I must say that just reading the lede, I thought that this program that offer biking for the blind (as the stoker on a tandem with a sighted captain) was a bit silly, especially since for me bicycling is so much about indepenence. But then I thought about how much richness my senses bring to my rides. The smells of what's for dinner as I ride through a residential neighborhood; the warm and cool air currents as I bike through microclimates at the top of a hill or past a body of water; the sounds of traffic and how I use them to create a 3D picture in my head of my surroundings.
And more importantly, the people who take advantage of the program seem to love it, and after reflection I can understand why.
I saw a story like that on 60 Minutes (or maybe Sunday Morning) recently. The lead rider was going to bike across country with his friend, but then his friend died of cancer, so he did the ride with seven different disabled riders along the way on a recumbent tandem.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine it would be an incredibly exciting sensation. It reminds me of taking the disabled child of friends sailing for the first time. Although the tippiness of the dinghy ride to the boat made him a bit uncomfortable, he found the sensation of sailing absolutely brilliant. He was sighted but significantly disabled in other ways and had never had this sort of experience--it was a joy to see him close his eyes and feel the wind and hear the sounds of the wind against sail and the water rushing by as we heeled.
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