Offensive Obscenities Directed at Women on Organized Bicycle Rides in Iowa

On the RASH Ride, I walked into the bar in Littleton, Iowa, and a small group of seeming well-wishers, mixed in gender, greeted me as the only bicyclist they'd seen so far that day. The RASH Ride route had been reversed so that Quasqueton would get some traffic as one of the first stops instead of the last. Littleton was the first stop in past rides. Now it was the last.

One man, who I assumed was a veteran, had a prosthetic leg. I was wrong. He'd been in a motorcycle accident. I greeted him and he asked which bike team I belong to. The team name was printed on my jersey. I'm a MelonHead.

He said, "I like your melons."

Now what did I do or say to provoke that comment?

He persisted. When I walked out the front door, he said, "Bye, melons."

On the Stiff Ride June 21, it got worse. I thanked a tall, older man who held the door open for me at the Shack bar in Cedar Rapids, and asked him his name. What he said was too obscene to repeat here, but he actually had his offensive a.k.a. embroidered on his shirt.

My husband and I saw him hold the door open for two younger women, and they, too, thanked him and asked him his name. He repeated the same sexually graphic obscenity referring to a sex act. They, like me, were taken aback. 

"Team Stiff" was embroidered on the other side of his shirt.

I also saw this man getting into the driver's seat of a black-and-gold Hawkeye sag wagon ambulance. He does not do credit to his team or the Hawkeyes, and he's old enough to know better.

Being a woman bicyclist on an organized bicycle ride should not serve as an opening for this kind of sexist and offensive abuse.