by David Goldman
The doctors said if I felt up
to riding, I could ride. They even said it would be beneficial. So, after being
disconnected from my chemo pump last Wednesday after my first two-day treatment,
the first thing I did was head out for a ride.
A little background: I go in
for my treatment on Mondays and get one drug infused into me for a while at the
hospital before going home with a pump attached to my port and a second drug
cocktail slowly dispensed over about 46 hours. On Wednesday, a home healthcare
nurse comes and disconnects me and I am free to do as I wish. Of course, this
is within any physical limitations I might be feeling as a result of the chemo.
The first treatment went
smoothly and as I was getting disconnected from my pump on Wednesday, I was feeling
good, and the urge hit me. It is the urge I get so often when the weather is
nice. Go take a trike ride. I double-checked
with the nurse to make sure it was okay. She said if I felt like it, I could. So
I did!
While I was riding I started
wondering about just what it was that I enjoyed so much about riding. What was
that pull that so often took hold of me, especially on warm sunny days? Why am
I struck with this need to pedal myself from here to there and back again? I
ride a trike with two wheels in front and one in back. These are referred to as
tadpole trikes or recumbent trikes. I know part of the appeal for me is that
it’s just fun to ride these things. But that’s not the whole reason.
It’s not speed. I don’t ride
very fast. Twenty years ago I was always riding to try and improve. Improve
what? My average speed! That’s what most bike riders are constantly trying to
improve through interval training, power output measurements, VO2
max capacity, and a host of other methods. If you don’t recognize these terms,
it’s probably good. Non-comprehension of them means you’re not a cyclist
looking to gain more speed. I used to do these things looking to gain a quarter
mile per hour of speed, but I don’t anymore. I’m content just pedaling along at
whatever pace my legs are moving on that particular day. That said, I do enjoy
the speed of the descents. Here around Chicago, things are pretty flat and
zooming down a long twisting or straight road or path at warp speed is pretty
much out of the question. But there are some spots where I can get up to 30 or
even 35 mph, which for me, is fast! And because I’m on a trike I feel and
indeed am, very stable. This means taking a spill at high speed isn’t really a
concern. But those faster speeds are infrequent and short-lived when they do
occur. Again, my 10-14 mph speeds suit me just fine.
It’s also not discovering new
places to ride, although I do enjoy doing this as well. Because I don’t drive,
almost all of my rides begin and end at my home so I’m confined within whatever
confines time and distance place upon me. As a matter of fact, I do almost all
of my riding in one place, the Des Plaines River Trail. It’s a multi-use path
that runs along the Des Plaines River in northern Illinois for approximately 31
miles, stretching from the southern border of Lake county up to the Wisconsin
state line. It’s a crushed limestone path and being multi-use means it’s open
to cyclists, walkers and runners, equestrians, and in the winter, cross-country
skiers. This is my preferred spot to ride for a couple of overwhelming reasons.
For one, it’s easily reached from my house. It’s less than a mile away and
almost all of that route allows me to ride on a very wide sidewalk that is
almost always completely devoid of pedestrians. The other section is along an
approximately 500 foot stretch of street that I have literally seen cars on
twice in the past year. In that year I’ve gone for 146 rides on my trike and at
least 120 of them have been on the DPRT.
And like wanting to ride
faster, riding in different locations is great. But because of the limitations
of where I can go, I’m fine spending the majority of my time on this trail.
It’s like being a kid and exploring the neighborhood. I used to know every
square foot of my neighborhood. Every street, alley, and shortcut from here to
there in my neighborhood were as familiar as the back of my hand. But even so,
during my years as a kid it seemed I was always discovering something new – a
way to cut across the train tracks at a certain spot in order to get to the
drug store where I’d buy my comics. Or discovering an alley that curved
differently than the street that it ran somewhat parallel to. This enabled me
to get to the record shop about 27 seconds faster than my friends who were
walking at the same speed as me but were unfamiliar with the way the alley
curved and thus missing this “secret” shortcut. Whether you were just going to
a friend’s house, playing a hide-and-seek type game on a several square block
area, or looking for a new place to catch grasshoppers and other insects, there
was always something new to be found in the old neighborhood and that’s just
how I feel about the DPRT. I always see something new and different that had
gone unnoticed in all my other rides.
But I think that’s just it. That’s
what attracts me. This explains what I enjoy so much about riding. It is why on
these beautiful summer days that urge hits and I have to get out for a
ride, and it’s why in the brutal winter months I daydream about the summer
finally arriving and getting out on the trike. It is why while riding, I
sometimes realize I must look like a fool, because I can tell I’m riding with a
grin on my face for no apparent reason.
It is because it makes me feel
like a kid again. It’s that plain and simple.
It’s the freedom that comes
with not worrying about or barely thinking about life’s day-to-day challenges.
It’s not that I want to escape my life. I’m quite happy! Actually, it’s quite
the contrary. I want to do what I can to enhance my life as much as I can, and
I think opening the vents of my mind and letting the wind rush through for a
while refreshes me. For just those two or three hours, there are no concerns
about work, financial matters, or difficult pending decisions. My mind stops
running through HTML code and CSS variations. I don’t think about needing to
replace carpeting, fighting with the health insurance company, or a million
other questions, thoughts or scenarios. No, those concerns all temporarily disappear
and are replaced by a free-flowing stream of consciousness. The environment
triggers a thought based on a sight, a smell, or a sound and I’m instantly
transported to another place in time. Most often it’s my childhood. Everything
is sharp and vivid. My mind’s eye once again sees with two good eyes instead of
one fair one. Faces and voices are all as they were all those years ago.
Perhaps my brain idealizes some of it because the sun always seems to be
shining and the weather is perfect. Even if there’s snow in my thought bubble,
it doesn’t feel cold.
While riding, I pick up the
smell of burning wood off in the distance and suddenly it’s an October Sunday.
I’m trying to get the leaves raked up and put in a pile in the street next to
the curb so they can be burned before the football game begins. Others on the
block are doing the same and the smell of burning leaves is pleasant and
pungent. Cappy, the neighbor’s dog, wanders over to lift his leg and anoint the
pile of leaves I’m constructing. Our front lawn is small: probably no more than
300 square feet if even that much, but when you’re 10 years old it looks to be
about the size of the football field you can’t wait to go see on the TV. And
every leaf has to be cleared off of it. Of course, we happen to have the
biggest, oldest tree on the block which means its branches shed an inordinate
amount of leaves.
My thoughts of Sundays, burning
leaves and football are suddenly interrupted as I approach the only, albeit
short break in the trail. For about 1500 feet I have a choice of either riding
on a very busy four lane road or on a dirt and grass path just a couple feet
beyond the right lane marker. Being on a wide trike and the vision of a hawk
not being one of my assets, I always opt for the latter. Riding along next to
this traffic often brings me back to one of my first bike rides on a busy road.
It was the summer of 1967 and I’m
11 years old. Two of my friends and I decide we’re going to ride our bikes to
the JCC, a boys and girls club of sorts, to go swimming. We are each wearing
our swimming trunks, a tee shirt, and flip-lops on our feet. We each have our
heavy, rusted bike chains wrapped around our waists and secured with a padlock an
armor piercing bullet couldn’t dent. We double and triple check to make sure we
each have the padlock key in a pocket. We’re all set for our two-mile ride.
Back then, our bikes were our main source of transportation so the distance
wasn’t intimidating. But the busy, shoulderless road was. Where we were going
required us to ride a little over a mile on that stretch of road, sharing it
with cars that all had V8s and heavy chrome bumpers. None of us tell our
parents where we’re going because we know they would instantly stop us. As we
approach the turn to get on the road we are all scared, but being 11 and 12
years old, we certainly can’t let on to each other that we are.
As it turned out, the ride
wasn’t bad. It was a weekday and traffic was light. As we start riding we gain
confidence. We don’t weave. We don’t take chances. We get there quickly and
without incident. We lock our bikes and head inside. When we get in we can hear
music playing – music that we know from the radio. We all recognize it at once.
It’s I Got Rhythm, the George
Gershwin classic that is currently enjoying a rebirth as a pop hit by a band
called The Happenings. We listen for the source of the music and soon realize
it’s coming from beyond a pair of closed doors that lead into the small
auditorium. It sounds like it’s being played live and the singer sounds like
the singer from The Happenings! We approach the doors and see a sign saying The
Happenings are playing there tonight in a concert. We’re here and they’re in
there practicing! We’re all really excited that we might get a chance to see
this band play. But just then, a worker walks up and tells us not to go in. We tell
the him okay, walk around the corner toward the pool, and carefully look back
until he is gone and the coast is clear. Quickly we head back for the door. We
slowly open it and peek inside. There, on the stage is the band practicing the
song we’d been hearing on the radio the whole summer! Swimming was forgotten.
It was my first taste of live, popular music and I loved it. It was the first
of hundreds of live concerts I’d get to see. We all sit down in the back in a
dark section as the band practiced. I am transfixed.
Unfortunately, the excitement is
very short-lived and quickly ends. Within two or three minutes at the most, the door we had
snuck through opens and in walks the same man who just moments ago had told us
not to go in. He hoists each of us up by our shoulders and unceremoniously shoves
us out the door of the auditorium and then the main door. He gives us a firm
warning that makes it clear we would not be welcomed back. But that was okay.
Those few moments have given me a memory that has lasted 47 years and will
undoubtedly last until the end of my days. Not only did I get to see live
music, but I learned that my bike could take me places I had once thought
unreachable on my own.
Back again on the DPRT in 2014 I
start wondering if that day had the same effect on my two friends as it did on
me. One of them died when he was very young and the other moved away a long
time ago. I haven’t spoken to him since high school. Did the boy who died also remember
that day for his entire, short life? Does the one who moved away ever think
about that day?
As I continue rolling along my
thoughts linger for a moment on the friend who had died and the others in my
life who are gone. Inevitably, I think about Krissy, my pancreas donor whose
life ended in an instant when she was just 17. This leads to an area of thought
that I know will not provide me with any answers, definitions or truisms. As I
ride through these old forests and prairies I wonder what happens next. Does
anything happen next? Is Christianity right and we either go to heaven or hell?
Maybe the Hindus have it right and we are constantly being reborn in a cycle.
Or, do the Jews have it right: you die. It’s over. End of story. Maybe it’s a
combination of these and/or others. Maybe it’s not. Personally, I like Albert
Brooks’ point of view in the movie Defending
Your Life. In short, after you die you wake up in what ranges from a cheap
motel to a five star luxury hotel and for the next few days you must appear
before a small panel that has been assigned to you. They’ll show you video
clips of your life and you explain what you did and why. While you’re visiting
for those few days, you can enjoy all-you-can-eat, delicious, zero-calorie food
that’s served 24/7 at no charge. After your hearing the panel decides whether
you are worthy to move on to “the great beyond” to enjoy eternity or to be sent
back to start a new life and try again. Seems reasonable to me!
But that, in a nutshell is why
I love to ride. For me, it’s therapeutic, refreshing, and invigorating. It lets
me clear out bad thoughts and fill them in with more pleasant possibilities. It
helps me put things in perspective. And riding helps me retain pleasant past
memories. Yes, yes, quite possibly with some unintended enhancements, but hey,
they’re my memories. So even on some days when I might not be feeling 100%, I
know that once I start riding I’ll soon feel much better.
There are days I go for a ride
specifically to make myself feel better and it always works. I always finish a
ride feeling better than when I started. And on a warm, sunny summer day, it’s
pretty hard for me to find a reason not to go for a spin.
