1st ride - 5/2/15

In 2013, I bicycled very devotedly, and kept a blog. However, balance-related issues from the brain injury I received in my 1993 accident led to numerous falls and injuries. I did not ride, therefore, from late September 2013 until May 2014, when I tried to restart, but after about a week of riding, I had another fall, leading to a minor concussion.

Though I would still have liked to keep riding, I felt it was unloving and unfair to my wife to keep subjecting her to the worry. This spring, I set up a FundMe project in order to pay for a pricey adult tricycle.

In the spring of 2014, I had a conversation with Rob Bauman, a colleague of Michelle's at her school, in which he recommended to me Jack's Bicycle in Dearborn, Michigan's oldest bicycle dealer (since 1935). They handle TerraTrikes, a brand of trikes which several former students of mine ride, and have recommended highly to me. So, on Saturday, March 28, I went to Jack's to do a little research and costs and product availability. Then, on Saturday, April 11, Michelle and I went back there so that I could test ride one, having settled on TerraTrike's Traveler model (because of its advantage of folding up for easier transport).

Following the successful completion of the FundMe campaign, Michelle and I went back to Jack's yesterday, May 2, and purchased a TerraTrike Traveler. We experienced mild frustration at the store in trying to learn how to fold it up for transport, and then to reassemble it again, but eventually got it, and later in the day went to Hudson Mills Metropark, north of Dexter, where I enjoyed an inaugural ride, keeping it modest and doing 2 of the park's 2.7-mile loops, for a total of 5.4 miles, in a half-hour. As I came toward the conclusion of this brief ride, Michelle snapped this picture of me.