Why I Want to Bicycle Around Europe

Originally, I planned to road trip, backpack, or hitchhike Europe.  There's only one reason that I decided to bike instead:

Sexism.

Let me clarify, nobody says that females cannot drive, backpack, or hitchhike around Europe.  They don't allow women in the Tour De France.

One of my goals was to ride in the Tour De France, I have never watched the Tour De France, and I didn't know much about it, but I wanted to race in it.  I didn't care if I won or not, obviously.  Then, when I started reading about it, I found out that only men are allowed in the race.

To adventurous girl this came as almost a shock, I thought that cases of sexism like this only happened on a small scale in certain places, but a famous race?  The biggest bike race there is?  Really?

Here's a pretty good article about the subject.  The comments are really worth reading as well.  Personally, I believe that if we can't be in the men's race that we should have our own at least, but as mentioned in the article, not as many people would watch, and sponsors would be harder to get.  That's a problem in my opinion.

Perhaps the only reason I care at all is because I'm still upset that I can't race in the Tour De France.  I do intend to do as many races that I can enter as possible.  If more women riding is the way to get our TDF then I'm in!

I'd say most little girls in America learn to ride a bicycle, I don't really know about other countries, but I'd hope that it is the same most places.  If it is, then why is there a problem of fewer female cyclists?  Assuming the same number of girls learn to ride bikes as boys (which is a pretty big assumption I know), the same number of girls should be encouraged to ride as well as the boys, then there wouldn't be a problem with this.

So I am going to bike around Europe in my own mini-protest of sorts.