Ukulele player and work colleague Fran has fitted a skirt guard to her bicycle. This is significant in that most bicycles in the UK don’t come with skirt guard fitted. Fran after many years of cycling is now finally able to ride while wearing a skirt.
BSY
Nipper
Skirt guards DO matter. That one looks like it suits Fran’s bike well.
That’s the skirtguard I’ve put on my Pashley Princess to replace the original. It’s excellent and has a vintage “wrought iron” look that people tend to comment on (they assume it is metal).
Hi Nipper,
Just found your website via David in Assen. Very entertaining, and like the bikes you’re riding. Here in Darlington the council got Cycle Demonstration Town funding in 2005, have spent a fair bit, though a lot of it on marketing. They are proud to ahve more than doubled the level of cycling here, though from a very low base. That same year we founded a Cycling Campaign, which agitated and campaigned to ensure that the newly pedestrianised town centre was open to cyclists. Battle won, though just.
Your experiences down there, however, mirror ours – lack of good infrastructure where needed, helmet obsession, always giving way as we cross side roads etc etc etc. Kind of feel the cycling lobby needs a clear, simple and coherent policy – we need cycling infrastructure on all busy roads. Any chance, I wonder?
Cheers
Ah yes! There are such practical items that every bicycle should come with! (On gent’s bikes they’re called “coat guards”) I’ve got an old Malvern Star 3-speed which I’m restoring (slowly) hopefully I can share pictures with you later.
Awesome! These will come in very handy for cyclists heading to dressy places that are participating in HER Helmet Thursdays here in Monterey County, California. Now if women lament they can’t bike to Jose’s Lounge Underground for the Thursdays discount, because they like to twirl in skirts while dancing, I’ll steer them toward bicycle skirt guards! Thank you.
Thanks Mari.
I am pleased to see you are trying to promote cycling in your local area. However promoting helmet use has been shown to actually discourage cycling. I would urge you to change tack and promote your scheme to all cyclists and not just those wearing helmets. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that wearing cycle helmets is more dangerous than not wearing them, they encourage motorists to drive more dangerously when passing cyclists and they can increase the risk of some types of head injury. There are no studies that can link a decrease in head injuries with increased helmet use. You can find out all the information on cycle helmets at http://cyclehelmets.org/index.html
I have cycled for more than 30 years and do not wear a helmet because cycling is a safe activity; my children do not wear helmets for the same reason. The use of cycle helmets is promoted by the motor industry to try and shift blame for accidents from the motorist to the cyclist. The only way to have real safety for cyclists is to deal with the dangerous cars. We need better infrastructure, traffic calming and a criminal justice system that has a zero tolerance to dangerous driving. Car and lorry drivers need to be educated that they are driving very dangerous weapons and it is their responsibility to drive with care and respect for pedestrians and cyclists.
I would ask you to read this post at David Hembrow’s wonderful blog it is food for thought when trying to promote cycle safety
http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2010/01/perceptive-comments-on-safety.html
Best
Nipper
Thank you for sharing this info, Nipper. I sincerely appreciate it.
It makes sense that the name HER Helmet Thursdays™ seemed to imply that this is about promoting helmets or bicycling safety. However, it is not.
To clarify, HER Helmet Thursdays is an ecology-economy partnership to encourage cycling in general. It is not a project to promote cycling safety.
The discounts in HER Helmet Thursdays are indeed for all cyclists, not just for those who actually wear a helmet.
HER Helmet Thursdays is a community service project created and launched in Monterey County by personal donations and volunteer time. There is no fee to participate. There are no discount books or stickers to purchase, no punch cards or coupons to obtain. (While those items may be very helpful in other programs, they are not part of this one.)
Instead, it is the bike helmet that is used as a way to show businesses and organizations that the individual is cycling. Walking in with a bike helmet in hand gets you immediate discounts on Thursdays at entertainment venues and educational attractions (the “E” in HER) and restaurants (the “R” of HER) at participating places all over Monterey County.
For hotels and other lodging places (the “H” category in HER Helmet Thursdays), cyclists may show a rental receipt or rental agreement, or bring their own bike. For lodging businesses, showing a helmet isn’t requested, since it is very easy for these places to note the presence on their property of a guest’s bicycle.
There’s absolutely nothing about the program that requires a cyclist to wear a helmet while cycling (they can toss it in their daypack while cycling if they prefer). The helmet is simply their “admission” to saving money at lots of places throughout Monterey County.
I hope this helps to clarify why the “helmet” in HER Helmet Thursdays. And thank you again for sharing the helpful info. 🙂
Thanks Mari,
I was thinking about how you could include all of the non-helmet owners in your scheme and wonder if presenting a ‘bicycle pump’ could be an alternative to a helmet when asking for your discount. It would be just as good a way to prove you were riding a bike and is a useful bit of kit for any everyday cyclist to carry. Indeed all my bicycles have a pump fitted to the frame as standard.
On the ukulele front I am thrilled to hear your daughter is a ukulele player! Perhaps you would like to send a photo of her ukulele and her bicycle, as I am starting a collection for this blog. I wonder if you have been to the Ukulele Club of Monterey? It looks like great fun. They have a you tube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVoDxi1lt_s the club details are;
Sundays 5 – 8 pm
Monterey’s Ukulele Club
Gianni’s Pizza
725 Lighthouse Ave
Monterey, CA. Info: Steve Brooks (831) 624-7022
I run a ukulele club in Taunton and have lots of free songbooks to down load, your daughter might like to check them out at http://www.tusc.co.uk/ (just click on the songbooks page).
Best
Nipper
PS: My daughter plays uke, which is how your site caught my attention. Very cool! All best wishes, Mari
Thanks for another good idea, Nipper. A pump certainly conveys the message that one is cycling. Like you, I have one fastened to my bike, though–as with helmets–not everyone has one here. After polling some folks locally, the consensus was clear to stick with the name “HER Helmet Thursdays” and the bike helmet as the item to show. My dad often repeated Abe Lincoln’s words, “You can please some of the people some of the time; you can’t please all the people all the time.” Of course, I also remember my dad saying a lot, “It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind!” Although no program-wide change about the helmet now, who knows? Tal vez mañana.
I do welcome any individual participating business or organization to let me know if they feel strongly about offering an alternative to the helmet. In that case, I’ll post in their individual listing that they allow a helmet or a pump as evidence of cycling.
Regarding Gianni’s, they not only have yummy pizza, but other tasty food, plus gelato! I’d love to have them join in on the HER Helmet Thursdays fun. The Sun eve uke club is apparently not mtg there anymore.
Thank you for the link for my daughter, which I’ll pass on to her. She’s 21, and some of my fav times are when she plays Ingrid Michaelson songs on uke or guitar and I play along on piano while we sing together. Nothing better than making music with your kids–unless it’s a bike ride! My son and I used to combine the two; we made up a very corny song about our favorite bike route when he was quite young..and I certainly won’t embarrass him, or me, by sharing it here!
I have a Brompton and I wear long skirts. (One of them met its demise). Where or how could I get a skirt guard for my Brompton?