Nine Years: What Writing This Blog Is Teaching Me

Nine years ago today, I started this blog in much the same way I start many of my rides:  I had a general idea of the journey I was undertaking, but I had no idea of where it would take me along the way.

About all I really knew when I published that first post was that I'd be writing about me and bicycling.  And, I supposed, anything related to them--which, of course, is open to very wide interpretation.  

So, if you've been following this blog, you've heard me ramble or rant about any and all sorts of things:  history, art, architecture, literature, New York, Paris, food, gender and more.  If you'd told me, for instance, that I would try to explain how a certain molecule works, I might have wondered whether you were partaking of substances that have only recently become legal, and only in a few states!

The fact that I write such posts (however ineptly) might be the reason why I've kept this blog going.  While I never imagined writing a post like that one, or some of the others I wrote, I also knew that this blog could not simply be a recounting of my rides or a discussion of equipment.  

 I realize now that this blog has become a forum for my experience of bicycles and cycling.  Whatever I see when I ride, what I think about when I'm adjusting my derailleur, what I recall from rides past, and the things I've learned about everything from urban panning to music as a result of my rides, are all part of my cycling experience.  

Really, I can't think of much that doesn't relate to bicycles or bicycling.   At least, there aren't many things in my life that I can separate from my experience of cycling. So, I expect that as long as I continue to write this blog, it will take twists and turns I never expected.  

Thank you, dear reader, for taking the journey with me.  I'm not done yet!

So You Didn't Marry The Girl Or Guy Next Door? Thank Your Bike!

If the love of your life is of a different race, ethnicity, national origin from your own, you have the bicycle to thank.  I might say the same if your significant other is the same gender as you, or identifies in a way you never heard of until you left home.

That's more or less what University of Arizona historian David Ortiz says.  As I've mentioned in several posts, no less than Susan B. Anthony said that the bicycle did more than anything to emancipate women.  Cycling would change the clothing women wore, allowing more freedom of movement.  The bicycle also allowed women to travel unchaperoned by males for the first time.

And, says Ortiz, it also allowed men to travel greater distances.  At the time the "safety" bicycle was introduced, most people never got further than about 50 kilometers from where they were born or raised.  For a young man, then, "the girl next door" wasn't a Hollywood stereotype (well, ok, Hollywood didn't exist then): If she wasn't the one he married, she didn't come from much further afield.

Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with marrying the girl (or guy) next door, if that is what you want.  I just think it's nice to know that it's not the only choice.  And, of course, having two parents of very different backgrounds can be a great thing for their kids:  What could give them a better education?

As a transgender woman, I can't help but to think that such heterogeneity, along with women's liberation, helped to bring about, however slowly, greater acceptance of LGBTQ people. It's no coincidence, really, that the first and most vibrant queer communities have been found in cosmopolitan neighborhoods and cities.

So, if I ever find myself hooking up with an Afro-Japanese Brazilian bisexual whose pronoun is "they", I know the bicycle is responsible!  

Seriously, though:  From what David Ortiz says, the bicycle made us freer.  Certainly, I feel freer when I ride!

Technology And Propaganda: The Bicycle In World War I

If our only hope of survival is halting climate change, then the only way the human race will truly advance is if we get rid of war.  That's what I believe, anyway.

That said, I also understand that you can't ignore war if you study history. So, because I am interested in history, and the roles the bicycle has played in it, I've written a few posts about how bicycles have been used by the military.

World War I may have been the conflict in which the bicycle played the most pivotal roles.  It raged at exactly the moment when technologies spawned directly and indirectly by the bicycle were starting to take forms we recognize today.  In all of the nations involved, with the exception of the United States, millions of people rode to work and school, and for fun.  Even in the States, many of adults were still riding, as affordable, reliable automobiles (think Model T) were still a decade in the future.

Doran Cart is one person who recognizes the importance of bicycles in the so-called "Great War".  He is the senior curator of the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City.  When the US entered the war in 1917, military leaders "realized bicycles could make a difference in certain situations," according to Cart.

French military folding bicycle

Although they weren't particularly useful in the trenches and weren't particularly safe on open roads, bicycles could reach areas inaccessible to motor vehicles, and were more reliable.  These factors also made the bicycle, in many situations, the quickest way to convey messages. Bikes also were used, interestingly, on airbases.

What might have been as important as the bicycle's utility was its familiarity.  Unlike other technologies deployed during the war, almost everyone was familiar with the bicycle, as most rode them as civilians.  This meant that soldiers didn't have to learn how to use them, as they did with, say, trucks or planes.  Because so many men and women in uniform had been riding bicycles for all or most of their lives, at least some knew how to repair and maintain them.  How many people knew how to fix a plane or tank before the war?

That familiarity, according to Cart, also made bicycles useful in another way:  they were "a humanizing aspect to the war."  Because bicycles "represented something that every person could use" and were (and are) "available to everyone regardless of social class", they turned out to be rather effective propaganda tools.  Countless illustrations from that time depict young soldiers on or with their bicycles.  I mean, if you see this "Avanti Savoia" ("Onward Savoy"), you might think the 26th Bersaglieri Battalion was embarking on a bike tour.