The Girls' Bicycle Handbook.

An exciting package appeared in my letterbox this week. Actually, two exciting packages appeared and they were all BOOKS.
"But this blog is not about books! It's about bicycles and fat bottoms of the unappealing, Mom-jeans kind," you interject. Because you like to cut me deep.

But! (Butt?) One book was about both Bicycles and tangentially, Fat Bottoms. I received a copy because my Fat Bottom is IN IT and 'IT' is a lovely slice of publishing entitled The Girls' Bicycle Handbook by Caz Nicklin of London Cycle Chic.

Here it is nestled in some ivy because lord knows we can't look
at anything now unless it's Instagrammed within an inch of reality.

It's subtitled Everything You Need To Know About Life On Two Wheels because it contains exactly that if you are a girl person who rides a bike or would like to get back on her bike without lycra or racing anybody to work. (Although there's a section about that if you want to!)

The Handbook blends bicycles, history, fashion, advice, and stories into a healthful smoothie of informative reading and pleasant pictures. It's like your favourite bicycle blogs in physical format, quite literally as many Lady Bicycle Bloggers of all stripes are to be found within. The virtual, pink-spoked circle has crossed over. But the bulk of the book is a 'How To' garnered from Caz's experience as an everyday cyclist and purveyor of bicycle chic. The focus is firmly on cycling for transportation and incorporating your bicycle into your life without drastically changing your style or identity. I was very pleased to see the section on maintenance as this is something I've wanted to learn more of ever since I became reacquainted with bicycles. It begins with the most basic procedures like how to pump up your tyres and ends with things you can do to spend less time and money at the LBS so even if you know NOTHING, you can start here.

Common Noises and What They Mean is a very useful subsection of this.

The guide is comprehensive enough that if you are yet to acquire the two wheels of the subtitle, there's advice on finding the right bike. If like myself you are already 'rollin' and subsequently doused in a tide of 'hatin', there is still plenty to enjoy with tales from women around the world, women biking with families, women who have gone to the next level for fitness or even… Yes. Here be the rarest of Roadies - The Lady Lycra. Softly calling from the pink-washed finish line, "One of us. One of us!"

The Girls' Bicycle Handbook officially launches on April 3rd, 2014 and is currently available for pre-order here at London Cycle Chic. (Fat Bottom not required.)

More ivy and the other books that arrived this week.
#Poseur

Vintage Ten Speed is Painless, it Brings on Many Changes.

(Apparently the 1980s is Vintage now. I am so very, very old.)

Jealousy and curiosity being equally powerful motivators, it wasn't long after Ginger went Full Roadie that I began to wish I could experience the social aspect of the road ride without all the attendant arse padding. Especially when special 'family' rides were offered by various organisations and I found myself road-blocked from even the lower end rides because my bicycles were too 'slow'. "Road bikes only!" they inevitably specified. Aside from justified outrage that a 'slow' ride did not appear to exist in Perth (I have since discovered there was a Tweed Ride in Fremantle last year. Fie on after-the-fact facts!), I was genuinely interested in expanding my bicycle skills by experiencing different types of bicycles. I had also seen how slender road rider's arms were, thus invoking the third motivator: Vanity. The pseudo-nonchalant viewing of local ebay listings reached its inescapable conclusion…

circa 1980s 10 Speed Repco Traveller.

The comfortingly solid steel and lugged Repco was purchased with visions of a bicycle touring Tasmanian future. These visions are still a work in progress, as is the Repco. It was sold in technically rideable condition but with more room for potential satisfaction than current jubilation. For a start, the brake levers are an evolutionary dead-end in the bicycle world. A dead-end which I came to discover had been lovingly christened, 'Suicide Brakes'.

Suicide and lavender. A winning combination.

Note that the usual brake lever sitting on the curve of the drops has a strange side projection. This runs parallel to the straight middle of the bars, supposedly providing the ability to brake while your hands are on top rather than moving them down to the drops. According to internet bicycle history, sports cycling was all the rage in the 1970s and so bicycle shops sold drop bar road after drop bar road to Average Joe despite what Average Joe (or Jollene's) requirements and skills might actually warrant. Instead of admitting that one style of bicycle does not fit all, (and likely blinded by dollar signs as they rode the craze for…um…road bikes…that they rode.) somebody clever came up with the idea of 'safety brakes'; extra levers right next to the top of the bars, coincidentally where the drop bar averse automatically like to put their hands because going from zero to drop bars is freaking scary and people don't instantly take to hunching forward with reduced field of view. Surprising, I know. Great, right? Safety wins again! Except: Turns out that a secondary brake lever is not nearly as powerful as a primary one so you actually get less braking power from the 'safety' brake. It also turns out that the top middle of the bars is the absolute worst place for an inexperienced road cyclist to put their hands as it gives the least amount of stability and control. Lastly, the suicide levers made other hand positions awkward. Ultimately, brake lever technology moved forward and bicycling fell out of fashion so that unsuitable bicycles were no longer being forced upon unsuspecting and innocently ignorant consumers. Until the mountain bike craze of the 1990s when it happened all over again. And now the hybrid bike push. And fixie epidemic. Anyway, having personally experienced these 'safety' brakes, I can anecdotally confirm that they suck. Stopping distance is not so much about stopping as it is about hoping there is a cushioned surface somewhere in the next 5 metres. Or at least not a car.

Stem mounted gear shifters.

The other problem with the Repco is one of my inexperience rather than mechanics. The stem mounted gear shifters and the gears themselves are terrifying to me. They are not 'indexed' as I am used to when it comes to gears. By not indexed I mean that they, 1. Don't have any kind of numbers or lines anywhere, and, 2. Do not reassuringly 'clunk' into place in the way that I am used to gears sounding. Usually, when shifting gears there is a nice click or a clunk to signal to the modern rider that teeth and cogs are interacting harmoniously and you are not about to participate in anything awful like the chain making a bid for freedom or your face meeting the pavement. If indexed bicycle gearing is like a staircase inside your house, these gears are like finding your staircase has been replaced with a water slide. They are known as friction gears and I am told they are a pleasure if you know how to use them. Because there is no predetermined sweet spot, you are able to tweak them to your liking. Great in theory but as I am still learning how to deal with indexed gears of more than one chainring, still a little above my skillset for now. I am aiming to conquer them though because I would hate to replace something which works and also because I think the stem mounted shifters are very pretty.

Lastly, I am not a huge fan of the orange and silver colour scheme but that's a problem for Future Fat-bottomed Girl and the powder-coater of her choice. Hmm…I've always wanted a cherry red frame…here's the rest of the Repco without comment. Or a bit of comment.

Shiny.

There's that 'Vintage' patina! You know. Rust.

I have no idea if this is good or bad.

Restrained lugs.

"Repco Cycle Company Huntingdale Victoria"
Australian manufacturing or just a sticker?

None of that Yankee spelling here. Ls and Us everywhere!

The days of the metal head badge were but a memory when this Repco was born.

Shimano branding detail.

The Fool on the Hill.

Moving from Western Australia to Tasmania, I knew hills would become an abundant feature in my life. I considered how this would affect my ability to bicycle and thought I had things covered from the transport perspective with some very low gearing on the Jenny 7 Schwinn. I had seen the town environment before (on foot) and it was bikeable. I thought there would probably be alternative routes to any extreme inclines on my travels. I thought I had seen hills. And then I saw my new driveway.

I am not pregnant, the front of my dress is FALLING FORWARD.

I had been right about most external factors but a variable I had never considered was the dwelling itself and how easy or hard it might be to get a bicycle out of my house before I even began riding. It made me think about all the places I have lived and their varying levels of accessibility. One thing you sometimes notice riding a bike in the suburbs is just how unfriendly the world must be to people who require wheeled assistance. A number of times I have been cycling along the edge of somewhere I want to enter, endlessly looking for a break in the curb that did not force me into a busy driveway and wondering how people on gophers or in wheelchairs navigate such a car-centric environment. In this way, a two wheeled trip can occasionally highlight the more glaring deficiencies in our urban planning. Obviously, I am able-bodied and so can't speak to the experience of people who don't have a choice. There are undoubtedly a lot of other urban flaws I don't notice because they're not woven into the fabric of my everyday life as they would be for somebody with a disability. After all, when I get sick of looking for the ramp I can always lift my bicycle over the curb. In this regard, I know am lucky. At least infrastructure is something we can hope to change. Geography cannot always be helped.

"Does this slope make my butt look b- Wait. Stupid question."
P.S. Photo not even taken from the bottom…of the driveway.
It's much bigger in real life. So is the driveway.

The state of Tasmania is infamous for hills and my North West town is certainly no exception. My current home is at the base of a brutal hill so the pictured driveway is but a taste of the true depravity of the ascent. Fortunately, town is downhill. Physically getting a bicycle out of my house and to the top of the driveway is not too hard. It's getting back in that actually restricts my cycling activity. Bikes cannot be brought through the front door as there are more than 20 steep and curving steps followed by narrow internal stairs. Bicycles must be pushed up the last bit of hill before my house and THEN up the evil driveway. Not even Ginger's road bike made it over the initial obstacle the first few times he tried. Cycling any kind of bicycle up the driveway is physically impossible. Even driving some cars up it is impossible. Walking is a reckless act of adventure when the surface is slippery. So I cannot take the heavier Pashley out alone because I can't get it back up the driveway without spousal assistance. In this way, my cycling life has been impacted by housing choice like never before. Previous residences have had only a few steps up to the entrance, our last house we even stored the bicycles in the bedroom next to the front door for ease of access. Currently, I have to navigate several doorways and avoid scraping multiple walls just to get my bicycle to the appropriate portal. Living in such a restrictive landscape has certainly encouraged me to consider bicycle movement, housing configuration and geography in the future. It's also made me realise that if I really want to recreationally experience Tasmania from the seat of a bicycle (with bicycle touring being the eventual goal), I have to accept more gears and slightly less weight into my bicycle lifestyle.

I have to dip my toe into Roadie waters yet resist infection. Challenge accepted:

More on this mess later.

Killing Us Softly.

It was with no small share of vested interest that I clicked upon the link for 'How Not to Kill a Cyclist', thinking that approaching the issue from the car driver's worst case scenario might be a great way to advance the discourse on sharing the road. I was immediately disappointed. Amongst a lot of sensible remarks I was confronted by what I think is a very unhelpful addition to the mêlée,

"…there are also many things bike riders would like drivers to know… that “cyclists” and “pedestrians on bicycles” are two distinct groups, or that we know we look ridiculous in bike shorts.…"
(Emphasis mine, obviously. And you certainly do.)

 Later in the article, the author goes on to describe what he probably considers 'real' cyclists, as

"…travelling at a high velocity, and chock full o’ adrenaline…"

and so that is why you shouldn't randomly honk your horn at them out of pure annoyance. Not because it's discourteous, an abuse of the horn and generally a dick-move to make loud noises in public spaces - but because 'real' cyclists are constantly in a 'fight or flight' mode and might bolt from their state of cat-like readiness into oncoming traffic!

Here's the thing about Real Cyclists™ Vs 'Pedestrians on bicycles': As somebody who has spent her entire life at leisure to observe the driving style of friends, family and strangers without a layer of personal ideology for what I think is the 'correct' way to drive (i.e "Exactly how I would do it," as most drivers think) I can tell you that a large portion of car drivers are 'Pedestrians in Cars'. They don't really 'understand' their vehicle and its consequences, they use speed limits as a vague guide, they don't ever consider that they might be at fault, they text or phone or do their make-up or read maps or try to drink scalding hot coffee or smoke or do any manner of things inside their car that in an ideal world would be confined to their lounge rooms. Even drivers who are not spilling lattes on their groins can be unpredictable 'Pedestrians in cars', darting about in a way that does not technically break the law but makes the road more dangerous for everyone around them. Why? Because they are not professional car drivers. Nor do the majority of them drive cars as a sport or take a defensive driving course or learn how to drive as a fleet. They scrape through their driving test and then THAT'S IT FOR LIFE. Now we are supposed to classify them as 'Real' drivers, even if they spend their entire career on the road failing to advance their skills or increase their confidence and racking up speeding fines because they believe that breaking the law in their car somehow 'doesn't count'. So how do other drivers, how would a professional or top amateur racer treat these, the weaker of their brethren? How would current Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel, a man who is such a 'Real Driver' that people pay him to do it, treat YOU and your lack of equal skill on the road? Would he tell other road users that you are the cause of all driving related problems? Would he burn rubber rings around you as he passed you on the freeway? No. He would take you and the varying style of people around him into account.

A cyclist does not have to be speed matching the average car, wearing lycra or "chock full o’ adrenaline" to obey the rules of the road and cycle courteously anymore than weaker drivers have to sit on the speed limit and drive aggressively to be acceptable to other car drivers. What we all have to do is be predictable as possible and make sure everybody knows the rules. If you drive a car, you should already be able to transfer those rules across to cycling and indeed, the majority of cyclists are actually 'drivers' first, cyclists second. It's rare to find somebody who is pure pedestrian/cyclist so the idea that a pedestrian mindset is to blame becomes even less relevant to the debate. To be fair, the article spoke about predictability and cars following the rules as usual when a cyclist is near - but the testosterone fueled 'us and them' mentality hidden within that casual quote is actively damaging to our transport evolution. Ultimately, all cyclists are only as safe as the largest vehicles around them. Yes, the occasional impatient car driver will spend their entire time complaining that not everyone is as fast or nimble as they - heck, they'll probably even honk their horn at other road users as they overtake and then speed off to get to the next red light before everyone else. But does the civilised transport world cater exclusively to the 'Professionals'? Or are we all just trying to get somewhere in one piece?

In the end, the only kind of pedestrians we should worry about? Every single person we see, regardless of what they're driving or riding. We were all born with squashy pedestrian bodies and fragile pedestrian skulls and it doesn't matter how good we are at pretending to be invincible.

2012 Tour de Pants.

Well, the live-streaming of this years Tour de France has begun - which means the Fat Bottom household is awash with boring conversation about sprint stats and the aerodynamics of rear wheels countered with vapid remarks about how pretty the Leopard Trek outfits are and what a pity it is they are now called Team RadioShack Nissan Trek because it's a lot less mysterious to have 'Nissan' written on your badonka-donk.

I am personally mourning the absence of Andy Schleck, only because I enjoy saying 'Andy Schleck' a lot more than saying 'Frank Schleck' but fate has been kind and given me a gift in the form of Edvald Boasson Hagen and I challenge any person alive not to think fondly about waffles and icecream when saying 'Boasson Hagen'. Sometimes I whisper it softly to myself as I squirt Cottee's Ice Magic on a Pop-Tart and shed a single tear for 2011 edition Andy Schleck. His sorbet blue helmet left a hole in my heart.

Come back, Pastel Andy Schleck!

Of course, Australia is almost as emotionally invested in the 2012 Tour as they are in say, Olympic Curling - thanks to the defending champion being ONE OF US. Yes, like a marsupial transmitted urinary tract infection, I am supposed to feel the sting of patriotism deep inside when I see Cadel Evans - But instead I suffer from what can only be described as extremely localised Tourette's syndrome. Whenever I see his 'Thunderbirds puppet who was too wooden for Thunderbirds' visage, words spill from my mouth entirely beyond my control.


"Muppet. Muppet face. Muppet face butt chin."

"For goodness sake, cut back on the waving before you get his string tangled."

So long as our internet connection remains, there will be little respite from the testosterone driven glory of the Tour de France and my chances of a mutually upright bicycle with Ginger (Not a euphemism) will be slim to none as the fever takes him. I must resign myself to the endless whirr of the bike trainer, be-lycraed bottoms flashing across my screen and the fact that not even my traditional methods of communication will break through his mania:

 

"Over here! Booooooobeeeeeees!"

And pray to the Roadie Gods that he doesn't find out about 'Bicycle-jersey.net' because I don't know if I can stand to see car advertising wobbling along in front of me without stabbing it with a fork.