In 1935, Ethel Rolf, packed some sandwiches and and set off from Guildford to London (75 miles) to talk part in a 10 mile time trial on the following day. As well as her sandwiches, she also had to carry a spare set of light racing wheels. The Roads Records Association was a men-only affair and didn't allow women to race with men, so women had to journey large distances up and down England in order to find races they could take part in #womenscycling
Evelyn Hamilton was a British racer and the first celluloid celebrity cyclist. in 1932 she rode the 70 miles from London to John o' Groats in 4 and 1/2 days.
Supposedly she joined the French resistance in WW2, smuggling people out of Paris on a tandem, and was awarded a medal by Charles de Gaulle, but the facts of the story are hard to verify and have a few holes.
After the war, she ran a bike shop and sponsored a mens team. in 1952, she rode 12,000 miles in 100 days #womenscycling
Alfonsina Morini is better known as Alfonsina Strada. They called her The Devil in a Skirt as she would lie about going to Mass and sneak of to race instead as a child.
In 1907 she was feted as the 'Best Woman Cyclist in Italy'; she broke the hour record in 1911, riding 37.192km which was over 1km more than the previous record. She's best known for riding and finishing the Giro d'Italia, pretending to be a man. 90 riders started and only 30 finished, including her #womenscycling
Hélène Dutrieux was "a pint sized thrill seeker" from France in the 1890s. At the age of 18 she set a new world hour record and became world champion the next year, riding 2km in 4 minutes and 31 seconds. After success as a cyclist across Europe, she became a stunt rider (La Flèche Humaine); first with bicycles, then motorbikes and eventually she became a test pilot for the new-fangled aeroplane industry #womenscycling
Did you know that there was a serious womens' racing scene in the US in the 1890s? It's exemplified by Tillie Anderson, and the 6-day races were on short tight wooden velodromes with a banking of up to 45%, and cyclists could fly off in to the crowd if they misjudged, or collide with overhead walkways.
There was a massive audience with serious betting on results - several thousand dollars in their money. Tillie was a national superstar who earned serious money #womenscycling
I just finished reading "Queens of Pain" recently. It's a look at the forgotten history of women in cycling over the last century and a bit.
The book is published by Rapha and doesn't have a wide distribution AFAICS, but it's amazing and deserves more exposure. I'm going to send out a few toots summarising the contents, over the next few days. #womenscycling
Before I discovered womens cycling, I was an avid TdF watcher. Now I hardly watch it as there is much more exciting racing to follow. As various commentators like Kathryn Bertine have said, there *was* a women's TdF in both the 1950s and '80s. The only thing stopping that from happening now is lack of desire and laziness. If Christian wants to reinvigorate the event, he needs to get off his ass and take action.
This beer ad went up at a local pub recently. They finished the slogan first and I was in agreement, but then they did the image and now I'm repulsed by the idea
I'm having trouble uploading images to mastodon.social at the moment, in case people aren't already aware. I get a 500 Bad Gateway error
yay! my copy of the Velofocus Road Book 2018 arrived today. It's a glorious photographic record of the 2018 women's professional road cycling season.
In case anyone wants to know what the content looks like, check out http://velofocus.com/
Merry Christmas everyone and a couple of PSAs. Firstly, if you've moved, tell your friends and relatives your new address. That way, you'll get their Christmas cards. Secondly, if you're sending a card, consider putting a return address on the envelope so it can be sent back to you from the old address.
I spent half the day in chats with Network Solutions in order to sort out administrative access to a couple of standby domains that the boss wants. It turns out that they'd created more that half a dozen userids for me linked in various ways to the two(?) accounts we have; only one has ever been used as a login userid. Now I have ten userids amd hate my life
Really? Was that the finale of the Dr. Who season? Maybe it's just that I've become a bit used to the overblown histrionics of the last few seasons, but that didn't feel like a finale to me.
So steam have a free trial for Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I finished it in a few hours and thought I might buy the full game (or the previous one, which I still haven't played). JFC, it's expensive. I might have to wait a few years before I can justify paying that :(
Best things I've read on today's npm brouhaha:
- https://medium.com/@jsoverson/exploiting-developer-infrastructure-is-insanely-easy-9849937e81d4
- https://gist.github.com/dominictarr/9fd9c1024c94592bc7268d36b8d83b3a
I can't count the number of times I've handed over control of an npm package I owned to some random person on the internet. It used to be considered a best practice, a solution to OSS maintainer burnout. Ah well.
The remote UK community living off-grid
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-45046023
(submitted by cmsefton)
