Cycle Chic. Sort of.

I was pretty darn excited to see today, a young woman riding a bike in the small city that I work in. People on bikes here are nothing new. College kids ride them all over the place and we have a very large population of folks who are not financially able to support a more lavish vehicle. Being near some "prime riding" suburbs and having a great bike-path leading from them into town, there are a lot of "Cyclists" that come storming in with lycra-clad backs bent low. This girl was something different. She has a step-through, dutch style bike with an IGH and a basket (lots of baskets actually) and flowers on the bars. The whole nine. It looked like a very new and very expensive ANT style bike. She was dressed the part too. Fashionable in black with no helmet or stitch of spandex of any sort any where. Thank goodness, because spandex on this poor girl would not have been pleasant for the rest of us. The sad part of it was that she was clearly not riding it well. She was wobbling all over the place and looked as if she would fall at any second. I hope that this was imply because she was anew cyclist but watching her I couldn't help but wonder it those sit up style bikes might not be just a little harder for a NooB to ride than a more...... "normal" styled bike. I know that, even though it is of a much older design, I personally feel ever so slightly out of control on my 3-speed than I do on my dropped bar bikes or my MTBs. My fear is that, despite the marketing push to get people onto these kinds of bikes they might not be the best for every one. In this young lady's case her weight was very unevenly distributed because of her size and the riding position that her bike made her assume. If she were leaned more forward, she might have had her weight on the front wheel more, making it more planed and easier to control. It would be sad if people DO go out, buy these nice, and very expensive "city bikes" and then felt uncomfortable riding them, or worse, got hurt on them. Still, it was very encouraging to see some one riding, by choice and design, a utility bike for utility purposes in the small city that lends itself so well to cycling. Even though I might have poked a little bit of fun at the girl, if she keeps riding that thing she will be healthier and fitter than she is today. That is if she doesn't fall off and hit her head first.