Abigail Melton - Gears for Queers

Abigail Melton and Lilith Cooper are a queer couple who are artists, community organisers and service industry workers. Lili grew up cycling around Cambridge and, when they met, transplanted Abis desire to walk the world onto two wheels. This is their first book born out of a series of vegan recipe zines from their first cycle tour. They live in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

Willow House

Stoneyfield Business Park

Inverness

IV2 7PA

Scotland

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright Abigail Melton and Lilith Cooper 2020

Editor: K.A. Farrell

The moral right of Abigail Melton and Lilith Cooper to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Sandstone Press is committed to a sustainable future. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council certified paper.

ISBNe: 978-1-912240-97-5

Cover design by Jason Anscomb

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

Our friends and family met the announcement of our planned cycle tour with confusion and alarm. How could two people, routinely unable to leave the house for days on end, manage to cycle from Amsterdam to Spain?

When we left for the Netherlands in 2016, even we didnt know the answer.

Neither of us had ever done anything like this before and we came at the cycle tour with very different experiences Abi had never cycled more than the 20 minutes to and from work, while Lili had spent more time in psychiatric hospitals than away from their home town. When we boarded the ferry at Harwich, we had no idea how we were going to cope, what this tour would look like, or if we would enjoy it.

Writing this book has been more difficult than either of us imagined. We felt uncomfortable staking claim to the identity of cyclists and struggled to feel our trip was legitimate. We spent hours scrolling Instagram, comparing ourselves to other cycle tourers who had completed their trips in a way we felt we hadnt. We persevered because we didnt want to perpetuate those narrow ideas of what cycle tours and cycle tourers looked like.

Cycling through the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and France for three months, we met only two sets of British cyclists, and yet these paths are just a short ferry ride away. As people become more interested in sustainable travel, we want to encourage people to access these amazing cycle routes, and we want cycle-touring culture in the UK to continue to grow. Visibility is only a small part of this. We need city planners, councils, transport bodies and the government to recognise and act on the demand for family-friendly, accessible cycle paths. We also need a cultural shift in attitudes to cyclists.

On the tour, we learnt some harsh lessons about taking up space on the road. We want this book to both take up space and hold space open for other accounts of bike touring or travelling that are too often silenced, minimised and marginalised. Both of us are privileged in ways that allow our voices to rise above many others in our communities. We have tried, in our account of the tour, to articulate the things that made this trip possible for us.

Lili is non-binary and is referred to with the gender-neutral pronouns they/them, which are used throughout the book.

Gears for Queers can be read by anyone, but it is written specifically for the queers, for other fat, disabled, trans, female, femme and non-binary people who are curious about bike touring. To queer something is to trouble boundaries, to question the divisions into binaries: success/failure, commuter/cyclist, mad/sane, travel/migrate, leave/remain. We hope the book does this too.

Take care and happy riding,

Lili and Abi

Day One, Amsterdam to Durgerdam

Abi and I left the hostel early, hauling our panniers one by one down the steep wooden stairs and depositing them on the damp alley cobblestones outside. I had spent the night lying on the top bunk, listening to drunken shouts and thunder while my mind raced.

Rounding the corner, I was relieved to see our bikes, Patti and Paula, had survived a night in the red-light district. Steel-framed, bought second-hand from Gumtree, they may not have looked like much, but over the months wed spent fixing them up wed fallen in love.

We wheeled the bikes over and rested them against the red-brick hostel wall. Slowly, the pile of bags was distributed across the two bikes. I heaved two large black pannier bags onto my rear rack. As I went to clip the two smaller front panniers the bike shuddered against the wall. I held my breath as it ground to a halt midway through falling, leaning dangerously to one side. I gingerly hooked the front bags on and attempted to right it. It was too heavy. Instead, I wrestled a large dry bag with my sleeping bag, a smaller one with our tent, my ukulele and a large hiking rucksack onto the top of the rear rack, securing them with bungee cords. The final flourish was a small fabric bag I attached to my crossbar.

I stood back and examined the result. Abi joined me with a look of trepidation.

We arent exactly streamlined, she commented.

Well be fine! I replied cheerily, silencing my own gnawing worry.

Abi and I emerged from the alley to join the rush of cyclists on the road up towards the train station. I still wasnt used to riding a loaded touring bike; it was slow and bulky. Quick streams of bikes flowed around us on the cycle path. My arms started to ache from the effort of steadying my unwieldy handlebars.

We rode into the gaping mouth of a cycle tunnel beside Amsterdam Centraal Station. Fluorescent orange lights blinked overhead. We surfaced at the back of the station, clambered off our bikes and wheeled them onto the foot ferry. The small boat which crosses the old bay connecting Amsterdam with the sea was busy with morning traffic. I gripped the handlebars of my bike, my nails making crescent-shaped grooves in the grip tape, as the boat ploughed deep furrows into the water.

On the opposite shore, we followed the single road away from the ferry terminal. I patted my pocket containing the folded Google Maps printout of our route.

This was it. After six months of prepping and planning, Abi and I were actually riding our bikes in a whole different country. We werent cycling to work or the supermarket. We were travelling; we were cycle tourers.

This is the same bridge. Again. Abi was barely containing her frustration.

Eurgh, I grunted in response.

Wed been cycling in circles for nearly 40 minutes. It didnt seem to matter what configuration of turns and paths we took, we always ended up here, at the same crossroads, looking at the same bridge. It was like a terrible