* * Jane's last bicycle ride

Yesterday, my wife Jane took her last bicycle ride.

Bicycling has always been a huge part of our lives.  In fact, we met on a bicycle ride in 1983.  The event was Seattle-to-Portland, a 200-mile marathon, sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Club.  We met at the train station in Portland where she and I were waiting to ride Amtrak back to Seattle the day after the ride.  We flirted on the train on the trip north.  In the intervening years, many of our best friends came to be known through bicycling.

Jane has never been athletic, but she’s always been game to ride, even at a slow pace.  She toured Australia and New Zealand on her own later that year and we did a 2-week bicycle tour in France when our daughter was six.  Jane has ridden the nearby Huckleberry Trail uncountable times on her road bicycles and the New River Trail on her dirt bike.  She and I have ridden our tandem together many times.

Over the years, her pace has slowed even more.  She’s now in her early 60s, and has developed what she calls “essential tremors,” which is uncontrollable shaking of her hands.  Her balance has deteriorated.

Last summer, we accompanied friends to Bath County for a 2-day vacation.  We took our bicycles and did a ride.  Jane rode about 20 miles and separately I rode about 45.  She rode her mountain bike because she felt increasingly less comfortable with the lighter-weight bikes.  Nevertheless, I learned that she lost her balance and crashed at low speed into a ditch.

Yesterday, I asked her if she wanted to join me on a ride at the New River Trail from Pulaski.  We agreed that she would take a shorter ride than me, and I would assist with shuttling the car.  After parking the car, I got her bike ready first and sent her on her way. 

I had ridden only 200 yards or so from the parking lot when I saw her standing near her bicycle, which was laying in the trail.  As I approached, I could see she was bleeding from a cut across the bridge of her nose.  Her leg was scraped and bruised.  It was clear she had fallen. She told me she had glanced at her gearing and drifted off the trail and crashed. 

We walked back to the car together and put her bike away.  She offered to allow me to ride and made plans for her to pick me up.  As I rode on my own, I realized an epochal period in our lives had ended.  The New River Trail is perhaps the safest place in the region to ride; if she can’t ride on it, she can’t ride anywhere.  And baring a miracle, her balance will never appreciably improve. 

She told me later, “I came to realize that I cannot ride a bike any more.  My balance is not good.  The thought of not being able to ride makes me feel old and cut off from others.  I know I don't ride much any more, but I want to think if I wanted to I could.”  Other than riding with me on our tandem, yesterday was her last bicycle ride ever.  We will soon put her bikes up for sale.  Today, she's wincing from a broken rib and has multiple bruises.

Aging is inevitable.  At some point, unless we die suddenly, we will all confront the cessation of physical activities of our youth and mid-adult ages.  But as she says, “It's depressing when aging causes you to give up activities that used to be a major part of your life.”