Text by Shinya Tanaka Photo by Rie Sawada
I am, of course, not gay.
I am very much into girls.
There is no mistake about that.
Across the ocean, there are all sorts of people of all sorts of races living in all sorts of ways.
Some have a self-employment rate of around 50%, some calculate their pay by the week to decide how much they should work the following week, adjusting their own time, and of course, there are also many who are just as fixated on being full-time workers as people in our own country.
However, setting aside such trivial matters, let me return to the point: the fact that I like girls.
Sugar Wheel Works
I have a photo here.
I met a very cute wheel builder named Jude in Portland.
She was inside a small, very cute shop that specialized only in building wheels.
The name is “Sugar Wheel Works”
It’s a very good name.
She was originally a teacher at UBI's Wheel Building Class.
She started this place by sharing the shop with Natalie of “Sweetpea Bicycles”.
(The first floor is Sugar, and the second floor is Sweetpea’s custom fitting area.)
And there were three things that deeply and strongly impressed me.
1: That someone can make a living focusing on such a narrow and small niche as just wheel building.
2: That a female mechanic is not only teaching, but teaching everyone.
3: That Jude is very cute.
(This is actually a serious point, as many female mechanics in the U.S.
are gay or have a kind of "macho" mindset.)
In short, it means that anyone can do anything, and you should just take action and do what you want to do.
And what I want most for our country is for many more women to get their hands dirty with bicycles, not by acting like hostesses for male customers, but by speaking accurately and selling products accurately. I want them to care less about wearing makeup, to let out that wonderfully beautiful, natural pheromone that comes from within, and to even drool a little while riding harder and faster.
I want people to realize that these things—which are quite normal over there—are not at all common here, and I believe that creating a slightly healthier society (we can think of this as the cycling world, or perhaps society at large; and isn’t a healthy society one where both men and women are equal and have easy access to participate?) is a crucial point for the future of the cycling industry, or even further, for the betterment of this country’s society.
(Though both men and women will have to change their overall way of thinking slightly.)
I aspire to such a society.
Where girls and boys alike cling tightly to what they love, and even though they might shed tears or drool at times, they still dig in and do what they want to do.
I truly believe it would be a good thing if more people like that gathered in this country, to the point where it might even become a world view like Paul Verhoeven’s "Starship Troopers".
(Most of you probably have no idea what that means... but if you’re interested, please check it out.)
To put it more simply:
It’s about being crazy about girls,
It’s about wanting to get to know more girls,
And it’s about how I think everyone feels the same way...
And it’s about wanting them to become people with true hearts, just like those women.
Oh... wishing all the best to the girls.