His Reward For Helping Others Ride

Yesterday, I complained about boneheaded planners and inconsiderate (or just clueless) drivers.  So, dear readers, I figured I'd give you a feel-good story today.

Owen Werner's mother is justly proud of him.  The 11-year-old from Elk Rapids, Michigan learned that a man in nearby Kalkaska modifies bicycles for special-needs and low-income kids.  So, Werner started a fundraiser in his school to help the man's work--and get those bikes to disabled and poor kids.

His efforts paid off, in the way he hoped--and in a way he didn't expect.

You see, Owen is one of the kids he was trying to help--although he wasn't thinking of himself when he started the fundraiser.  But, apparently, someone else noticed--specifically, the owners of McLain Cycle and Fitness.  They gave him a specially-modified bike for his needs:  He has a condition that's kept his muscles and joints from developing normally.

Owen Werner

In watching the video of him, I couldn't help but to remember someone I knew in high school.  He walked and moved in a way similar to how Owen gets around.  But he had the misfortune of growing up in a place and time where it was believed that kids with similar handicaps were incapable of any sort of physical activity.  He was even left back a year because, in spite of having an otherwise-perfect academic record, he didn't pass Phys Ed.  

Fortunately for him, he was extremely (almost frighteningly) smart and talented in all sorts of other ways.  I have to wonder, though, what his life would have been like had he grown up now--or simply in some place with more forward-thinking people than my high school had in the mid-1970s.  

Seeing Owen Werner also reminded me of something that I see in my work and everyday life:  How often physical disability and poverty go hand-in-hand.  If you go to any public housing complex, you will find disproportionate numbers of people, young and old, in wheelchairs and walkers, or who need other kinds of physical assistance.  At number of them are, and have been, my students and have spent all or parts of their lives in "the projects".  

There are, of course, several reasons for that. One is that the physical disability of a child can impoverish a family.  Another is that disabled people, in spite of all of the technological and social advances of the past few decades, have much more difficulty finding employment, let alone anything that pays well.  Moreover, a kid from a low-income background--or an adult who has trouble getting a job with a good insurance plan--might not get treatment that could keep a low-grade malady from turning into a crippling disability.

On a more positive note, I also couldn't help but to think of how versatile cycling is.  Someone, I forget who, said that a bicycle (or tricycle) can be adapted to just about any physical disability besides blindness or deafness.  And, of course, deaf and blind people can ride a tandem with a sighted or hearing "captain." (I know:  I played that role on a few rides with blind riders.)

Somehow, though, I don't think anything is going to stop Owen from doing whatever he wants.  Aleasha Witt, his mother, has every reason to be proud.

Adapting By Bicycle

I have never ridden a recumbent bicycle.  Perhaps I will one day.  My major concern with them is visibility, especially as I do much of my riding in heavily-trafficked urban areas.

I do, however, see the value of them.  Some claim they are more efficient and comfortable.  Certainly, I can see the value of them for some people with physical ailments and disabilities.

That point became clearer to me after an article I read about a ride to raise funds for disabled veterans.  

On Sunday, normally-abled cyclists joined their disabled peers on the Two Top Adaptive Sports Foundation's inaugural Bike for Disabled Vets fundraiser.  Among them were Igor and Olga Titovets of North Potomac, Maryland.  They pedaled along the Western Maryland Rail Trail--she with her legs, he with her arms.

His legs are in braces.  This means that, while he can use a foot-powered recumbent bicycle, it is difficult for him to climb hills with it.  Instead, he rides a model powered by his arms.

Igor Titovets

Titovets' participation in the event is emblematic of the ride's purpose, and Two Top's work.  The non-profit Foundation, based in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, provides disabled veterans and their families lessons in adaptive sports like cycling, skiing and water skiing. The lessons are by reservation, and the group has a fleet of 22 bicycles.

They are, of course, recumbent, because that is pretty much the only kind of bike that can be adapted to hand power.  Plus, it can be adapted in other configurations to accommodate people with a wide variety of disabilities.

  

David and Jo Ann Bachand

The Titovets' participation--and that of another couple, David and Jo Ann Bachand--underscores another important point:  that adaptive bicycles can help disabled veterans--whose population has grown with the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the Iraq invasion--cope with their disabilities.  By extension, cycling and other adaptive sports can also help them cope with their post-military lives:  Some of them had been in uniform practically from the day they left school.

They Can Ride, They Can Shine

One day an elderly woman wheeled her husband into the shop.  Neither of them had been on a bicycle in decades, she explained, but she wanted to buy bicycles for him and herself. 

Turns out, he'd had a stroke and, at that moment, couldn't speak.  In fact, his facial movements were constricted.  But I could sense, in his eyes, that he was at least curious about the bicycles.  If I could notice that, I thought, she certainly must have known that he was interested in riding.  Then I wondered whether he had expressed interest before his stroke, or whether that interest was somehow communicated in one of those ways couples sometimes develop.

Whatever the case, she knew what she was doing when she brought him to the shop.  I saw them ride just about every day that spring and summer and fall, sometimes on my way to the shop, sometimes on my way home or out for a ride of my own.  I saw, almost immediately, in his facial expressions (limited as they were) and body language, that she wasn't "dragging" him; he was riding voluntarily, behind her.  Within a few weeks, he was leading her, and looked as if he'd initiated their rides--even though he still couldn't speak (though his grunts and groans became more intelligible).  And she was encouraging him.

They also came to the shop regularly.  First it was to adjust the things that normally need adjustment (cables and such) as a bike "breaks in", but as they rode more, we tweaked the handlebar and saddle positions, and changed things like the grips.  He was attracted to the bright, shiny things--reflectors, bells and other accessories with a bright finish. One day, though, he pointed to the Huret Multito cyclometer (Cyclo-computers were still new.) on another customer's bike and pointed to it.  He had his curious expression again.  Not quite sure of how to explain it to him, I explained it to his wife.  

"He understood you," she said.  "He can understand much more now that we've been riding," she explained.  "Sometimes it almost sounds as if he's making words, not just sounds."

That fall--just before I stopped working in the shop--he had, in fact, regained his power of speech and was reading the newspaper.    Later, I heard he'd progressed to books and was writing cute notes to his wife.

Today I thought about that couple for the first time in years when I learned about a cycling camp for disabled children.  It's going to be held in Oklahoma City during the last five days of June.

That camp is one of a series--called "iCan Bike"--that's been been held in various locales throughout the USA since 2007.  iCan Bike camps are run by the nonprofit organization iCan Shine, which began under the name "Lose Your Training Wheels" in 2007.  One of the stated goals of the program is for children with physical, intellectual and emotional disabilities to ride a bicycle independently, which iCan Bike defines as 75 feet with no assistance.   According to iCan, 80 percent of kids who participate in the program reach this goal, even though they attend training sessions for only 75 minutes on each day of the program. The remaining 20 percent of kids leave the program with parents, siblings or other people who are trained as "spotters" and can continue the work of the camp.

When I recall how cycling helped the recovery of the old man whose wife wheeled him into the shop where I worked, I am sure that it must be great for kids who don't have the kinds of skills that man had before his stroke!