Cycling is for Everyone

One of the things I like about cycling is that it’s for everyone. Not just the rich, not just the poor, not just the young, not just the old, not just the physically perfect, not just the rest of us. Everyone. I realize there are a few people who really cannot cycle, but they are much fewer in number than most people realize. Cycling gives very diverse people something in common, and it makes us healthier.

There are stereotypes about cycling that prevent it being more popular than it is, I think. Bicycling magazine (or Buycycling, as some people refer to it) is often filled with expensive bicycles and other equipment, so one might come away with the impression that only rich people cycle. Someone interested in cycling might look at the magazine and think, “Oh, I guess I can’t afford it.” But a more common misconception is that only poor people cycle. If you’re riding your bike, it surely must be because you can’t afford a car.

In some cases that’s true. In other cases it isn’t. Many cyclists also own cars and ride bikes not because they have to but because they want to. I sold my car when I no longer had any use for it. Though technically I could afford a car, I’m using that money to pay off my mortgage early. Many people with a car couldn’t do that. Some months I pay a lot extra toward the mortgage; other months not as much if money is tighter, or if I need the extra money for some other expense. Someone who needed the money for a car payment certainly wouldn’t have that option. I’m grateful that I have that flexibility even though my income is relatively low.

In any case, unless people live in an area where there is a high rate of poverty, there is usually a stigma attached to being poor. Poverty is sometimes treated like it’s some kind of crime. People don’t want to look poor. They think if they ride a bike, someone will think they’re a bum. Or maybe someone will think they got their driver’s license taken away for drunk driving.

It’s a shame that people let stereotypes prevent them from trying something fun and healthy. Bikes are for rich people, poor people, and everyone in between. Though there are some very expensive bikes, there are also very nice bikes for a few hundred dollars, and one can find used bikes for next to nothing at police auctions, yard sales, etc. Anyone can afford a bike.

Another misconception is that cycling is for people in perfect physical condition. Skinny guys in spandex. The Lance Armstrongs of the world.

Look around. Really look at the cyclists you see. How many of them are really in perfect physical condition? A few of them are, but a lot of them aren’t. The great thing about cycling is you don’t have to be in perfect physical condition. What’s even better is whatever shape you’re in to start with, cycling will make you healthier and stronger.

Before I started riding my bike at the age of 35, I weighed 225 lbs (at 5'6"). I was completely sedentary except for an occasional walk (every few weeks). Walking uphill or up more than one flight of stairs left me winded. Long walks made my feet hurt.

When I got a bike, one thing I really liked about it was that it didn’t make my feet hurt. I could sit down while riding! It took me a long time before I had the strength to make it up some of the steeper hills around town. I had to just get off and walk.

Over time I slowly lost weight. I’m down to 180, and this seems to be what my body wants to weigh. My legs are more muscular than they used to be, so I’m about the same size as I was when I used to weigh about 150 lbs. several years ago. I haven’t tried to lose weight. I don’t believe in dieting. I just eat healthy food and I ride my bike. I’ve also gotten stronger over time. I can make it up those steep hills now, though other cyclists pass me on them, and I’m out of breath when I get to the top. It could be my asthma. (Really, really steep monster hills make me wheeze and cough. I know that’s my asthma. Fortunately I don’t encounter hills like that very often.)

I could never go back to a sedentary lifestyle. When I hear about doctors recommending 30 minutes of exercise 3 times a week, I think, “Geez, that’s not enough exercise. I ride my bike at least 5 hours a week.” I wouldn’t want to live any closer to work because then I wouldn’t get enough exercise. My commute is the perfect length.

Though my cycling has had an effect on my depression (it has alleviated it, though it’s not a cure), I can tell my depression also has an effect on my cycling. I’ve noticed that when my depression is very bad I cycle more slowly, probably because I do everything more slowly. But on those days, sometimes the only part of the day that contains the smallest amount of happiness is when I’m on my bike. I get where I’m going. Does it matter that I’m slow? The fortunate corollary to this is that when I’m happy, I’m able to ride a lot faster. Riding fast feels good. I know I’m healthy when I’m riding fast. I feel alive. I feel vibrant.

I’m definitely healthier now at 39. Long walks don’t make my feet hurt. My natural walking pace is much faster. I can walk up hills or stairs without getting winded. My blood pressure is lower. Even though I still have some health problems, I’m healthier than I was before, and my health problems didn’t and don’t prevent me from riding a bike.

John Ardelli: “I felt better than I had in years.”

John Ardelli’s eyesight isn’t good enough to allow him to drive a car. Without his glasses, he can’t read anything farther than three or four inches away. With his glasses, he can see well enough to navigate, but he has to be close to things to make them out. Cars move too fast; there isn’t time to tell what something is off in the distance before it isn’t off in the distance anymore.

When he was a kid, John loved riding his bike. He went through a series of bikes, though, and the last two he had never really shifted right. The last one he had was frustrating enough that he finally gave up cycling in 1992 or so at around age 20. Without regular exercise, his health began to deteriorate.

John has a congenital heart condition called aortic stenosis, so his heart isn’t as efficient at pumping blood as other people’s. He’s always had less endurance than other people. His legs had been strong though. After he stopped cycling however, he gained weight. The endurance he did have left. Long walks exhausted him, and if he tried to run any distance, he would get winded.

In December of 2001, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Medication ended up lowering his blood sugar too much. Changing his diet had a more beneficial effect, but he still needed to lose weight. He did end up losing weight, though not in a way I’d recommend or that anyone could intentionally emulate anyway. In spring of 2003 he went through a period of severe depression and simply didn’t notice that he wasn’t eating. When he emerged, he was surprised to find he had gone from 215 pounds to 190.

He realized he needed to start exercising to keep the weight off, so he quit taking the bus and started walking the 7 kilometers to his job as an auditor at a call center. He started feeling better, but he was a bit frustrated with how long it took to get there. He started thinking about getting a bike. He looked around and discovered that he couldn’t afford a new bike, but he was lucky enough to find a very high quality used bike for very little money. He started riding to work and to everywhere else.

Such freedom! He describes the bus service of Sydney, Nova Scotia as “mediocre at best” so it was a definite improvement to not have to wait for the bus and to not be limited in when he could go places and where he could go. He didn’t have to hire a taxi either or impose on friends with cars. The bike gave him transportation independence.

It also improved his health. Gradually his stamina improved and he was getting stronger. When John crashed his beloved bike after only three months, he decided pretty quickly that he was going to have to buy another one. “Cycling had given me so many benefits by this point,” he determined. “I felt better than I had in years.” He scraped together enough money to buy a new mountain bike that was on sale as a discontinued model at Canadian Tire, a CCM Riot. As much as he loved his old bike before he crashed it, he admitted its skinny tires were no match for Sydney’s streets which seem to be made entirely of potholes. This time he got something with a full suspension. He recommends the full suspension to anyone who will listen, but the Riot has more rust than it should after only one winter and it’s had some problems. He was afraid it wouldn’t last through another winter, so he recently bought a Norco Screamer with an aluminum frame to replace it.

Today he controls his diabetes entirely through diet and exercise, eating mostly veggie subs with an occasional pizza. He doesn’t need to take medication anymore, and his blood sugar is stable enough that he no longer needs to monitor it. It doesn’t matter that he can’t see well enough to drive a car or afford to buy a car anyway. He rides his bike everywhere he needs to go. He has all the freedom that motorists have, but he’s healthier than they are. At 32, he’s healthier than he’s been in years. And he’s having fun.

Because of the slower speed of bicycles, he can see well enough to navigate, but he can’t always see as well as he would like. He notes, “License plates I can’t see until I’m almost on top of the vehicle, which is quite frustrating when some cager does something stupid that I’d like to complain about.” I think many of us have problems with cars driving away too fast for us to read their license plates. It is frustrating.

Sydney is an economically depressed area with high unemployment. It’s common for people to be poor, so there really isn’t a stigma to it. I wondered if a lot of people there rode bikes. But actually, no. “A few, but not a great number. Of course, this is probably in large part due to the terrible road conditions around here which, in turn, is why I chose a full suspension bike. I’m trying to encourage more of my co-workers to try cycling, though.” He said most people drive cars even though they really can’t afford to. Since the bus system is inadequate (and bikes are off their radar as an alternative), they see cars as their only alternative, so they drive what he referred to as “puddle jumpers” that barely run.

I thought back to the expensive repair bills during my last few months of car ownership, necessary just to keep the stupid thing running. I was able to get out of debt a lot faster once I got rid of the car.

I’ve heard that the average American spends as much on transportation as on housing, which I find appalling. I mention this to John, and he says he figures it’s probably about the same for Canadians over a lifetime. Being poor sometimes feels like drowning. A bicycle is to a life preserver as a car is to an anchor. I hope John can convince lots of people in Sydney to start riding bikes.

Ranj Niere: “Without riding I am pretty sure I would be dead by now.”

When he was a kid, Ranj Niere rode his bike everywhere. When he first started learning to ride, his parents were in the middle of breaking up, so their minds were elsewhere. They assumed he was just riding around the neighborhood. He was more ambitious than that.

His mom didn’t really figure out how far from home he’d been riding till he was hit by a car on a shoulderless arterial when he was 9 years old. He got a concussion, a broken collarbone, roadrash, and a crunched bike. Fortunately she got him another bike. It wasn’t nearly as nice as the one he’d had before (a beloved Schwinn Varsity), but it was a bike, and she encouraged him to get on and ride again. He did.

Ranj rode that and other “junk bikes” till they fell apart, jarring them to pieces on the gravel roads near the Missouri River. For his 16th birthday, he got a new bike, one he had begged for. A 1970 Follis road bike, the first 10-speed he’d had since the Schwinn got crunched. It was wonderful. He rode it everywhere. He rode races on it. He toured all over eastern Missouri. He used it as his main transportation for years, even after he moved to Kansas City at age 20.

But then an off duty police officer ran a red light and hit him. This was his second time being hit by a car, and not long after having to fight off a mugger attempting to steal his bike; he freaked out and assaulted the officer with his front wheel. The assault ended with the officer drawing his gun.

He got the cop to pay to have his bike fixed in exchange for his not reporting the crime the officer had committed. It had taken something out of him though. After that he was afraid to ride his bike. He quit riding, and in his mid-20’s he finally got a driver’s license and started driving a car for the first time.

He drove for the next 20 years or so. Not that that got him away from stress. He ended up working in a hospital emergency room, working his way up from an orderly to a certified orthopedic technologist. After 5 years though, he had simply seen too much. He had to get out of the ER. He switched to pediatric orthopedics for the next few years, but it was still a lot of stress for very little pay.

He went back to school to finish his degree. It was time for a career change. Computer science was more enjoyable and paid a lot more. A lot of hours though.

In June 2001 Ranj was a Senior Software Consultant and a workaholic. After returning home from a two week trip where he was cooped up in a motel teaching 60 COBOL programmers Delphi, he just wanted to go have dinner. Instead he had a stroke and two heart attacks. That same day he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

He lost sensation in the right half of his body (though fortunately he’s left-handed), but he experiences neurological pain on that side. Though most of his right foot is so numb he can’t feel the ground, other parts are so hypersensitive that if he steps on something as small as a phone cord with the wrong part of his bare foot, the pain is severe enough to make him scream. A third of his body feels like numb, buzzing wax. He has terrible cramps. His field of vision has a large hole in it (he can no longer drive a car), and on some days he’s mentally sharper than on others. He can’t balance a checkbook by hand anymore.

After the stroke, hanging around the house was really getting to him. He couldn’t walk much further than around the block. So he bought a recumbent trike with a small gas engine as a backup (he wanted to be confident he’d be able to make it back home) and started riding. He discovered he couldn’t take any of the statin drugs that would help prevent another stroke or heart attack. When he asked his doctor what he could do to extend his lifespan, she said “Keep riding the bicycle.”

The more he rode, the stronger he got. He ended up almost never using the gas engine. He rode for miles at a stretch, while his heart got stronger, and his balance got better. “Finally, a year after the stroke, I had a better trike, and rode 100 miles on the KATY trail by myself. That was the most important moment since the stroke, at making me feel if not normal, then at least more independent.”

His significant other, Cat, got another trike and started riding with him, and then a two wheel bent. One day he tried riding it. It wore him out, but his balance had improved enough that he could actually do it. He was very happy. He went out and bought a two wheeler. That’s what he rode on his second KATY trip, this time with Cat. They did the ride again this spring and took another trip this summer.

In warm weather he rides 60 to 80 miles a week on average. “It makes me feel stronger and healthier than anything else I do.” He rides almost all year, but the stroke took his cold tolerance with it. When the right half of his body gets cold, it stops moving, and when it does move, it hurts. There’s a month or two he can’t ride in the winter, and it’s a depressing time of year. But when he can ride, he feels good that he can get where he needs to go. He’s never going to ride another race again, but that doesn’t matter. As he says, “Getting where you need to go beats the alternative all to hell.”

It’s been three years since his stroke. His doctors weren’t optimistic that he would make it six months. “Sure, I am not magically healthy, but I am a lot healthier than I would have been without riding, in fact, without riding I am pretty sure I would be dead by now. So now I try to wake people up, and get them on the bike before they wind up like me.” He’s 48 years old. He’s hoping he’ll live another decade if he’s lucky.

He’s definitely come a long way. Because of cycling, his heart is stronger. His balance is better. Walking has gotten a bit easier, though it still tires him out. He still carries his cane, though he usually doesn’t need it unless he’s tired or the ground is uneven since he can’t feel where the ground is with his foot. He straps his cane to his bike when riding.

Most importantly, he’s happier. He’s got his bent, he’s got Cat, and he’s got a goal: getting people on bikes for their health.

Shyrley Williams: “Biking is freedom.”

Shyrley Williams lived in various towns in Ireland and the UK as a child, and she remembers riding her bike everywhere. “We would take a packed lunch and ride 10 miles to a village, eat lunch and ride back. We were always on our bikes as children.” She can’t really recall why she stopped riding her bike, except when she went to university in London, the public transportation was so good. The hospital where she worked as a neuropsychologist was quite far away. Having gotten into the habit of taking public transport to university and to work, she just used that for all her trips. She forgot about the bike.

She quit her job after she got pregnant to stay home with the baby. Shortly after her third child was born when she was 26, she started losing her balance and seeing double, and her hands started shaking. She went to her doctor, who referred her to a neurologist. The health system in the UK moves slowly. There was an 18 month waiting list to see the neurologist, a 2 year wait for an MRI, and then another 8 months to see the neurologist again for the results.

Because of her neuropsychology training, she had guessed it had to be either multiple sclerosis or fibromyalgia. “Mind you, neither is curable so I just wanted to know out of curiosity,” she says. It was MS.

Not surprisingly, in the long time she waited for a diagnosis, her symptoms worsened. She had gotten herself a beat up old bike by that time though, all she could afford, and she rode that to the neurologist to get the diagnosis. “Initially I didn’t do anything but then I thought, why let it beat me and got back on my bike and hiked the hills with the dogs daily.” By this time the youngest of her three children was 4 years old. She started using the bike for shopping and errands in the evenings when she could leave the kids with her husband. During the day she could leave the kids alone for an hour and run errands. “I think the exercise plus the happiness of cycling keeps the worst symptoms at bay.”

Sometimes she has days when her muscles won’t respond, and she feels sluggish and cycling is an effort, but usually it’s easy. It’s easier than walking. She straps her walking stick to her bike with Velcro. Her joints and muscles ache and have shooting pains, and her fingers are numb. At times her hands shake. It affects her memory too. “Either something is Now or Not-Now,” she says.

Like me, she’s had migraines and severe depression her entire life. She too finds she feels better when she’s riding her bike. “Biking is freedom. I am just me. I am not harassed mother, fretful woman dealing with no money, imperfect daughter. I am me and my bike is wonderful. Sometimes I have to make myself go out and ride but it’s always worth it when I do, even if it’s raining and I’m just going to the supermarket. When I have to drive I find myself bitter and angry and looking longingly at people out on bikes who pass me.”

Shyrley home schools her kids, so she often takes them on bike rides with her. Now 35, she recently returned to the UK after living in the US for 2½ years in a particularly bicycle-hostile area of Virginia, where some people seemed to have never seen a bike before. She’s glad to be home in Bristol where bikes abound and people don’t drive SUV’s 12 feet to move them closer to the grocery store entrance.

She recently had a fourth child, and she was able to cycle all through her pregnancy. She’s apprehensive; her baby was born with cerebral palsy. She doesn’t know what her daughter will be capable of. It’s much too soon to tell. But already she’s done things the doctors said she wouldn’t be able to. Shyrley has joined a CP support group to learn as much as she can and know what’s available from the British health system since the squeaky wheel gets the grease. She hopes her daughter will be able to ride a bike. She might.

When Life Gets More Complicated

I’m not naive. I know that just because I have the use of my legs now, that’s no guarantee that I always will. Fortunately, as long as someone is able to sit and use their arms, they can ride a bike.

Numerous companies make hand-powered recumbent tricycles, AKA handcycles, such as Greenspeed (who also makes foot-powered trikes for cyclists with one or no arms), Varna and Freedom Ryder. They look pretty cool, although they would only work for recreational use. What about transportation? If you want to ride your bike somewhere, but you need your wheelchair once you reach your destination?

John told me about the Quickie Cyclone, a device which easily attaches to the front of a wheelchair to convert it to a handcycle and can be detached at the end of a trip. He had tried to talk his fiancée, who was born with spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, into getting one so she could go cycling with him. She just wasn’t interested, however. This does raise a point. Some people just aren’t interested in cycling. I would never try to force anyone who really didn’t want to ride a bike to do so (and of course, neither would John). Anyone forced into it will just resent it and make themselves miserable. I hope everyone who doesn’t cycle does find some form of exercise to do though so they can be healthy.

I also hope that anyone who used to cycle but thinks he or she can’t anymore for some reason will rethink that. Maybe you can. You might need a different bike than the one you used to ride. If you have back problems, different handlebars or a recumbent might be the answer. If you’re blind, get yourself a tandem and find a sighted riding partner. But don’t automatically think that you just can’t ride a bike.

Cycling is something that gets in you. Once it’s part of your identity, it won’t let go. No matter what life throws at me, I know I have to keep riding my bike. I’ll do whatever it takes so that’s possible, because I know it’s the only exercise that I will do every day. It keeps me healthier physically and mentally than I would be if I didn’t do it. I can’t stop.