Becoming/being, disabled?

[Crankin]

I am where you are, Helene. I don't have knee issues, but I would rather do more moderate cycling in both terrain and distance than to get an e bike, unless I was really incapacitated. Like you, I'd find a replacement activity. When we went to Provence last summer, one of the women on our tour rode an e bike the first day. She was clearly not as strong of a cyclist as most of the others, but she *hated* the thing. She said it was heavy and just felt unwieldy. She went back to the Trek FX and modified the mileage each day of the tour.

[ny biker]

Last year, when I had the laryngitis that wouldn't go away and that made it hard to breathe when I rode my bike, and the jerk ENT told me I had a paralyzed vocal cord, I started to cry. In part I cried because the doctor was a jerk who refused to believe that the vocal cord problem affected my breathing and it was so hard to talk that I couldn't tell him what I really thought of him. He had no idea that when he said "there's no treatment" I was hearing "you won't be able to ride your bike like you used to ever again." I was very upset.

I was lucky that the problem was not caused by a serious underlying problem and that it resolved on its own. I'm told it will probably happen again so I'm very careful about not straining my voice whenever I get a cold. My voice has been hoarse lately (due to allergies? and maybe also the inhaler I use?) so several times a day I say EEEEEEEE which is a test to see if the vocal cord is paralyzed. If the problem hadn't gotten better I would have tried to find ways around it -- riding easier, flatter routes maybe -- but ultimately I would have had to find a way to accept that I would always struggle to talk, I couldn't sing anymore, my activities would be limited by an inability to breathe. And my voice sounded so funny when I did talk, I hated it. I honestly don't know how it would have affected me it the long run. You try to fight it, work around it, not let it get to you but sometimes you just get tired of fighting and want things to be different.


As for e-bikes, I do know someone who rides a recumbent with an electrical motor. Without it, he wouldn't be able to get up the hills, so he sees it as the thing that allows him to keep riding.

[Pax]

NY - I can hear the "end of the rope" exhaustion in what you wrote. You just reach a point where you sit back and realize you have got to stop fighting for your own emotional well-being. Glad your situation resolved so you got another shot at being active.

If I continue to live where biking is safe and viable, I'll have an e-bike at some point. Since my knee has healed up so badly I really can;t ride much at all these days, so at least that would help me roll a bit.