Biking is easier than walking

“Walking is not your friend!” says my hyperkinetic physiotherapist. “Wear cushy shoes! Swim lengths! Don’t stop moving!” He bounces off to bully a client strapped into a torture device in another cubicle. “But no no NO walking! Just keep riding your bike.” 

A year ago every part of my body moved and worked. I could still do almost any physical activity, with the exception of running (my knees nixed that activity decades back). Cycling along I would feel the miracle of my body in motion, and I would say aloud to myself: nothing hurts. I have no pain, I have no pain. This is amazing. It won’t last. (Ever the buddhist buzzkill, me.)

And then true enough, it happened. I went to a dance party, and spent a few blissful hours jumping and spinning in the warm embrace of the dance floor. The concrete dance floor. The next day I could hardly walk. Then the ache in my lower back spread to my hips to my groin to my knees to the soles of my feet and back again, deviously shifting and morphing, day after day, night after night, week after week. Those many years of all-night dancing with slightly kinked spine and various injuries and incomplete healings, the creeping osteoarthritis, the many strains and sprains and workarounds and compensations. That one night of dancing pulled the plug and the system went down.

I’m working on it. Seeing specialists, taking painkillers, swimming lengths several times a week. Sometimes everything just hurts a little, and sometimes that one little thing hurts like hell. Walking really hurts. But riding my bike still feels good.

I can ride to my job at Deer Lake with little to no pain. The commute is 12kms and takes about 45 minutes on the magnificent Central Valley Greenway, plus stops to pick blackberries and wach turtles. The route follows the railroad track and so is almost completely flat.

People are unduly impressed by my commute but in fact I can coast most of the way. I probably take as many pedal strokes in that 45-minute ride as I would take steps, if I walked for 15 minutes. The bike is perfectly sized to my body, it is ergonomically precise, and all it needs is a drop of oil on the chain to ensure that the gears ease my way up inclines. The motion causes no impact or compression on my joints, and requires only enough strain to keep my muscles limber. It’s certainly no walk in the park — a walk in the park would be hard. Biking is easier than walking. The bike is my in-line wheelchair.

When I worked at The Bike Doctor we had a regular customer who rode with the Whistler Downhill team. He had only one leg. I have a friend with cerebral palsy who walks with a rolling gate and is prone to falls, but who rides with ease. Big people, awkward people, broken people — the bicycle carries all of us with grace. On a bike anyone can fly.

Today I spotted Noel cycling down the Drive in the rain, decked in high viz jacket and orange rubber gloves, wooden cane hooked to the milk crate on the rear rack. A former swing-dance instructor, he now busks on the street with his little Italian squeezebox. He still remembers his first bike, bought second-hand at age 10. The bike was so big he had to put his leg through the frame to pedal, and although it was freshly painted he managed to get only one smear of wet paint on his pants. At 90, Noel still loves his bike. He’s still rolling.

I might not be able to walk at present but I am comforted in knowing that I might still have 30 plus years of riding ahead of me.