Women mountain-bikers

I love mountain-biking and the only elements I fear are falling, going over the handlebar and colliding on single track. To alleviate that later risk, I have a bell that I use liberally before any blind corner, yet, that doesn't prevent shock-encounters and I've had my share of those, some more brutal than others.

Of course, there's that key rule for single track riding; The cyclists traveling downhill should yield to the ones headed uphill. With very few exceptions, men generally get that rule, but most women don't. Is it because female are spatially challenged and can't tell uphill from downhill, or is it that they expect men to always yield to them, no matter their right to it? I don't know, but their attitude ticks me off.

Yesterday, as I was riding my mountain bike uphill, I came across two girls yakking as they were barreling down the trail. At first they didn't appear willing to slow down, but they eventually stopped when they saw that I was neither stopping nor yielding to them. I thought to myself, “hey, we're making progress!”

Then two miles down the trail, in a notorious blind area, I met that girl that was going like a bat out of hell; she didn't even try to stop and I'm the one who violently hit the brakes in a last-ditch effort of self-preservation. I came to a full stop while she blasted through, I continued and soon realized that as a result of my pulling on my rear brake lever, the hydraulic disk brake was stuck and was jamming the wheel.

I was forced to walk the bike home and this gave me a perfectly good reason for blaming that particular girl and all the other women mountain-bikers, the world over, for my ordeal!