Watching your back in Lebanon: Following 120 women cyclists on a mission of peace

Colleen McGuire and Carol Murry: Serious cyclists on a mission! 

This week's TCB sighting hails from a bike seat in Lebanon - where 120 adventurous women cyclists visited Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps, bringing a message of peace. As you can see, two of the riders, Colleen McGuire and Carol Murry wore their Traffic Cone Bags - least they could find each other in that big peloton!

According to the FollowTheWomen website, the ride is the brainchild of 2001 European Woman of the Year, Detta Regan. In April 2004 she gathered together 270 women from all over the world, including America, Palestine, Britain and Iraq, to ride bicycles for over 300 kilometres through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to campaign for peace and an end to violence in the region.

According to Colleen, this year's edition was organized by Beirut By Bike which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary in business.

"Its director, Jawad Sbeity, enabled us to meet with common people who expressed enormous gratitude that we came to visit their country. Lebanese mothers told us they want the same things American mothers want – education and opportunities for their children, affordable food and housing and, not just peace, but peace with justice."

Colleen is the Founder of CycleGreece, which offers tours of her beloved country she calls home.

So how she use her TCB on this trip? 

"During the event I wanted to have my Surface Pro tablet with me at all times. It's uncanny how this hybrid laptop fits perfectly in the TCB, and I even have the small TCB. It's snug with enough extra room for wallet, snacks, glasses, map. I've had the bag for about five years (my second one) and the beauty is the TCB just doesn't wear out."

You can read Colleen's account of the trip here.