Die Allianz T-D-P » gadget set them apart fromother

I think bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel ... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. -- Susan B. Anthony, 1896Girls who break camp and ride,daughters of iron fleur-de-lis andpearl sankofa, smashing homeruns,charting backhands, in city sandlots,with floral abstractions and lightningrod detail, calculating their girl futureson urban stoops, long after dark,long before Wimbledonssilver trays spell out their planetarynames. Foremothers, women of ryeinvention in the business of movement& motion, concoction & measure,The Paper Bag, 1868,belongs to them.They rode their bicycles out of tightboxes and off their chains into a propellerof girl wind, only to discover thewide stained glass slide of themselves,they sallied forth and circled,in drums of cotton and sailboats of lace,salty & pugnacious, riding with handlebars but with no hands,Sue Sally Hale, colored in a mustache and dressed like a man just to play polo in Southern California in 1950.Juggling dream notes and sketches tenfeet in the provincial air, as their bikesflew the red dirt roads, women of wheelwind now giving historical permission totheir daughters traipsing gridirons, pitchingdiamonds, running the wooden courts,sleeping with their hands still arced inblack belt tunics and butterfly capoeira.This love song is for those who masteredthe almost falling over, in order to relishthe sublime female flight of up & away,the journey of female physical intentionAnnie Taylor, first human to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.The great girl flight is the tumbling from asolid, to a liquid, to a gas. Full throttle withwheels calculating the circumference ofinvisibility, fending off trumpets of chivalryand doubt, giving birth to shy daughters inneed of the sweet roux of their own bluecornflower flame. Contortionist swangirls of the track and field thathail from Housing Projects and Hollers,measuring the mechanics of their owndust tracks on the road, sweating the detailsand leaving their girl trace,The Murphy Bed, 1885,is one of their contraptions.Wrapping lavender and rosemary garlandaround the velocity of their handlebars,they sing and sign to the whirling, pirouetting,dervish band of other girls with wheelsfeverishly bringing up the rear, eyes andaureoles leaned in, pressing on aroundeach bend, loop de looping the arenawith their mighty wheelworks mastery.The circumference of a girl who wontback down is a registered trademarkmotion. On wheels, no longer standingstill they learn what makes them tick.Remembering how their mothers madequiet haste of cabin fever, preferring torqueto meander, saying No to any parade ofpretty dainty wave.Cathay Williams was also William Cathay, Secret woman & Buffalo Soldier, 1866.They would rather be chased and nevercaught, than stared at and never seen,daring, wild, and crooked free, and womanenough to build their own time capsules,The Windshield Wiper, 1903,invented by a girl.Sometimes a girl can sail her bicycle,sometimes her arm is already the wheel,she is the girl-woman of the double-quickhips, twerking with her kickstand up,Virne Mitchell, pitcher, who struck out Babe Ruth. Women would later be bannedfrom the sport.They refashion new arenas for womenwho fence and cover their hair, withcrescent and purpose, then lunge withmight and fearless heart.Monopoly, the game, 1904,was invented by her kind.No bra or bodice, she is at homewith her inner workings and the quickcockpit of her mind. Nobodys Foolcomes tattooed across her back beneath herhoodie. This great grand daughter, thesister, the lover to the woman who inventedthe circular saw in 1813,then bloomers in 1851.Verve and gadget set them apart fromothers, they are comfortable in theirrunning shoes and bloomers, relaxedwith themselves in an easy loose-fittingkind of way. Sing the love song againstthe liar who has tried, since the Gamesof Hera, to tell us who they are, fillthe silence that can set in quick whena girl is told from stroller wheel towheelchair, A girls mind is not that quick.Watch closely for the girl who is intenton spinning her wheels in the cockpit,Bessie Coleman, piloting herJenny into Paris, smiling downat the ones who told her shewould never fly a plane.Near the hoop, around the arena,past the insult, into the microphone,women who invented exertion,who thought go & travel a fragrance,The female Sumo wrestlers of 1870. Hattie Stewart, pugilist, 1884. The Women of Roller Derby.Girls who GirlTrek and gad about forfreedom from inertia, in the name ofgetting the lead out, with the same DNAas the women who inventedScotchgard, 1953, andKevlar, 1965 (5 times tougher than steel).From the wombs of women whobent forward all day in high cotton,beyond the wired corsets of motherswho could not leave the house(and still be thought of a lady),into the high notes of womenprone to move, girls made fromthe cloth of loose womenremoving their corsets withoutpermission, strait-laced womenwho took years but finally learnedto disobey the rules, then who withfists and fisticuffs fought back.We march into the new Hippodrome,in the name of women who twitch & move,to honor the long-legged,