Response to the Toast to the Club

By Michael Harvey - read out at the Annual Club Dinner 2004

Thank you Andy for your introduction and thank you Peter for your much appreciated toast to the North Road. Thank you June for the opportunity to respond to Peter’s toast. When June asked me give this response I asked her what I should talk about and she said “anything you like but keep it within 40 minutes”, sorry, 10 minutes! So as Henry VIII said to his wives, “I shall not keep you long.”
I thought to back to the first dinner I attended in 1962 which was an all male affair. The North Road was an all male institution at the time and judging by a number of its members, “institution” is the right word. It seemed sad to me that there were no wives, girlfriends, sisters or mothers to see their lads picking up their prizes so at the following year’s Annual General Meeting I proposed that ladies be invited to club dinners in future. Ken Lovett seconded my proposal which, unfortunately, was narrowly defeated. One member pointed out to me that “women are different!” – whatever that meant!
Things have now changed. The North Road is truly a unisex club and is all the
richer for it. There have been other changes.
In the early 1960s the club was essentially known as an organiser of time trials: the Hardriders, the Memorial 50 and the 24. The Memorial 50 has now moved from fast and furious trunk roads to a safer circuit and whilst it was a wrench to lose the 24 this was inevitable in today’s traffic conditions. We also have the very popular Brickendon circuit series on Tuesday evenings. Nowadays, through the vision of people like Michael Hill, Arthur Lancaster and Eddie Jones over many years, the North Road is also a well respected road race organiser with well respected riders also.
Then, club runs were Saturday Teas and all day Sundays plus the annual York Run. These days there is a whole variety of club leisure and training runs and activities including a midweek run for those of us still active and for whom early retirement has given us more leisure time than we might have expected.
The annual club dinner was held in Central London at the expensive formal venue and for youngsters like me it was very expensive as well as being accompanied by traveling difficulties. These days far more convenient, reasonable and less formal places are used.
But back to that older member’s statement – “women are different!” I have reflected on this and agree, women are different.
Women are able to do more than one thing at a time!
Women see things that men don’t see such as a puddle on the pavement, which we inevitably tread in, or something more solid and smelly!
Women, however, often find navigation and map reading more of a problem. It is said that a journey of 10 miles as the crow flies is 25 miles if Mrs. Crow is navigating. North, south, east and west can be a problem. And how often to see a woman reading a map sideways along or upside down?
Women are more communicative than men which is not surprising as 40% of a woman’s brain activity relates to speaking. On an average day a woman will speak between 5,000 and 8,000 words compared to 2,000 to 4,000 for a man.
Imagine this scenario:
It is the end of the Christmas holidays. The children go back to school and the man goes back to work. His wife has been able to arrange to go back to work a day or two later. This means she can spend the first day getting the house tidy and back to normal and in doing so she concentrates on the work in hand and communicates with nobody.
Meanwhile the man has returned to the office to face 50 e-mails which require a dozen telephone calls, his boss has arranged five meetings for him and he has a number of other conversations and telephone calls. By the time he finishes work at 6 o’clock he has used up all his day’s speaking units.
He arrives home at 7 o’clock and will be going to bed at 11 o’clock. His wife still has almost all her day’s speaking units to use within those four hours. Does she do so?
Men are less communicative than women. On average it takes a man eight minutes of silence from his wife or partner to realise that he has said something wrong or done something wrong. However, if he has something focused to discuss such as the relative merits of Campagnolo and Shimano, or steel versus alloy versus carbon bike frames, a man will talk endlessly.
Focus also affects a man’s pain threshold. If he is focused on an activity his pain threshold is high. Consider the rider in a road race who falls, grazes and bruises himself yet keeps going until the finish with no concern for pain. Yet a few days later, if he sneezes he thinks pneumonia is on the way!
Men are natural problem solvers. How often do we buy a video or PC or digital camera or brake/gear combination, take it home and try to get it working – without reading the instructions?
Men do not like seeking help. If you see a car driving past in the same direction a few times every few minutes there is invariably a man driving and a woman saying to him “For goodness sake ask somewhere how to get there.” Many people believe that Moses spent 40 years in the desert because he wouldn’t ask someone the way!
Yes, women and men are different. We are all different and cycling is a great balancer. The kid from a rough area with few chances in life can become a champion whilst a high powered executive will be delighted to win 3rd or 4th handicap in a club event.
Cycling clubs allow us to share our time, our ideas, our successes and our disappointments. And at this time the world needs more sharing though it may be a little far fetched to envisage Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush cycling into the sunset together.
Thank you again Peter for your toast to the North Road; June for organising such a good evening; and all of you for your attention.

Michael Harvey