Why do I see fewer women cycling than men?

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Originally Posted by limewave

Zoom-Zoom, I'm not a fan of riding alone on the trails by us. But I've been on them enough that I know quite a few short cuts if I were to get in trouble. I can take you out sometime and show you some of them. I also wear an emergency whistle on my camelbak and carry an emergency blanket. It may be over the top, but after watching 127 hours, I've started carrying a good knife too. I don't want to have to do something like that with a cheap piece of crap.

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I'd love to hit the trails with you in the future--especially after you've tackled Lumberjack...I know that event is weighing heavily on you (and my hubby, though he won't actually admit it. He's totally freakin' out, ha! ;)).

You know, there are still random cougar sightings around these parts...and now black bears, wolves, and the wild boars from last Summer. Sometimes I think I should be more on my guard for aggressive critters than I should be of nefarious humans or my own klutziness. :p

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Originally Posted by limewave

It may be over the top, but after watching 127 hours, I've started carrying a good knife too. I don't want to have to do something like that with a cheap piece of crap.

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Visual image: limewave's arm trapped under bicycle; hacking it off. :eek:

my two cents(: ditto on the critters! though it is pitbulls and dobies that are my nemesis! I have biked (trails and road) and backpacked by myself- love it! NEVER had trouble with people or "wild" critters....but those two breeds ...sigh...are the reason I carry mace and a knife ):

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Originally Posted by tealtreak

my two cents(: ditto on the critters! though it is pitbulls and dobies that are my nemesis! I have biked (trails and road) and backpacked by myself- love it! NEVER had trouble with people or "wild" critters....but those two breeds ...sigh...are the reason I carry mace and a knife ):

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Ha, my nemesis seems to be doxies...why are such tiny dogs such a-holes!?! I don't have issues with them on the bike, but I sure do while running, for some reason (and they can run pretty fast when they want to chomp on people calves). And I have decided that red-winged blackbirds are the a-holes of the bird world. What a lot of jerks those guys are this time of the year! :mad: We encountered a bull mastiff on our CX bikes last Fall...he kinda scared us. Until we realized that he was standing in the road in hopes that we would stop and love on him, not to hurt him (though I nearly crashed into the big lunk). His name was buddy.

My friend was attacked by a red winged blackbird last week while we were walking. It was freaky!T

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Originally Posted by limewave

My friend was attacked by a red winged blackbird last week while we were walking. It was freaky!T

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I can see them hovering behind me when I run on some farm roads. On my bike they follow me until they hit the next bird's territory, then that bird follows me, ad nauseum. I know some folks have been pecked by them.

Red winged blackbirds are nesting right now, that's why they're so aggressive in the spring. They get mellow after the fledglings grow up, leave the nest, graduate from birdiversity, rack up huge student loans and move back in...

One road we used to ride on south of Calgary years ago had a pair of hawks nesting beside it every spring for 3 or 4 years (it's all suburban houses there now). Far scarier and larger than blackbirds! A friend of ours had talon marks in her helmet shell where one of the birds swooped down and clawed her. My husband decided to draw faces on ovals of paper and tape them to the back of our helmets, as he'd read somewhere about Africans doing that to protect themselves from lions attacking from behind. It seemed to work.