Cycle Chic

[darkemeralds]

Now that I've been at this cycling thing for a few weeks, I'm becoming conscious of some nuances of bicycling culture.



I'm not yet in a position to create a complete classification system of all the types of cyclists, the styles of riding, or the bicycles themselves, but I am prepared to posit a simple binary:



Put another way: wears lycra or wears street clothes. Lance Armstrong vs. Elmira Gulch, if you know what I mean.

Well, I clearly belong more in the Toto-in-the-basket category, while Portland, generally, leans toward the lycra and the insect-head. The bike shops--which are damned near as numerous as coffee shops around here--offer every conceivable bicycle type, but don't seem to have any cycling accessories that aren't black ripstop nylon and lycra.

So I went a-googling, and I found London Cycle Chic, a blog by a woman cycle commuter in one of the great cycling cities, who is promoting cycling for real everyday people who want to wear nice clothes and get to work safely.

Her brilliant advice on arriving at work fresh as a daisy: Take a leisurely pace and wear loose clothes.

So I'm joining the Cycle Chic crowd (with a sardonic smile on the "chic" part, you understand). My only real cycling problems so far have been not with car drivers, but with faster, younger, more "entitled" cyclists. I want to identify myself clearly and in every way as the other kind. I want non-cyclists to see me and say "If she can do it, I can do it," and then they do it.

And then there will be lots of Elmira Gulches to annoy offset the Lycras and that way Clyde and I won't be so odd.