rebeccmeister | International Women's Day [bicycling]

Happy International Women's Day! Let us begin this by saying, Not All Men.

Some of you might remember when I wrote and posted a draft article about pee funnels. A couple of you had really helpful feedback on the draft, too - thank you! To be honest, I sat on the draft after that. But recently, someone has been releasing videos of other Paris-Brest-Paris ancienne's sharing about their experiences with the ride and their advice, and one of the women interviewed also mentioned challenges with the bathrooms. So that was enough to tip the balance, and I finally submitted the article.

The editor got back to me promptly just to ask if I had any photos that could go with the article, but I didn't. I had the idea that it would be good to include a photo showing the pee funnel clipped onto my Camelback while I'm out riding, but I don't really have a good way of taking a photo of my own backside while on a bike. But I looked ahead on the calendar, and noted that International Women's Day was coming up, and along with it, an International Women's Day Populaire hosted out of a bike shop north of here. So perhaps I could persuade someone else on that ride to snap a photo for me.

I checked the website for the ride repeatedly in the days leading up to it, but the website info stubbornly continued to say "TBD" with regards to the 2026 ride (

scrottie and I did the 2025 ride last year, so we have some experience with this brevet region, and the info from 2025 remained posted). I did find a way to submit a form saying I would ride, but other than the automatic confirmation message, heard nothing more.

So somewhere between Friday and Saturday, I had to figure the ride seemed unlikely to happen, and I should cut my losses. In the meantime, someone from the local social cycling group posted to a group to see if there was any interest in a 10-30 mile ride on Saturday or Sunday. "I'm interested," I replied, "Can you name a start time and place, and a route?" It was soon settled, meet up at nearby Washington Park at 11 am for a 30-mile ride out to Nassau for burritos, and there would be four of us riding! In the big picture, that fit better with everything else I have going on right now, compared to a 60-mile/100k brevet that also requires a good 50 minutes of driving each way.

Of course, I then finally heard back from the Populaire organizer Saturday afternoon, but informed him I had made other plans because I hadn't seen evidence that the ride was actually going to happen.

Anyway, it was cold up until Friday, but the high temperature today was 52°F, so Everything was Melting.

Except for the shaded parts of the bike path.

Whoops. I suppose people vary in how carefully they check to ensure the route they've selected is actually useable.

Still a nice day for a hike-a-bike, with some sunshine and fresh air.

I had some flashbacks to a time in the winter where

scrottie and I had tried to ride this trail, but encountered sheets of ice. This stuff wasn't *quite* so bad because it was all melting, but we eventually resorted to riding on some rather busy roads in the interest of getting to actually ride our bikes to our destination instead of taking them for a nice long walk.

Eventually we made it for tacos! Well, actually, I think all four of us wound up getting burritos, and that was also the point where we discovered we were a roving band of bicycling vegetarians! The burritos tasted fantastic, and it wasn't just the hunger talking.