I had a brief Greyhound bus break in Harrisburg, PA during Round America with a Duck, but it was enough time to catch this photo of a bike rack showing rare female representation in our public spaces on bikes*. I think I squealed out loud when I saw it. (Yes, I’m the person who rides my bike with chalk so I can add pony tales to those men-on-bike markings in bike lanes.) Follow for the rest of 12 Days of Bikemas because I have another GREAT example coming.

The bike rack (along with one of a man and one of a child) was in front of the Rachel Carson State Office Building. Rachel Carson wrote one of the most important books of the 20th Century — Silent Spring — about the loss of birds, the reasons, and what needed to change. It was published in 1963, the year I was born. (Fun fact: my home garden has experienced about a 95% loss of goldfinches and pollinators in just the last fifteen years, but the buses I was on were taking me eventually to Kansas, to a farm right on a major bird migratory flyover route. I downloaded the excellent Merlin app from the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology so I could identify the many birds I had never seen or heard before.)

* Whenever I see something bike-friendly, I research if the community is certified as a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of America Bicyclists (for which I serve as a League Cycling Instructor). If so, I put it on my travel list to come back to ride my bike in the future (#BikesMeanBusiness). Harrisburg is not certified yet but is taking steps forward. Its PeopleForBikes city rating is 29 out of 100. (The best cities in the USA for bike riding are between 70 and 99. My Metro Atlanta city is 16, but, like Harrisburg, taking steps forward.)