Monday, December 22, 2008

The Bicycle: A freedom-machine for women?

Since girls with bikes is going to be a primary, unspoken theme of my posts on this blog, I figure I should address it early on to head-off any confustion.

American Susan B. Anthony said in a New York World interview on February 2, 1896: "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."
---wp

No doubt. Thank you Facsimile Magazine for paring the youtube video above with such apt excerpts from the wikipedia entry for bicycles. Other content I have shamefully stolen from that particular issue of Facismile Magazine include the banner at the top of this blogging page.

To be sure: I have no idea what the deal is with these Facsimile Magazine people. I tried briefly to figure it out. There website is suspiciously cryptic, to the point that I strongly assume pretensions of hipness on their part. I came across it by google-image-searching for "girls on bicycles," a favorite of mine. Regardless, there is a lot of visually appealing stuff and a bunch of random ironic-type youtube videos to enjoy in the above linked to issue.

Anyway, thinking about the implications of the bicycle on 17th century women, and in light of Rob's eye opening post about Natural Disasters (a favorite topic of ours), I couldn't help but wonder about the possible connection between bicycles and natural disasters.

Natural Disasters and Bicycles: A practice in extrapolating implications

I couldn't find much readily available information on the internet about the role of bicycles in urban tornado situations. I was able to find information about a possible tornado made of bicycles. At first, the prospect of a bicycle tornado raging through a metropolitan area filled me with terror, because most metropolitan areas already have a high concentration of bikes. Thus, many cities, that for geographical-meteorological reasons are structurally-strategically unprepared for the doom of an EF5, could end up in some hot-water.

Upon further review, I realized that this particular tornado was made by some lousy artists who I won't name (for fear of lending support to their lowly habit). I will theorize that, being as it was made by artists, there's no way the bike-tornado could even reach EF0, because that would imply that it actually did something, and welded-trash-art never does anything.

I was able to find a connection between disaster-preparedness and bicycles. Santa Clara County, California Supervisor Ken Yeager, is an outspoken advocate of the role of bicycles in emergency disaster type situations:
If the power is knocked out for an extended period of time, as it was in New Orleans, no one will be able to use credit or debit cards to purchase gasoline, and the gas pumps wouldn’t work without electricity anyway. Even if your car has a full tank of gas, the roads may be severely cracked or shattered, and sections of freeways could collapse, making it impossible to drive to a safer location.

This leaves the bicycle as the most reliable mode of transportation. A bicycle is narrower and much more maneuverable than a car, so it would be easier to guide down damaged roads.

Bicyclists wouldn’t have to worry about finding cash for gasoline or searching for working gas pumps. Flat bike tires are also easy to repair on the road.

I hope many of you will add a bicycle to your list of items for emergency preparedness. It never hurts to be ready.
---http://kenbikes.blogspot.com/search/label/emergency%20preparedness

I Think we can probably all agree with our friend Yeager, and as soon as I get a chance I'm going to upgrade my emergence preparedness kit:

I suggest you all do the same.
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