I founded Easy Riders August 2006 for the most selfish of reasons—to find people to ride with.  I was diagnosed with arthritis, fibromyalgia and various orthopedic injuries in 2001, at the age of 39. (So big deal. One in three people has arthritis.)
Water exercise, both with the Arthritis Foundation warm-water program and the now-defunct Water Women (this link is dead, too, but I can't remove it in Office Live—sorry!), got me from barely shuffling down the street to walking OK again. But I missed bicycling! After significant research, I sold my (ouch!) touring bicycle and bought an upright-style mountain-bike/road-bike cross with a little suspension to ease the bumps for me. (More importantly, it's green and has a squeaky turtle horn.) I also learned a few riding tricks to make cycling not only easier but healthier. Just so you know, I bike about 10 to 12 mph on the flat when I'm feeling OK. On hills, I go very slowly except, as I found out while riding in rural Indiana in 1981, when five farm dogs were slavering at my frantically pumping pedals. Then Lance Armstrong had nothing on me. So go your own pace, and we'll ride together. In any case, we'll both be whirring our wheels and tossing our helmet-hair in the wind. 7/30/08 Update Wow, it's a couple of years later, and I can't believe how much better I feel, thanks largely to bicycling. Although I started off this season in a slump, after a sickly autumn and soggy winter, I now feel great most of the time. To think that earlier this week I was embarrassed that I could ride only 25 miles with a few hills thrown in. Then I read this old article I wrote for this site on shame, and I remembered that 10 blocks was all I could do when I started out this year. So if you're giving yourself a hard time about what you can't do on your bike rather than enjoying what you can do, cut it out, OK? And remind me to cut it out, too, if I start up on that sorry theme again. Happy trails! —Cindy e-mail: cindyri  AT speakeasy DOT net
phone: 206  817 0746 Photo by Lois Pierris, at http://loispierris.com (C)2006 Riskin Writing & Editing. All rights reserved at home and abroad in all forms and formats. |