Thursday, May 30, 2013

The Bakery: Be the Change



I recently had the opportunity to sit on a panel about the future of women in mountain biking at the MTB Tourism Symposium in Sooke, British Columbia. The answer to many of the questions posed was simply that we need more women to ride. So how to do get more women involved? Some of us are fortunate to live in areas where women’s riding clubs, groups and lessons are readily available, where it feels like you see just as many women out for a ride as men, but to affect change we need to close the gap on the percentage split between male and female riders. To do this we need to encourage grassroots action, each of us needs to participate. While more women are joining the sport, the number of people mountain biking is also growing in general, and so we are only maintaining our percentages.

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Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Bakery: Chasing the Dragon



When it comes to sports I’m not a natural. My first few months of mountain biking were filled with frustration, crashes and temper tantrums. If my bike hadn’t been so heavy I probably would have thrown it at least 10 times. And I definitely tried to sell it once. I never thought much of the learning process. I was either good at something or I didn’t do it; this is the reason I barely passed math in high school. Leave the ‘jocking’ for the jocks, I’ll be over here writing art history papers, thanks. Not until I tried mountain biking did I realize how addicting it can be to conquer the things that challenge you the most.

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