Freedom is Coming and She’s a Bike
No, the old lady on a bike did not bike off into the eternal
sunset. She is still alive and pedaling
even if, to be honest, often these days perched warm and dry on her indoor
exercise bike looking out the window at roof tops and hillsides battered and
drenched by Mother Nature.
But the weather wasn’t what kept me from blogging last
year. It was the struggle to keep alive a
business called Whistle Stop Co-op Café and Bike Shop. It was a fun, but calamitous adventure that
blew a gaping hole in our retirement piggy bank.
One of the worst mishaps
was the obliteration of 2/3 of Whistle Stop’s beautiful mural meant to enhance
the neighborhood ad infinitum. Unfortunately the colorful
image of a biking lady in African dress, surrounded by verdant meadows and
sweet charming friends, has been messily obscured with institutional green
paint. The reason is that we have rented
the building to a nice gentleman who has deftly transformed it into an East
African coffee shop. I guess the poor
guy didn’t realize that destroying other people’s art is a bit of a blunder in
American culture. But he has promised to
replace the lady on the bike with a beautiful mural of an African savannah with
a woman carrying a pot of water on her head.
“But the lady on the bike was even wearing an African dress!”
I protested to the guy when I first saw green paint dribbling off the wall in
her place.
“Yes, but people kept coming in and asking me to fix their
bikes,” he whined. “I don’t know how to
fix bikes!”
I guess I loved the young African lady on a bike so much
because she was a woman-power salute painted on the busiest corner in southeast
Seattle.
Once in India I saw
two women biking in saris and gave them the salute. It brought to mind a Susan B. Anthony quote:
“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.”
Maybe it’s too much to ask that African immigrant women to be
thus emancipated so early in history.
Once I saw a little girl about eight years old in African dress out
biking on the Chief Sealth Trail. But I
have never seen a grown woman wearing a burka “ride by on a wheel."
To the contrary, the other day another East African gentleman
told me that in their culture a woman walking in the street is suspected to be
a “loose woman.” I hope the man was
exaggerating/spinning a yarn. Next to
riding my bike, my favorite activity is taking a walk. I take one almost every day. To be culturally and socially inhibited from walking
down the street would be tantamount to prison.
Imagine being under house arrest for your entire life!
When I think back to the early days of the women’s movement,
I wonder if it ever occurred to Betty Friedan and friends how lucky they
were. Maybe they were imprisoned within
suburban homes with refrigerators and washing machines, but at least they could
get out and take a walk a bike ride.
