“They’ve Gone Soft!” Who Would Know Better?

Photo by Zac Williams 

I forget what we were discussing. But I remember what a student said: “My father always talks about walking barefoot three miles in the snow every day to go to school.”

A pause.   “He was in Jamaica!”  She wasn’t talking about the neighborhood in Queens.

There’s always some member of the older generation (as if I can talk about them in the third person!) who insists that they had to be smarter, braver and tougher in the good ol’ days.  Such a person laments how the “younger generation” had “gone soft.”

That criticism has been leveled at the peloton in the just-ended 2023 Giro d’Italia.

What are the bases for such an assessment?

One is that of 176 riders who started, 125 finished.  That is indeed a higher rate of attrition than befalls most races, whether the local Category Four criterium or a Grand Tour like the Giro. But the riders who started three weeks ago included current and former champions, and the “quitters,” as they were called, included the rider who was wearing the race leader’s maglia rosa.

So what, exactly, caused 51 riders to—if you are to believe the critics—melt like a cake in the worst song in the history of pop music. (I can forgive Donna Summer for her disco stuff, but not for giving new life to that song!)

Well, for one thing, there was the weather which, even the haters would concede, was some of the worst in Giro history.  The rain, sleet and all of the other meteorological delights caused crashes that took out a number of riders, including 2020 winner Tao Geoghegan Hart. 

Then there was something that’s sneaking up on much of the rest of the world: a rebound COVID-19. When Belgian Remco Evenepoel, a favorite to win and Aleksandr Vladivostok, a strong contender for a podium spot, were forced to withdraw because of positive tests, they were accused of “faking” or being unable or unwilling to suffer.

As Ryan Mallon points out, cycling differs from other sports in that there is little incentive for a rider to “fake”or “dive.” Players can get themselves or their teams free kicks, foul shots or power plays by rolling on the pitch, court or rink to exaggerate the effect of an opponent’s hit.  On the other hand, if riders crash, fall or are otherwise interrupted, they are rewarded with a longer, tougher chase to keep up—if indeed they still can—with the rest of the pack.

If there is an irony in everything I’ve just mentioned, here it is:  Some of those who are saying that the riders who had to leave the Giro were “faking” or had “gone soft” are professionals who raced during the ‘90’s and early 2000s. You know: the era of PDM, Festina, Lance, Marco Pantani and a few others who, as Jacques Anquetil would say, didn’t win races on salad and mineral water.

Maybe they have a right to call today’s riders “soft”:  After all, those old heroes had to have really high pain thresholds to withstand all of those needles!

Did A Crash Save His Life?

Years ago, while pedaling along a long flat stretch in central New Jersey, I saw a woman and her bicycle lying on the side of the road.  She was conscious but in obvious pain.  I promised her I'd call for help at the next public phone. (This was in the days before cell phones.) She waved her hand. "No.  I don't need..."  

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. 

Of course, I was going to call for help, but not long after I started pedaling away, I heard a siren and glanced back to see flashing lights.  

I wondered whether she was OK--and why she didn't want help.  Was there someone she didn't want to worry?  Or, perhaps, she worried about a potential bill: Maybe she didn't have insurance.  It didn't occur to me that she didn't want to be found out by immigration officers or other authorities because such things weren't much in the public discourse and she was a white woman who seemed to speak English without a discernible accent.  

She may simply have been stubborn--as I can be in such situations. Or she may have had another fear that I hadn't thought about last night, when I came across the story I am about to relate.

The 27th of January in 2018 dawned as a cool and windy but clear morning--one that practically begs for a ride--in North Texas.  And so Tan Flippin did.

The 57-year-old Baptist pastor, who'd taken up cycling after a torn meniscus ended his running regimen, was pedaling on a street by a subdivision.  He'd ridden that particular street many times before "with no issues," he recalled. That street, however,  had recently undergone repairs.  "I guess they had a little bit of asphalt left over and put it on the shoulder," he explained.

His front tire ran into that asphalt.  His shoes came unclipped from his pedals as he flipped over the handlebars.  "I'd had a lot of wrecks and just got up and brushed myself off," he said. But this time "there was a terrible pain in my right hip and I couldn't stand."

His wife, Janet, drove him to the hospital.  Four fractures were found in his hip.  Due to the nature of his accident, doctors wanted to do a CAT scan.  He waved them off but those doctors--and Janet--prevailed.

The images revealed a mass pressing against the front of his skull, pressing against his brain.  The doctors thought it was brain bleed, considering the kind of accident Flippin experienced. (I had a mild brain bleed near the back of my head after my crash in New Rochelle two years ago.) Looking at those images again brought more somber news:  what doctors thought was brain bleed was, in fact, a baseball-sized tumor.  A few days later, they realized the tumor was malignant.

A grueling surgery and rounds of chemotherapy defined his two years--until cancerous tumors developed on his breast bone and ribs--and another on his skull.  That is how Flippin learned he has a rare blood disorder that predisposes him to tumors growing on his bones.  Radiation was no longer an option, so in October of 2021, he underwent bone marrow and stem cell transplants.

He's been cancer-free ever since.  Six months later, he was on his bike again.

Being the pastor he is, he believes that God used the accident to save his life.  Well, I won't comment on that, but it's not hard to wonder what would have happened to him had he not given in to his wife and the doctors and not gone to the hospital--or gotten the CAT scans.

And now I'm wondering what happened to that woman I saw, with her bike, on the side of a New Jersey road so many years ago.

Why Don't They Protect Us?

 Helmets are for sissies.

I actually said that once.  Of course, that meant I would soon don the best head protection available at the time:  the Bell "turtleshell."  At that time, I told myself that a real man can indeed wear something more substantial than a Team Peugeot cap on his head.  But, of course, that wasn't the real reason why I--a manque transgender woman--wore a cranial shield.

In time, most cyclists I'd ride with in clubs, training or races would wear them, too.  Women, it seemed, were more willing, even if they were worried about messing up their hair.

Well, I just learned something I never expected:  Women may have less reason to wear helmets.  Now, I'd like to think because we're tougher and more resilient, or because we have so much more brain matter that we can afford to lose a little.  

From Femmecyclist

The real reason, though, is that helmets may do less for us than they do for men.  According to a recent study, although we're more likely than men to wear helmets, we have higher rates of serious head injury (in spite of less head injury overall).

What accounts for this difference? The study posits that it can be one of two things:  sex disparity in helmet-testing standards or "intrinsic incompatiblity between available helmets and female anatomy."  

This reminds me of the "female problem" in medicine:  Most of what doctors and other medical professionals learn is based on studies done on males.  So the data is biased; so is the perspective of doctors. Most standards for everything from blood pressure readings to medication dosages are thus based on data gleaned from studies done on men.

I know that many women have difficulty finding helmets (and other apparel and equipment) that fit them.  I wonder whether the helmet issue has to do, not only with the differences in size and shape between women's and men's craniums, but also in the ways our heads move and balance on our bodies.

This Isn't An Experiment

Some people simply cannot abide any toe-clip overlap.  Me, I can stand a little, depending on the bike and how I'm riding it.  But this is, shall we say, a bit out of my range.

What's worse is the way it was achieved, if you will:

I'm thinking now of Rigi bikes from about 40 years ago. Its creators made the wheelbase shorter by splitting the seat tube in two--rather like the top tube on a mixte frame--and running the wheel between the smaller tubes:



I've heard of a bike that does the same thing with the down tube:  The front wheel runs through it.  I don't know how one steer such a machine.  The only possible use I can see for it is a motor-paced time trial.

Now I'll dispense with the levity:  As you probably have surmised, I didn't try to alter Arielle's geometry. Rather, it happened--in front of a nondescript tenement on Bonnefoy Avenue in New Rochelle.

I was pedaling, at a pretty good pace, home from Connecticut.  Well, I thought I was going home:  I hit something and, the next thing I knew, I was getting stitched up.   Then someone in the New Rochelle hospital decided I should be observed in a trauma unit, to which I was sent. 

Poor Arielle.  As for me, I still feel pain on the sides of my neck down to my shoulders.  Oh, and I have a headache and have been tired.  A trip to the drugstore felt like a century or a marathon.

When I got home, my face looked as if someone had superimposed a railroad map over a satellite image of the Martian surface.  It's a little better now, but I don't think I'll be modeling for Raphia any time soon.

I hate asking for money, but I think the real pain will begin when I see what my insurance doesn't cover.  So, I've set up a GoFundMe page.

I hope, more than anything, to be back in the saddle soon.  Until then, I'm going to catch up on some reading, writing and a project.  And Marlee is going to catch up with, well, the cuddles she misses when I'm out of the house!

Thank you!

Jury Awards Cyclist Injured By Bike-Lane Obstruction

Sometimes it seems that there aren't any penalties for creating hazards in a bike lane.  I can't begin to count how many times government vehicles park in them, or civilians use them to pick up or discharge passengers.  Worst of all, though, are objects left thoughtlessly or deliberately in our paths.

Such an obstruction ended the career of a Securities and Exchange Commission official.  In April of 2016, James Schnurr was pedaling down a bike lane in his Jupiter, Florida neighborhood when he struck a stanchion.  According to his complaint, he "was ejected from his bicycle and hit the ground," causing "significant and permanent injuries."  The SEC hired an interim replacement for Schnurr in July of that year and he retired permanently that November.

James Schnurr

In addition to incurring expenses for his medical, nursing and rehabilitative care, Schnurr suffered a loss of earnings (he was making $248,000 a year) and the ability to earn money in the future, according to his complaint.  So, he filed suit against the homeowner's association that oversees Jonathan's Landing and Jonathan's Landing Golf Club, Inc.

He claims that the companies erected the stanchions--which are typically used to hold up chains, velvet ropes or cloth belts to delineate crowd-control boundaries--but failed to provide pavement markings, signage or other warnings as to their "hazardous nature."  It is not clear as to why the companies erected the stanchions.

The association and golf club fought the charges. Still, a Palm Beach County jury awarded Schnurr 41 million dollars but  determined that all parties shared responsibility. Schnurr was deemed 50 percent responsible due to "negligence. The homeowner's association was 45 percent negligent because it failed to notify Schnurr of the dangerous conditions, while the golf club's 5 percent negligence contributed to his loss, injury or damage. Now it is up to the court to determine whether that $41 million will be cut to reflect how responsibility was distributed.

Whatever happens, I hope this leads to more awareness of how cyclists are endangered, whether deliberately or unwittingly, by obstructions in bike lanes that are supposed to be safe for us.

How Strong Does A Helmet Need To Be?

Current bike helmet testing procedures are fairly rudimentary.

That statement comes from two Swedish companies whose names are associated with safety.  One is well-recognized by Americans:  Volvo. I can recall when the company's ads included the claim that their cars were "the safest" on the road.  The other is POC, which makes helmets for cycling as well as other sports.

They have a point:  Most helmet tests "involve being dropped from different heights on either a flat or an angled surface" and might mimic low-speed falls onto curbs.  They do not, as Volvo and POC state, "take into account vehicle-to-bike accidents."

Previously, the two companies collaborated, along with Ericsson,  on another project aimed at making cyclists safer in the presence of cars.  In January 2015, they exhibited a prototype of a car-and-helmet system created to warn Volvo drivers and cyclists of their proximity to each other which, the creators believed, would prevent crashes.  That system, however, was not developed commercially.  As noble as the intentions of its creators may have been, such a system is fairly useless--unless, of course, the car and helmet have compatible systems.  That would be the case for the small percentage of drivers and cyclists (outside Sweden and a few other countries, anyway) who drive Volvos and wear POC helmets.



Now, a helmet that can withstand a collision with an automobile might be more practical. Still, I think it's fair to ask:  How much more practical is it?  Are there any studies that show how many collisions involve the cyclist's head slamming against the hood (or some other part) of a moving car or other motor vehicle?  

If a cyclist is run down from behind by a motorist who blew through a red light (as happened to Frank Scofield), how likely is it that the cyclist's head will make contact with the vehicle?   I can't help but to think that in such a collision, or the one that took the lives of five Michigan cyclists three years ago, helmets, no matter how strong, might not have made the difference between death and life, or prevented permanent injuries.

Don't get me wrong: I am in favor of making helmets safer.  But I also think they should be designed to protect cyclists in the conditions they have the greatest chance of encountering.  If someone can show me that a helmet made to withstand impacts with motor vehicles  can prevent , or could have prevented, fatalities in a significant number of crashes, then I'm all for what Volvo and POC are trying to do. Otherwise, I have to wonder just how useful it actually is.

Hot Spots In The Evergreen State

Recently, Bicycling! magazine published its "Best Bicycle City in America" poll.  This year, Seattle got the top honor.

But, as we all know, no matter how good a city is for cycling, crashes are always a possibility, just as they are for motorists.

With that in mind, a local law firm, Colburn Law, sifted through five years of crash data and determined 15 "hot spots" in Washington State.  Not surprisingly, the first seven, and the majority of those on the list, are in Seattle. 

One reason is that crashes occur most commonly at intersections and, of course, there are more of those in a city.  On the other hand, more fatalities occur on open roadways, possibly because motor vehicles go faster on them than on city streets.  

The hottest of the "hot spots":  4th Avenue and Pike Street, Seattle

The Colburn report does raise at least two pertinent questions, both of which relate to the changing cycling scene the Emerald City as well as the Evergreen State.

One is how effective dedicated bike lanes will be in reducing the number of crashes.  I have not been to Seattle but, from what I've heard and read, it lags behind other "bicycle friendly" municipalities in its construction of lanes and other infrastructure, though the pace has increased recently.  And, some of the new lanes are separated, at least by pylons and planters, from the traffic lane.

Another question is whether the city's new dockless bike share programs will increase the number of riders who go without helmets--which, planners expect, would increase the number of injuries and fatalities.  So far, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of such things, as police have actually issued fewer citations to cyclists who weren't wearing helmets (which are required by law) in 2017 than in 2016.

Whatever the answers may be, they probably will have no bearing on whether Seattle "repeats" as "champion" in next year's poll.

The Dangers We Face In Cities

A common misperception about cycling, especially in cities, is that the hazards cyclists face are self-inflicted.  Some media outlets, such as Faux, I mean Fox, News and the New York Post depict us as surly scofflaws who had it "coming to us" when one of us is injured or killed by a driver who was texting.

According this infographic from Chicago Bicycle Injury Lawyers, the truth is quite a bit different: