The girls take a tour of the student clubs at school and discover the old cycling club's headquarters.
Episode 3 - "Let's Start a Girls' Cycling Club!"
Heh.
There wasn't as much cycling on screen as the first two episodes, but we had to see the Girl's Cycling Club get started at some point and it was a good device to see new students visit other clubs. This was definitely more in the vein of the cute-girls-do-cute-things slice-of-life than a bicycle procedural.
Hey, any excuse to get girls into swimsuits is a good excuse.
Hiromi trotted out another English word, "Gorgeous!" to describe the indoor pool facility. It certainly was and they certainly were!
I cringed at Hiromi scraping her toe on the pool bottom. That little cloud of blood was done pretty well.
Hiromi remembered how to swim as well as she remembered how to ride a bike...
Of course the tan girl Natsumi is an excellent swimmer. And of course a tan Japanese girl is from Okinawa.
Judging from the preview card, Natsumi is going to be the first kind of light drama this show will have. Cycling Club and Swimming Club Fight!
Ha! The first thing Hiromi asked Natsumi was about champloo, which is Okinawa stir-fry meaning "blend."
Fuyune was at the Nurse's Office being a crybaby over her soreness. Natsumi called her "dainty" for having to give up on such a short ride to Enoshima Island.
As an athletic tan girl swimmer, Natsumi should know how to deal with cramps.
The first hint that Fuyune may be a "special" student was how the nurse called her Fuyune-chan instead of by her family name. When we met the principal at the old cycling clubhouse, it became clear why: she's the principal's granddaughter! Everyone is connected to each other somehow through Minami Kamakura High School.
Ah. That wasn't a dead old lady. She just fell asleep with headphones on. It looks like Fuyune has had to deal with this kind of thing before.
And now we get the title of the show through the Girls' Cycling Club revival.
Yes, Hiromi. Bicycles have been around longer than 40 years... The modern bicycle, using two wheels with rubber tires of the same size, came into being in 1885. Before then, velocipedes of different designs using pedal power had been around since 1817.
Principal Kamikura reminisced well about the "Touring Boom" of the 1970's before everything in Japan was paved over, bullet trains were developed and planes flew around all the different islands.
Fuyune actually had a deeper reason for taking pictures around Kamakura with her butler than messing around with her camera. Her wheelchair bound older sister wants her to find a view she got to with her own two feet. That's why Fuyune muttered to herself that a bicycle counts as under the power of her own feet.
How convenient. The new Cycling Club already has a huge clubhouse with a kitchen and retro furniture.
Interesting that Principal Kamikura gave the clubhouse key to Hiromi instead of Fuyune. I suppose everyone knows who the main character is supposed to be...
Cycling Porn.
There wasn't much riding around this week as the girls visited other clubs, but we did get a flashback to Fuyune cramping out of a short bike ride and struggling to climb stairs. Principal Kamikura's pictures of her high school days showed off the touring bike, aka randonneuring bike.
A randonneur in French means "hiker," which was borrowed for the long distance riding events known as randonées. If you've been following my
Long Riders! posts, you would be familiar with the event those college girls want to do called a Brevet. That's short for Brevet des Randonneur, which literally means Hikers Certificate, but amongst cyclists means you've successfully ridden a randonnée of at least 200 kms under a certain time limit.
We can see how much bikes have changed from the 1970's when even the steel touring bikes of today are much lighter. I doubt very much the new Girls' Cycling Club is going to be doing a randonée on their carbon bikes, which they haven't bought yet, but we'll see what kind of club they make of themselves.
The live action omake talked about buying helmets and gloves. Cycle bro made the important point that the proper fit of a helmet has the front of the helmet resting right above a cyclist's brow. I also wear a stylish cap most of the time to keep my forehead from getting helmet tan lines. Caps not hats, for cyclists!
When I first started riding, I wore padded gloves all the time. They're usually called attack gloves, because you only wear them in racing conditions where you might fall. Otherwise, I don't wear gloves at all anymore. Cycle bro's advice was good for beginners to take.
As for long fingered gloves, I only wear them when it's really cold or raining. I have some thick ones for almost freezing conditions and neoprene ones for the rain. Neoprene is what divers' wetsuits are made out of, so what keeps the hands warm is the thin layer of sweat that develops between the skin and the glove. Kind of gross if you think about it too closely, but it really works. It's not good enough for colder than 40° F, however. That's when you need to use thick gloves with a waterproof hard shell.
Uh oh. The swimming club president, not the "Light Swimming Club" president, looks like she's going to fight hard to keep Natsumi away from the Cycling Club.
The End Card shows Tomoe and Hiromi riding their Liv and Anchor bikes they haven't bought yet. Man, they better buy those bikes pretty soon...
