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Thanks for the Mammaries:
The Fat Tire Age of Innocence
by Jacquie Phelan
Mammaries leave an impression, however shallow, in other people's minds: Tom Ritchey invoked 'em in a Hungarian MTB magazine many years after the 84 Rockhopper 4-Lungs race where they got such good exposure. The magazine editor asked about the single weirdest thing he ever saw happen on a mountain bike. Once Darryl Price inferred that my flagrant Alice B. Topless gesture "permanently warped" his 13-yr old brain.
BikeReaders may have heard a version of the 1984 shirtless story, but it is always distorted, and I want to set the record straight, especially the "Why?"
I did it because Absence
of Kit wasn't illegal yet, in those simple pre-NORBA rulebook days. There's
more to finishing shirtless than just losing one's tan lines. [Historical note:
From 1981-85, there were 2 NORBA rules: you get no help from any other rider,
and you have to finish on the same bike you started on.]
Breasts. They are quite popular with the readership (presumed male) of all bike
mags. Look at the lame soft-porn ads! Logic dictates that real breasts would
be even more popular, but as soon as they become original equipment ("OE spec")
on a racer, and as soon as they are observed to be passing a fellow as if he
were riding backward, suddenly the picture changes. They, and the rider, become
a) show offy, b) unfeminine, and c) in violation of some rule -- where is it?
We meant to write it down here somewhere....
Thanks to my not-at-all unexpected trip into Cancerland, I've become more sensitive
about issues like Breast Awareness, and Breast Benefits. So I'm hauling mine
out again for a tour of duty. Since the Big Bang of mountain biking's racous
inception, I've upheld standards of feminine insouciance
and reckless devil- and NORBA officials-may-care abandon. "Early detection"
was my mission: I wanted folks to detect a woman zooming past.
It was in the merry merry month of May, 1984. A time when you could study the
tracks in the dust and damn near identify the person who'd been out on the trail
that morning. Mountain bike racing was the focus of my life, my "work", since
the it involved at least ten or more hours a week of exploring the hills for
new wildflowers, unnamed creeks and yet unridden trails, and recovery included
vast expanses of recovery time, usually out in the garden, or on the couch with
a book, or tucking into a pot of fresh pasta, and second helpings of dessert.
Any selfish young woman in my shoes would have done the same. But young women
weren't doing the same. They came to the races, but they stayed on the boring
side of the fencing. Oh, wait, there weren't crowd barriers then, because the
crowd hadn't exceeded the number of racers....
Thanks to a woman ten years
older than I, and just as crazed about racing as I was, a separate turf for
women was created, possibly altering the direction of the sport. All we did
was invite women to come ride on Mother's Day.
The previous week, Casey Patterson and I had hosted a historic Mother's Day
Tour. Casey's foolproof bait to hook clients: "Leave the kids and husbands home.
We'll cook AND do the dishes!"
Seventeen of us took part, including a couple mothers with their daughters.
For two days we ate, rode, gossiped, sweated, howled over our beer at night,
and sometimes we doffed our tops in the summer sun. Until that campout, there
had never been a gathering of more than 3 or 4 women on bikes anywhere. Comparison:
the National Championship the previous winter had featured three women. It was
a foregone conclusion that men were the only people buying and "really using"
mountain bikes.
Pulling into the parking area and seeing all those bikes... well, that part
about racing has never changed for me. That is when the butterflies hatch in
my stomach. The registration line was almost as long as the portapotty line.
Excited jabber filled the air, punctuated with the gasps of the bicycle pumps,
the whir and click of the freewheels, the universally ignored babble of the
bullhorn.
On May 20th 1984, 324 riders convened in Santa Rosa California's Annadel State
Park to test the limits of their legs and lungs, raise a little money for the
American Lung Association, and brag a little. I'd hoped to have a Cunningham
team jersey, but it hadn't arrived by mid-May. Suntour was already messing up.
I painted up four camouflage t-shirts with Charlie Cunningham's brand in a cobby,
custom fabric paint, and at the last minute opted not to use mine.
The press, i.e. Fat Tire
Flyer, the only fat-tire magazine, was bored. My winning was a foregone conclusion,
hence not newsworthy. I had a friend stencil the name "Cunningham" across my
back in that same yellow paint. Instead of the t-shirt, I wore a one-piece swimsuit,
whose thin cross-straps revealed the sponsor's name: "Cunningham" in Carolingian
miniscule script, owing to our Scots Irish heritage. Jan Shaw's custom polka
dot shorts, knee socks touring shoes, plus a two pound hardshell helmet completed
my "uniform". I was a fashion desperado.
On the line next to me were Tom Ritchey, my beloved Charlie Cunningham, national
champ Joe Murray, favored local Gavin Chilcott, teen downhill demon Peter Lewendal,
Scot Nicol. 'Twas a Who's Who of racing. Casey Patterson, the NORBA silver medalist
that year, was a hundred riders back, having missed the call to the front row.
At 5 feet even, and 90 pounds, there was no way she could muscle back in. Thankfully,
we women weren't relegated to a separate (unequal) start later in the day. Despite
the initial jostling, this was all to the good, since I had a sick need to beat
men on their own turf.
Back then, fat-heads competed as one big red-eyed human stampede, six across
and 50-60 deep. If you could see through the dust, we all looked pretty much
the same: helmet, t-shirt or jersey, and some sort of shorts. The pros had black
ones.
The pro men did about six
more miles than the masses, meaning I did 22 miles instead of 28, so I finished
ahead of them. With five remaining miles I approached the final descent -- in
those days you did one huge, epic 22-mile loop -- I saw by the tracks that there
was only one rider ahead of me, on Snakebelly tires. That had to be Charlie,
my beloved husband, doing the 22 miler in the vet category. I wriggled out of
the one-piece swimsuit, careful not to crash now of all times. Somehow out of
the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Tom Ritchey by the road's edge, maybe
fixing a flat. He was flabbergasted.
I flew in, arms aloft, figuring, "they're going to change the sport soon enough,
might as well have a little fun while it's still legal". At the time, we "pioneers"
in Marin were "NORBA", the National Off Road Bicycle Association. It would change
hands three times and when it came under the rule-cramped USCF in 1989, a shirtless
racing ban went into effect almost immediately.
Back at the race, the feedback
I got was 99% positive, the only negatives coming from a couple of dudes who
felt it made the event laughingstock. Event organizer Lynn Woznicki was all
smiles, being a wild woman herself. There was no possible way the gesture was
degrading or obscene. It was not perfectly spontaneous, either, but it had to
do more with exuberance than exhibitionism. After crossing the line and unpinning
my number, someone took a picture. I pulled up the suit and went off in search
of the beer, and Charlie.
The local newspaper ran my comment in the tag line: "I was tired of being mistaken
for a boy".
© Jacquie Phelan
other stories by J Phelan
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