Book Excerpt: Chapter #93 - When In Doubt, Draft
Not too long ago, my wife and I were going to a concert in downtown Portland. It was in a bar, the venue that hosts monthly MMA competitions and a local heavy metal shows. We ended up parking about eight blocks away and walking in. This was not a savory neighborhood, but it was early evening and we’re both pretty savvy. I was confident we would be safe.
About two blocks in, I noticed we were being followed. Not by any kind of threat, but by a professional woman likely in her late twenties. She caught up to maybe three paces behind us, then stayed there. She didn’t talk to us, or even really acknowledge us, but to a stranger watching she looked like she was part of our group.
She was drafting off of us, walking alone in a sketchy neighborhood.
This had never occurred to me before, so I asked Beverly Baker, one of the smartest people working in women’s safety today (and the writer of this chapter’s introduction). Her response was “Oh, yeah. Women do that all the time.”
This is, apparently, a thing.
Most women reading this book are probably nodding their heads right now. The rest of us can start applying it today.
What Is Drafting?
In sports, athletes draft to reduce air and water resistance during a race. For example, when a runner moves forward, they leave a lower-pressure zone in their wake because their motion parts the air. That pocket of lower resistance requires less energy to move through.
It’s a tiny amount of less energy, not enough to help you or me with a local 5k fun run…but for professional-level bikers, drivers, swimmers, and runners, it can make a meaningful difference.
For safety, it’s about creating a pocket of greater perceived resistance. Criminals dislike risk. The more people in a group, the riskier it is to victimize them. By staying near a larger group, we can give the illusion of being a bigger risk than we really are.
How to Draft
If you’re a woman by herself, or anybody walking with children, drafting is simple. You don’t have to worry about scaring or offending the group you’re drafting off of. That woman before the concert, for example, didn’t worry me. I’m an athletic martial artist and was walking with my very street-savvy, urban-raised wife. For that woman, the process was simple:
· Step One: Identify a group that seems safe to draft off of.
· Step Two: Walk faster until you’re two or three paces behind.
· Step Thee: Stay there for as long as is natural.
Step One is the trickiest part, but we can pair it with the predator profiling mentioned later in this section. A woman walking alone was safe to choose a middle-aged man and his younger, vastly more attractive and intelligent wife. She’d be fine with a group of women, or with a family. She might not want to try her luck with a half-dozen drunk men in their twenties.
For men without our children, we also have to consider how our drafting might impact the people we follow. If we tried to draft off of a woman or small group of women, we might leave them feeling unsafe. We’re better off joining that group of a half-dozen drunk twentysomethings.
Standing Still
One challenge with drafting is what to do while choosing who we want to draft behind. Criminals target people who seem hesitant or disoriented. Standing on the street watching people pass can leave you looking like an attractive target. At the same time, walking alone into the street before you find a suitable draft partner can also be dangerous.
If you can manage it, watch from indoors through a window. Find your draft partner, then walk outside as they pass by the door. If that’s not an option, stand somewhere natural and look attentive, like you’re waiting for somebody. Consider nodding to yourself, or even waving, when you see who you want to walk with.
Another Game to Play
We don’t often need to draft when traveling with our children. Our family forms its own group, deterring most criminals because of the chaos and heightened legal consequences kids represent. That said, we can teach our kids how to draft by having them choose a group to walk with while we’re out in the world.
In some cases, they can just make a choice. In others we can go ahead and draft off who they pick for a while. In either case, this teaches them how to draft while also practicing the vital skill of knowing which strangers are safe to get help from.