Ladybiking Love: Spring Showers Jackson Style Edition

Because it's spring in Jackson, the weekend brought a sudden turn for the snowy (slash freezing rainy) in the weather. Given the 50 and 60 degree days that kept popping up without warning, I kind of thought I'd be telling you all about getting Little Red back in fighting trim for an early spring ride. That was a big fat nope after the vicious ice reappeared with a vengeance.

Thankfully, the League of American Bicyclists saved the blogging day. I actually signed on to the site because I needed to see where Wyoming ranks in terms of its bicycle friendliness. Instead, I got distracted by posts about women in biking history as part of the League's Women's History Month series, which is much more impressive than mine.

Both of the women were suitably badass, but I particularly loved Frances Willard, who was badass in the 1890s.

Frances Willard, courtesy of CUNY's Investigating History site

My favorite part?

"I learned to bicycle when 50… and I think it is one of the best things I ever did,” Willard wrote. “What pleases me is to see other worn-out women take it up, and fine a new lease of health and life thereby."

She also named her bike Gladys, which is enough on its own to make me adore her. 

It is seriously cool to hear from one of the early women to try the whole challenging her body thing, especially because this was back in the day when women were supposed to be super delicate flowers. Unless, of course, they were poor, in which case they were supposed to do back-breaking work in shitty conditions and still raise kids. Reality-based notions of women's abilities and worth were still in the future, and seeing women doing a sport (!) in public (!) was huge for advancing them.

Even now there are a ton of messages that say women aren't physically strong, women shouldn't be out on bike routes alone, women prefer bikes with superfluous flowers on them instead of any actually practical features because they don't really do anything hard.

In one summer, I got strong enough to make it up a 10 percent grade without stopping - the exact same 10 percent grade I shared with Serious Biker Dudes. And I did it with sequins on my very practical mountain bike. Trying to explain how that feels to someone with the privilege of knowing society always has and always will assume he is capable on his own merits is tricky.

I can do things some subsets of common wisdom say I can't. When I fail, it's clearly because I'm a newbie, not because I'm a woman. My body and its abilities are not defined by what makes it female. Learning to mountain bike means I know this on a level I didn't before I ventured into this more extreme area of physical activity, and I am that much more powerful because of it.

Imagine what a difference that feeling must have made to a woman like Willard. Imagine when she realized her body was strong and capable and useful in a way it hadn't been before; a way so different from the one she'd been taught to consider important; a way considered actually impossible for women to achieve at the time. Empowerment really can be that simple.