From Riding Without Tires To Leaving The Competition In His Tracks

Some of us have ridden bikes with mismatched or missing parts.  We may have ridden such bikes because we didn’t know any better.  Or we may have been too poor for a “proper” machine.

Such was the case for Richard Carapaz.  His father brought home a blue BMX he found in a junkyard.  That bike was missing a seat, pedals or brakes.  He rode that bike—without tires on the dusty roads near his home.

That home was in the Ecuadorean village of Playa Alta, near the border with Colombia.  “Alta” means “high”, and that’s no exaggeration:  It’s in the Andes.

Riding in such conditions surely helped him during the past couple of weeks, when conquered climbs on the Alps and
Dolomites.  Those ascents, and strong time trials, helped  him to win the Giro d’Italia.

That victory made him the first Ecuadorean winner of one of the Grand Tours.  While racers in neighboring Colombia are among the sport’s best, cycling has been relatively unknown in Carapaz’s native country.


Whatever else happens, Carapaz is unlikely to forget his roots:  His family has saved that bike he rode without tires.

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!