This morning I had an amazing ride to work. This blissful, cosmopolitan feeling of anonymity. No remarks, no “meeeeee-sus” or “MALAI!” or smooching sounds. Perhaps everybody I passed had a late night. But there was not even one remark. I passed through traffic, passed through teenage school boys too cool to pick their feet fully off the ground as they walked, but even they had nothing to say about a WHITE WOMAN, BIKING, ALONE!

I began to dream about biking through a big city, like Lisbon, or even St. Louis my mean mid-American home, plotting never to own a car, to be one of those crazy few who just refuses. In fact some of the best people I’ve ever met were bike messengers. I do not think it is a coincidence.

Part of this hallucination was the idea of starting an all-girls biking club. Me and Queen-of-Weekend are always out biking around Dili, and I wonder what reaction we would get if we were in a group of 10 Timorese girls. Kind of like a grrl, pedal-powered Harley gang without all the noise and drugs and violence. (But I suppose we could build up to that!)

posted by JG at 3/27/2003 08:52:00 AM