwards”, then I guess that’s right.

kid

In case you were wondering, here’s a diagram illustrating both correct and incorrect helmet configurations.

diagram

Yes—in the real world, errors abound. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with them, too.

wheelie

See y’all next week!

2 thoughts on “Fit is a Feminist Issue: the Sunday Boo-Boo edition

  1. I was recently introduced to cycling as my husband started his mission to develop cycling as a sport in India, And also because my 3 year old got her first bike 😉 We are all about cycling now!!

Comments are closed.