June 2012 Cupcake Ride Details
June Cupcake Ride deets! I’ve planned out a ride where instead of taking trails, we’ll be riding down the ‘Shared Roadways’ and bike lanes that make up our disjointed bike network.
Hope you can make it out!
Date: Sunday, June 10th
Time: 1pm
Start: Short and Sweet Cupcakes
1945 Avenue Road
- up to Felbrig Ave to Elm Rd
- Cranbrooke Ave, right on Jedburgh Rd/Duplex Ave
- right on Glencairn Ave to Rosewell Ave (while detouring through Alexandra Blvd and Lytton Blvd)
- to Roselawn Ave, then right on Edith Ave
- Eglinton Ave to Lascelles Blvd
- Kilbary Ave to Russell Hill Rd (wheeeee!)
- through Cottingham Rd to Davenport Rd*
- left on Shaw St to Harbord St.
- Ossington to …
End: The Wedding Cake Shoppe
859 College St
*We could ride all the way to Osler Road to make a detour out to the West Toronto Railpath and loop back on College to the Wedding Cake Shoppe. We can discuss the day of!
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Short and Sweet Cupcakes is requesting for us to pre-order our cupcakes because Sundays are super busy for them. If you could let me know what flavour you’d like to try by Thursday, June 7th, I’ll relay the order to them for us!
The Wedding Cake Shoppe says that we could place an order (so that we have the flavours we want there) or they would just bake some extra cupcakes in anticipation of our group.
So if you’d like to pre-order at The Wedding Cake Shoppe as well, please let me know.
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The closest TTC station to Short and Sweet Cupcakes is Lawrence station on the Yonge line.
From Lawrence station you can bike up Duplex/Jedburgh to Fairlawn and then up Elm (kind of a reverse of our trip from Short and Sweet), this way you can minimize ride times on Lawrence and Avenue, where cars tend to speed.
If there is enough interest, I could do a pick up of cyclists at Lawrence Station and we could ride up together to Short and Sweet. Just let me know in the comments.
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• Sorry gents! This ride is for girls only!
• Please check out my ride rules prior to the ride!
• You can RSVP at the Facebook event page!
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The Cupcake Ride is organized on a volunteer basis and it is not a professional organization. As such, each of us is responsible for our own safety and well-being during an organized event. The organizer is not in any way responsible for any participant on the trip. However, as a group of friends, we make an effort to look out for one another to the best of our ability.
Almost Wordless Wednesday
My contribution to the ‘Chalk the Block‘ event in Brockton Village, on Dundas St. West between Dovercourt and Lansdowne.
Why I Organize Girls Only Rides
Thanks to the Cupcake Rides I’ve met so many awesome women who’s main mode of transportation is a bicycle.
Before I organized these rides and met all these amazing lady bikers, however, I only knew a handful of women who biked in the city. And within my close circle of friends in Toronto, I’m still the only girl who bikes regularly in the city.
When I show up to meet my friends somewhere with my helmet dangling from my arm I am met with comments like, ‘I can’t believe you bike in the city. I’m too scared.’ or ‘No way, drivers in Toronto are too crazy. I don’t know how you do it.’
Sadly, these sentiments aren’t exclusive to my group of friends and they probably represent the main the reason why so many women don’t bike in Toronto and North America.
Statistics show that in Toronto roughly only a third (and only about a quarter in North America) of cyclists are women.
Taken from the City of Toronto 2010 Bicycle Count
This cyclist gender disparity is the reason why I started the Toronto Girls’ Cupcake Ride.
I should really create a FAQ page, but in the meantime hopefully these points shed some understanding on why my rides are for women only.
Why are the Cupcake Rides segregated?
- To encourage more female cyclists to bike in the city.
- aka to take some Affirmative Action.
- To create a special ride just for women, much like there are sporting events just for certain groups of people (a person from Europe can’t compete in the PanAm games, and American athlete can’t compete in the Commonwealth Games).
- To create a ride that is non-competitive and welcoming.
- To create a ride that allows first time or newbie cyclists to feel comfortable riding on city streets while being sandwiched by more experienced riders.
- To build female camaraderie within a bike culture that can sometimes have a chauvinistic side
So those are great reasons, but why do we need to encourage more female cyclists to ride anyway?
- Our roads are clogged with pollution emitting vehicles and our public transit is bursting at the seams, by getting more people to bike we can alleviate the pressures on traffic and public transit ridership plus help to reduce pollution.
- Strength in numbers! More cyclists on the roads can help create safer bike trips because drivers become more careful.
- Strength in numbers! More cyclists can strengthen our voice at City Hall.
- Modest increases in bike ridership could yield major economic, health benefits
- If you love riding your bike, why wouldn’t you want other people to enjoy this wonderful activity?
I’m sure over time while I mull this over I’ll have more to add.
These are my reasons for creating a women’s only ride, which I wanted to share to counter some of the, at times nasty, comments that I receive from *ahem* guys who feel left out.
And to be frank, I volunteer my free time to organize these rides. As such, I should be able to organize them in anyway I want.
The Bike Corral
YAY! The bike corral has returned to Kensington Market!!
Now if they can provide another corral for the southern part of the neighbourhood (on Kensington Ave by Essence of Life or that tofu store) it would be amazingly perfect.
Almost Wordless Wednesday
A nice sign on a quiet strip of Shell Road, in Richmond, British Columbia.
May 2012 Cupcake Ride Details
Announcing the details for the 2nd Cupcake Ride of the third season! Hope you can make it out!
Date: Saturday, May 26th
Time: 1pm
Start: Swirls Cupcakes
4158 Dundas St. West
- east on Dundas St. West to Old Dundas
- then into the Humber Trail
- out to Stephen before tucking back into South Humber Park
- east on The Queensway (bike lanes)
- cross bridge to Martin Goodman Trail east
- all the way to Logon St.
- left on Queen St. to
End: Desmond & Beatrice
750 Queen St. East
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I know we can head directly to the Martin Goodman Trail from the Humber Trails, but in this political climate, it would be nice to show all the weekend drivers that there are indeed a LOT of cyclists that utilize bike lanes. So that’s why I’ve planned for us to ride on the Queensway.
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If you are planning on TTCing out to Swirls (this part of Dundas West can be a bit bike unfriendly – despite the bike lane on Dundas West over the Humber River by Lambton Park), I would suggest taking the subway to Royal York Station and then ride north on Royal York Road. This portion of Royal York Road doesn’t have bike lanes but the bike map shows it as a ‘Suggested On-Street Route’.
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• Sorry gents! This ride is for girls only!
• Please check out my ride rules prior to the ride!
• You can RSVP at the Facebook event page!
—
The Cupcake Ride is organized on a volunteer basis and it is not a professional organization. As such, each of us is responsible for our own safety and well-being during an organized event. The organizer is not in any way responsible for any participant on the trip. However, as a group of friends, we make an effort to look out for one another to the best of our ability.
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PS!!! I’m changing the date for the June ride to be on Sunday, June 10th instead of Saturday!
Almost Wordless Wednesday
Gridlock in the bike lanes – most times people pass me on the left (ringing their bell courteously only happens about 50% of the time).
What gets me are the people who pass on the RIGHT. Ugh! It’s so dangerous – please stop.
Sweet Ride: Cupcake Edition Recap
Despite the nippy weather, we had a great turn out for the first Sweet Ride of 2012!
Thank you so much to everyone who came out to join my co-organizer Joe and I on this ride.
We started off at Flour Studio on Eglinton (where most of us totally earned our cupcakes after riding north towards Eg and climbing all those hills to get our meet up location).
With all the delectable cupcake flavours to choose from, I think many of us had a hard time to pick just one to eat!
Then it was time to hit the trails and wind our way down to Bobbette and Belle.
After a little bit of riding on Bathurst we entered the beautiful Kay Gardner Beltline and enjoyed a downhill ride through to Mount Pleasant Cemetary.
Well … actually the whole ride, not just the Belt Line was downhill! I’m glad I brought the grocery-getter (despite the basket malfunction – who knew that Loctite would be THAT important over bumpy terrain) and not the fixie because I was able to coast for almost the whole way!
Then after a slightly rocky trail along Bayview, we hit up the Don Valley trail south to the Lake Shore trail before we headed up Carlaw to our final destination!
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And I don’t mean to gush so much but I just love< Bobbette and Belle.
Everytime we visit the beautiful bakery, we always get such special treatment. The first time we visited, owners Allyson and Sarah took time out of their busy schedule to come meet us and also treat us to special bicycle paperclips (that I still use in my daytimer). The third time they had special whoopie pies for us to try. This time all of us riders were treated to a free macaron to go with a cupcake (or other purchase).
Despite always being busy with customers, Allyson, Sarah and the Bobbette and Belle staff always make us feel really welcome.
Thank you ladies!!
Thank you again to everyone who came out! It was so nice to bike with so many Sweet Ride and Cupcake Ride veterans but also with a lot of first timers. Hopefully we’ll see you again soon.
And a big thanks to Joe who took the reigns to do most of the planning for this ride and being our leader for our beautiful ride down the city.
To see more photos, check out the Flickr set here.
Here are Joe’s photos and some rider submitted photos on the event page!
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If you missed this ride and want to join us on the next one, check out the season schedule!
Julie’s Team Ride for Planned Parenthood
One of my favourite bike blogs is The Julie Blog.
Julie is a NYC lady biker (love that term she’s coined) with a lot of sass and cute style! She blogs about her daily biking outfits and shares her adventures on her cute Linus bike that she’s nicknamed ‘Kate Middleton‘.
I’ve mentioned this many times before but her panda shot skills are second to none. I’m actually quite jealous of them. As you can see, even when I’m stationary I can hardly take a decent self-portrait.
So when she started fundraising for a great organization, through the 5 Borough Bike Tour by selling her handmade necklaces I had to get one.
And today it arrived! Want your own necklace? You still have some time to snag one!
Almost Wordless Wednesay
My grocery-getter on parcel delivery duty.
