Biking in the (not) Rain


Some observations on bicycling in my corner of Los Angeles County.

Murphy's Law, Lakin's Corollary: If you don't bike for a week and a half because you're waiting for your rain cape to arrive, the rain will break the very day you stash your cape into your bike pack.

I hope I haven't jinxed the rest of the rainy season... it's been going REALLY well, despite my whining. By our standards, LOTS of rain.

Here follow my observations on bicycling in the portions of LA County I've covered in the last two months:

On the streets of LA, there are a significant number of bicycling commuters, mostly by necessity. The working poor, often immigrants, they ride ancient bikes that don't fit them, with casual disregard for traffic laws. On the trains and buses, there are far fewer bicycling commuters, perhaps 2%-5% on the trains, fewer on the buses judging by the number of occupied bike racks. These better-heeled cyclers have better-fitted, newer bikes with more goodies, and are more likely to obey traffic laws. Many of these appear to be bike commuters by choice.

Neither of these groups contains significant numbers of females. I have yet to see a female cyclist besides myself on the train. Since I take the bus seldom, I can't speak to that, but on the streets at large, female cyclists appear to be limited to the "for exercise and sport" class, not to the "getting to work and back" class. Why this should be, I don't know. Comments, ladies?

Posted: Wed - October 27, 2004 at 06:46 PM   | | | | |

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