Good Thing They Didn't Call It The "Jockbra"

In several posts on this blog, I've mentioned that Susan B. Anthony said, in essence, that the bicycle has done more than anything else to liberate women.

Since women started riding bikes, there are probably two things that have done more than anything else to encourage girls' and womens' participation in cycling and other sports.

One is Title IX, the 1972 US law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs--which include school-based sports programs.  Since then, the number of girls' and womens' sports teams in colleges and schools has expanded greatly.  As a result, more girls were encouraged to participate in sports, whether in their schools or outside of it, and one could argue that the subsequent increase in the proficiency of American female athletes has spurred other countries to improve their women's sports programs.

The other is what we now call the sports bra.  Before it was created, girls and women--if they weren't flat-chested--had to live with the pain of their breasts bouncing or the chafing of a bra's wires and straps.  Or they improvised support from duct tape and other items.  Or they simply didn't participate in sports at all.

The last option simply wasn't an option for Hinda Miller.  She had just started working for the theatre department at the University of Vermont and taken up jogging.  She used two bras which, I imagine, restricted her breathing and was probably only somewhat less painful than bouncing breasts.  

Across campus, Lisa Lindahl was dealing with the same problem.  She and Miller reached out to Polly Smith, who made costumes for the university's theatre department.  They bought some bras and tore them apart. "I was taking notes; Lisa was running," Miller remembers.  She was always asking Lindahl, "Does that feel good?"

None of them did.  They tried to come up with a solution when Lindahl's then-husband came downstairs with two jockstraps slung over his shoulders.  He was teasing them, but the proverbial light bulb lit up in Miller's head:  "That's what we want to do," she remembers thinking.  "We want to pull everything closer to the body."

She ran to the store, bought two jockstraps and brought them to the costume shop.  "The waist band became our rib band," she explained.  "We crossed the straps in the back because we didn't want them to fall and it went over our head.  And that was it."

So was the Jogbra born, 40 years ago this month.  It became a national brand and, two decades later, Brandi Chastain cemented its place in our collective consciousness.

Hinda Miller with a bronze plaque commemorating the Jogbra at the University of Vermont.

Today, Lindahl is an artist based in Charleston, South Carolina.  Miller served as a State Senator in Vermont from 2002-2013 and ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Burlington (Bernie Sanders' old job) in 2006.  These days, she serves on the boards of a number of organizations as diverse as the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and the Vermont Youth Orchestra.

If I do say so myself, few people in this world can appreciate the story of the Jogbra's origin as much as I can.  After all, I am a cyclist and someone who's participated in other sports--and someone who's lived on both sides of the aisle, if you will.  In other words, I am a transgender woman and one of (I assume) very few people who has used both a jockstrap and a sports bra!

New Locks In The Town Of "The Wire"

Bike share programs have been popular in most of the cities that have them.  Share bikes provide an alternative to driving or even public transportation (which is often overcrowded or inconvenient) for many commuters, and have given people who don't have a place to keep a bicycle the option to ride.  And, of course, they're handy when a friend visits from out of town and you don't have a bike for him or her to ride.

One problem, though, is that in too many cities, those bikes have also been popular with thieves.  Roberto, my guide in Rome, told me that the Eternal City abandoned its program after bikes were stripped and abandoned, tossed into the river or simply disappeared.  Other cities that were among the early adopters of the bike share idea found that they had to redesign ports and locks and install tracking devices on their bikes.

The problem of theft and vandalism was bad enough in Baltimore that earlier this month, it temporarily shut down its program.  The locks on the bikes met industry standards, but were no match for thieves in Mobtown.  

Bewegen, the company that made the locks, believes it has come up with a solution:  a "Baltimore lock" that automatically clamps the bike into the station when its handlebars are yanked.  According to Bewegen, other unspecified safety measures are also being added to the bikes.

All of the bikes have been shipped to the company's Montreal headquarters, where they will be refurbished as the new locks are made. "It's going to be a hard overhaul," says Chris King, the company's US marketing adviser.  "We're stripping them down to the bone."  He said the company will pay for the cost of the locks and all of the work under the terms of its warranty with the city.

Once the work is done, company officials will go to Baltimore to oversee the installation of the new bike locks.  King has all but admitted that the 15 October target date might not be met.  "We'll take as long as it's going to take to make it right," he said.

And, hopefully, folks in a town known for Edgar Allen Poe, H.L. Mencken and The Wire will be able to enjoy their city on two wheels for many years to come.

Watch For Recalls!

To my knowledge, I have ridden with three bicycle-related products that were recalled by their manufacturers.

The first was the fork on my Cannondale racing bike, one of the company's early models.  In those days, Cannondale made their aluminum frames but supplied them with steel forks made by Tange and other manufacturers.  When I bought the bike, a couple of my cycling buddies warned me that the aluminum frame would fall apart, even though they didn't actually know of any instances of it happening.  So they were as surprised as I was when the fork and not the frame was recalled, especially because many of us had ridden with Tange forks--or even frames made out of Tange tubing, not to mention the firm's headsets--without any problems.

To Cannondale's credit,they made that process of exchanging my fork about as easy as it could have been.  That would have been reason enough for me to continue buying their bikes, if only I liked the way they rode.  I know that some of you love the ride of your Cannondales, and I won't try to convince you that you should ride anything else.  Those bikes just aren't for me.

Anyway, my second recall resulted in my third:  When Control Tech said there was a problem with one of their stems, which I happened to have on one of my bikes, the shop from which I bought it offered me a lighter and more expensive Syncros stem as a replacement.  Not long after, that stem was recalled!

In each of those cases, I was fortunate enough to get news of the recall in a timely way.  In those pre-Internet days, it meant that I was in regular contact with the shop from which I bought the stems and was working for the shop in which I bought the Cannondale.  I wonder whether I would have learned about the recalls so quickly--or at all--had I been like most customers who return to the shop infrequently, or not at all, after buying their bikes.

But even in this day of smart phones and such, consumers sometimes don't hear about bicycle-related recalls.  One reason, I think, is that they are not announced in the media the way recalls of cars or household appliances are.  And, even if the recall of, say, a faulty seat post were mentioned in the evening news program, most people who aren't dedicated cyclists probably wouldn't think it has the same potential for harm as, say, a faulty water pump bearing in a pickup truck's engine. 

So it is especially important to be alert and diligent.  It's also a good idea to stay in touch with the dealer or company from whom you bought your bike.  That said, bike shops are staffed by human beings, who occasionally forget, or neglect, to tell some thing or another to their customers.

2008 Felt S32

According to Mark Ashby, that is what happened to him.  He bought his 2008 Felt S32 racing bike from the Bikes Unlimited of Williamsburg, Virginia in 2011.  Over the next two years, he brought the bike in for regular maintenance.  In fact, according a lawsuit he's filed against the shop, the Felt and ADK Technologies of China (which manufactured the bike for Felt), a check-over and other maintenance items were performed as late as 13 April 2013.

Later that month, Ashby crashed on Colonial Parkway in Williamsburg.  This caused him to "suffer severe personal injuries adversely affecting his health and well-being," according to documents filed in the court.  The cause of the crash, Ashby says, was the fork's steerer tube, which broke and caused him to lose control of the bike.

The Colonial Parkway, where Mark Ashby crashed.

The suit alleges that Bikes Unlimited knew about the recall but failed to notify Ashby. They did indeed know about the recall--of 2009 model B12, B16 and S32 bikes, which was initiated the following year.  The recall was expanded to 2008 S32 bikes--the model Ashby rode--but not until 2014, the year after he crashed.

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think I have to be one to see that Bikes Unlimited was not at fault.  Still, I think this story shows the importance of being alert (Check the Consumer Products Safety Commission website!) and maintaining a good relationship with those who sell you, and maintain, your equipment.

A Journey Continues Across Generations

Some things are worth saving for their intrinsic value, artistic merit or historic or cultural importance.

More often, though, the stories behind objects are what make them valuable--at least to someone, if not to everyone.  

Such is the case of a bicycle that hangs in Les Sorensen's garage.  The Cooks Mills, Illinois resident inherited it from his uncle Einar when he died in 1978.  Einar never told Les the story behind the bicycle.  Rather, the younger man learned about it from letters his uncle's friend, Ed Warren, wrote to his mother.

Those dispatches were sent out daily during a trip Warren took with Einar and his brother Kay in 1922.  Their 62-day journey--which Einar rode on the bike in Les's garage--took them from their native Illinois to Los Angeles.  Some letters were sent  from familiar-sounding locales like Reno, Nevada, while others came from places where one might not expected to find so much as a rubber stamp, let alone a post office.

Along the way, the three young men stopped and worked for money to pay for their trip.  Einar sometimes stayed and worked a little longer than the others, but he would catch up to them.  While they made friends along the way, some places were rather hostile.  When they rode through those not-so-safe areas, they hid their money in their handlebars.

Les didn't find any of that cash.  I am sure, though, that some dirt and dust from their route was still embedded in parts of the bike:  For much of the time, they were riding on unpaved roads and they often had to carry their bikes.  One of Warren's letters says that one day, they portaged their machines 18 miles through the desert.

The letters and other memorabilia Warren's daughter assembled into a book, which she gave Les, offer no indication of any motive--except, perhaps, fun--behind their ride.  When they arrived in California, Kay decided to stay and join the military.  Einar and Warren returned, with their bikes, to Illinois.

The bike Einar rode--and Les now owns--is a Rugby, made in St. Louis.  According to the report I read, the bike had wooden rims, though the ones in the photo look more like chromed steel--and not of the same time period.  I am guessing that the wheels were replaced a few years ago, when Les rode it for a season.

Born 12 years after his uncle's adventure on the Rugby, Les is, shall we say, getting on in years.  He never could sell his antique treasure, he said, so he wants to keep it in the family.  So, he plans to send it to Kay Sorensen's granddaughter in Oregon.  

And, I'm sure, the stories will follow as the Rugby makes another trip to the Pacific. 

Jeff Whitehead Is No Crazier Than Any Of Us

No matter how much you've cycled, it seems that any time you decide to pedal any further than the nearest corner, someone will tell you you're crazy.  

That is what happened to Jeff Whitehead when his neighbors learned he was riding from his home in Laguna Park, near Waco, to Rockport, in another part of Texas.

About 300 miles separate Laguna Park from Rockport.  Jeff Whitehead wasn't going that distance to train for a randonnee or race, see a monument, meet some personal goal or visit a friend or relative.  At least, he wasn't going to see any relatives or friends he knew before he took his ride.

The people he would meet in Rockport became his friends--and, some might say, relatives after he arrived.  You see, he was motivated to take his ride by seeing the television coverage of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated so much of the Lone Star State's Gulf Coast.  "I decided that it was just time to come to do whatever I could to help," he explained.

The destruction wrought by Harvey would make driving a car impossible.  That was one reason why Whitehead decided to ride his bike.  Another is that being on two wheels, instead of four, and not being surrounded by metal and glass "made it easier to go around talking to people" because his mode of transportation had him "in the same boat as they are."  Still, he realized that because he could take that ride, he was luckier than they:  "I did it through a choice; they didn't have one."

His neighbors still might think he was crazy.  To me, he's no crazier than any one of us who's gone out of our way to help strangers--or ridden a bike 300 miles.  In other words, he's as crazy as any other dreamer or hero.  And I'm sure the folks in Rockport appreciate whatever form of insanity Jeff Whitehead might possess!