Dreamwidth Velo Club

Had great fun yesterday at the Eugene Disaster Relief Trials, a cargo bike event which is half bike race, half obstacle course: competitors have to haul a five-gallon bucket of water, a five-gallon bucket of dirt, and an orange cone around an urban course, cross obstacles (often with bystanders pitching in!), deflate and inflate tires, and generally do silly things.

I was not competing (I'm only just getting back in the saddle after a lengthy recovery from concussion -- from driving a car, not a bike accident, and yes, I DO wish I'd been wearing my helmet while driving -- and will not be fit enough for something like this for at least a few more months) but we did go down on the tandem, hang out with friends, and watch all the different ways people configured their equipment to meet the challenge! It's also neat that about half the bikes competing were locally-built (everything marked "Bike Friday" is local, as are many of the cargo bikes that look like nothing you've seen before, which mostly come from the Center for Alternative Transportation).

Big photoset on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethanjewett/sets/72157636484496484/

p.s., because I know it may be of interest to some of you: organizers very actively tried to recruit more women competitors; sadly several were, like me, on the injured list, while others had other commitments on a Saturday afternoon. The associated "Fiets of Parenthood" competition was a shorter distance and more evenly gender-balanced (you had to cover an obstacle course with children on your wheeled-and-geared device, and obstacles included "picking up dropped toys" and "hauling groceries.")

NPR's Codeswitch blog, on minority bicyclists (their adjective) organizing.

There's a story that Veronica O. Davis likes to tell about why she started a cycling group for black women. She was pedaling past a public housing complex near her Washington, D.C., neighborhood one day when a young black girl shouted to her mother, "Mommy, mommy, it's a black lady on a bike."

"At first I was like, 'Why is she so excited?' And I realized I'm probably the first cyclist that she saw who looked like her," said Davis.

That one small experience led to a Twitter message, which then led to a Facebook group. Two years later and now 800 women strong, Black Women Bike: DC is a full-blown cycling movement. And it's not alone.

Minority cycling groups are sprouting all over the country. There's the National Brotherhood of Cyclists, We Bike NYC in New York and Cuidad de Luces/City of Lights in Los Angeles.

A recent report by the League of American Bicyclists cites people of color as the fastest-growing segment of the cycling population. Bicycle commuting rates in those communities are growing, too. The League's Hamzat Sani says that's not surprising.

"You'll see a lot of third-shift, late-shift folks or restaurant workers engaged in cycling because public transportation doesn't work when they get off of work. But those aren't the cyclists we'd see in a magazine, right?" said Sani.

ETA: Post this, go back to my reading page to double-check for typos, and immediately below it is delux_vivens link to NK Jemisin's recent experience being stopped for biking while black in NYC. Which is...yeah. *sigh*