Mondays with Mike: On a bicycle built for two

Our current ride

For her birthday, on December 23 1983, I gave Beth a brand new Peugeot bicycle. It was a dandy ride—a lovely light blue, classic upright riding position, folding saddle baskets, three speeds. Perfect for the young and lovely university professional who wanted to commute to campus and run errands on her bicycle.

She loved that bike. But Beth only got one good season out of it, then the diabetic retinopathy put an end to her riding days. We eventually gave it to an exchange student at the university. Beth wasn’t sentimental about many things after losing her sight, but somehow the presence of that bicycle gave us both stomach aches, so we got rid of it.

Back then, can’t remember exactly what year, our good friend Greg Schafer called one day and said he’d spotted a Schwinn Twinn tandem in one of those weekly ad papers. He and I took a look, and I took possession.

We’ve had a tandem ever since. Just this past Saturday, we schlepped our big long bike out of the basement of our building and rode to another hood for a terrific breakfast. Later we headed out on and did some grocery shopping.

It was a swell day. But. Our tandem bicycles—the Twinn lasted a long time but we’re on our third now—have been, in a very real way, a telling representation of how Beth’s blindness changes things, and how it doesn’t.

On the one hand, it’s cool we can go for rides together. And Beth still gets that feeling of the wind in her hair. On the other, it’s a circumstance that’s dictated. It’s not like we rode a tandem and fell in love with riding together one day. Back on the first hand, it’s another example of how adaptation can help fill gaps left by Beth’s disability. On the thumbs down side, like most of the adaptations—a talking computer, audio books—it’s not the same.

For Beth, she has to follow my lead and put an enormous amount of trust in me. She can’t just go for a ride if she feels like it. I have to feel like it, too. And even recruiting other friends isn’t a great solution—because in truth, it takes some practice to ride these things safely, and you have to learn to work together.

It hasn’t always been easy. And it’s sort of representative of a lot of the give and take we’ve had to work through. I have short stocky legs and prefer a faster pace in a lower gear. Beth likes pedaling slower at higher gears. I like to coast when Beth likes to get on the crank. I have to be vigilant about traffic and such, she’s just pedaling away.

And so on. It’s like that in other scenarios off the bike. It just is. And I wish it weren’t so. But it is. It’s not what we’d choose if we had the power. But we don’t. It’s the best we can do. And it’s pretty good.