Spring is here! That means biking again!

It's starting to warm up here in North Carolina. We regularly get temperatures of 50 degrees, though generally it's much colder in the mornings and evenings. The flowers, sensing the change in season, are beginning to bud and flower. The trees have yet to notice it seems but they will be soon to follow.

This is the perfect weather for biking, which I love to do at least once a week. My sister, the musically talented Helen Exner, performed at benefit concerts to raise money for any adaptive equipment I might need. That money went toward a new handbike, the best form of adaptive biking for someone in my situation.

 

It has a hand crank that acts as both handlebars and brakes. I'm able to get the exercise I need and the speed I crave all in one. I found out about this through Steve Ackerman, a paraplegic who not only races handbikes but sells them out of his home in Fort Collins, CO. Though he may not be near you, chances are he can ship one to you. You can contact Steve Ackerman at steve@freedomryder.com.

My bike looks like this only painted red instead of green.

Having this cycle has opened up a whole new world to me, one I had almost forgotten existed. For most of college I didn't have a car, getting around by bike instead. I spent countless hours crossing the city to and fro. After my injury I was put on a stim-bike, a machine that combines motor powered movement with electrical stimulation. There has been research suggesting that this type of "Activity Based Rehab" increases function return in some patients. When I was put on the bike I turned on my ipod and daydreamed about biking across town on my way to class, work, or volunteering.

The stim-bike looked very similar to this machine here, though without the arm portion.

Those images haunted me for a long time, with their simplicity, beauty, and the fact that they were beyond my reach for good (or so I thought). When I was finally able to travel the road on my handbike all of that changed; I was fast, I was invincible, I was the MAN! I reconnected with a part of myself that I thought was gone forever.

Though the initial enthusiasm has worn off, I still get excited when it's warm enough to bike. I can bike the trails near my house, seeing parts of the woods previously unexplored. I can get my nature freak on! Whatever it is that you most like to do, chances are it can be adapted for people with various disabilities. Take charge of your life and do what makes you happy!

On Biking and Puppy Tricks

As many of you know I have been experimenting with different forms of biking. I have used prepackaged electrical stim bikes, stationary recumbent bikes, handbikes...

My sister and I biking during her trip out to see me.

Stopping to pet an the neighbor's dog, who was adorable.

The view from a handbike.

To add another to the mix I am now using a stationary upright bike, the kind they use for spin classes. It is a little tricky getting on, since I have to hop, but once I'm on it's smooth sailing. I've been doing this for a little over a month and feel I'm really starting to get the hang of it.

Me on the spin bike.


My left foot stays attached using a pair of bike shoes with special cleats on the sole of the shoe. This is the type of shoe that lets professional bikers stay clicked into their tiny pedals.


I have good control over the left leg now, minus the ankle. The shoes keep my foot from going anywhere which allows my leg to use the bike as I normally would. This hints at a similar bike in the future, though not anytime soon.


My mom playing with the video function on the camera.


The bike is a vast improvement over the recumbent bikes. Though they offer more back support, the seated position is uncomfortable and not ideal. By having my back upright I can stay vertical and work on balance, keeping my legs and hips happier in the process.

The sign hanging on the wall, most likely from the spin classes. Yikes!


Puppy Tricks
Now I love my mother dearly, since she has pulled me through this whole experience. One of her perhaps less endearing habits is to say to me "hey why don't you just...", asking me to do some feat or another. She has a fond habit of doing this when we are visiting with company, passing acquaintances, when we meet random strangers... My family has taken to calling these my "puppy tricks". These tricks are not particularly difficult or bad for me in any way, but they do leave me with the odd feeling of being a show dog.

Here is me showing off that I can in fact pick up stuff off the floor:

Back Home: Swimming, Biking, and Avoiding Work

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I've been adjusting to getting back into my life in North Carolina. I was expecting to be energized and inspired, which is true for the most part (though not as much as I'd hoped).

Swimming
It's finally warm enough here to go swimming outside! I'm lucky in that my parents live on an inlet sound. The water is warm, only a little salty, and no chlorine! I still do go to the YMCA but there's something just so much more refreshing about swimming in nature. My goal is to swim every day; I haven't quite lived up to that yet but I'm getting close.



Fins
Having SCUBA dived in a previous life I had a pair of fins lying around. Though my dad was tempted to get rid of all the SCUBA gear since no one's used it in years I asked him to save the flippers. When I'm swimming normally I have enough movement in the water to move my left leg in almost any direction and in any motion, though speed may vary. The right leg is stronger than the left so I have a slight tendency to veer toward the left. For anyone who's used flippers, they exaggerate your every movement. Now instead of listing slowly to the left I steer into left wall practically every kick. Though not what I want it to be yet, it's good to have something to work on I suppose.



Biking
I have been using the hand bike more and more every week. I don't use it every day but I make sure to use it a couple of times each week. The area around our house is flat, with miles of farmland in between us and town. At the moment the top distance I've gone is about 8 miles (we clocked it on the car odometer) but I want to go farther still. I felt tired afterward but not exhausted, so I know I can go farther.



Otherwise things have been pretty calm. I'm picking out new classes for next semester but for the mean time I'm enjoying my relative time off (from school work anyway). I have good friends who drag me out to make sure I spend this time doing something fun, always walking of course. So all in all things even out I guess. My life hasn't changed too dramatically but enough that I've noticed.



What to look forward to: the disappearance of my wheelchair. I've been keeping it around, more as my security blanket than anything else. Though I only use it in the house now, both my doctors and therapists have told me to ditch it completely. But it's difficult after all this time. So they've given my parents permission to hide my wheelchair! We'll see how this goes. It hasn't happened yet but my mother has been sending me warnings that it'll happen soon. I'm going to miss you wheelchair.



If you haven't seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog you need to! From Joss Whedon, with Neil Patric Harris and Felicia Day. It is amazing!

Bike Awesomeness

Excited as I was to put the bike together right away it turned out to be more of a challenge then I had thought. It came in different pieces, all with odd shapes weird angle, and funky configurations, screws that needed to be tightened, loosened, moved, jiggled... It was a hot mess of random looking parts. Even with directions it took about a week to put together (due in part because I've been fiendishly busy). But it's finally together. Putting my bike together piece by piece. Getting a better angle. I took it out for a test drive as soon as I could. It's an amazingly smooth ride, easy on the shoulders, which can be a problem in just a regular wheelchair. And it looks freakin cool! The has a very wide turning radius and like any adult bicycle you can't backpedal. But as long as I watch where I'm going it works beautifully. Pretty comfy. On my first test run I learned two things: always double check every nut and bolt before you take out a new bike, and wear pants if your legs are dangling inches above the ground. Fortunately nothing worse happened than my backrest coming loose and dirt covering my legs, but good lessons to learn nonetheless. Hitting the road! I've made a couple trips on it now, each ride increasing the distance I cover. I'm now up to 8 miles (we checked that using the car odometer earlier today) and wasn't even beat. I've got nothing but flat open road for miles and miles so we'll see how far I can go. One of my friends who is a runner has pointed out that in the half marathon that he ran there was a contestant with a hand bike. My sister has been insisting from the beginning that we should enter a race of some kind together. When I join one of these I'll let everyone know and I'll make sure to post pictures.

A Handbike and Why It's Important To Me

So soon thanks to the support of my family I will be getting a hand bike, the Freedom Ryder FRH-1.



My legs will be straight out in front of me in slings by the wheels. I will crank it it using the handles provided, which also contain the breaks and gear shifts.

For those of you who don't know I was a huge biker before my accident. This started because of necessity, since I didn't own a car. I had classes to go to, friends to visit, and a job to go to. I also worked at a bird rehab facility that was at the other end of town, which I visited at least twice a week. So I spent countless hours peddling back and forth across Colorado, usually with music blaring in my ears from my mp3 player.

One of the therapeutic tools I've used is an electric stim unit, which provides the electric stimulus that the muscles need to contract. The first time the stim unit was places on my calf and I felt the muscle contract I had a flood of memories come back to me. Suddenly I was back in Fort Collins racing through old town (which has a dismount zone fyi) dodging pedestrians who muttered curses at me. I was back heading toward CSU, trying desperately trying not to be late to class again. I was speeding in the bike lane heading to dinner surrounded by my friends. That first time tears welled up in my eyes.

Well I now have the chance to get a bike that would allow to do that for real again. The handbike would allow me a sense of motion and speed that I haven't had in over a year. It's not only the speed I'm looking forward to but the freedom. It's now possible for me speed along the miles of empty road between here and town. I expect to use this on a daily basis, so much that my parents will say "will you get off that bike and get home already!" I'll get back a piece of who I was. Though I'm not the same person I was before the accident it'll be nice to integrate that piece of who I was back in.