Truth be told, I have spent a huge part of my life being afraid to ride a bike. Like my son, who is now 9 years old and still refuses to learn, I avoided riding a bicycle until my double digit years.

My late husband Aaron, gave me a hybrid commuter bike for my 27th birthday. It was a heavy steel Marin road bike, with straight bars. It also had the skinniest tires I had ever seen. The day he gave it to me I cried. "This is a pressure gift" I said, and refused to ride it for weeks.

It didn’t help that on one of the few occasions I did ride the bike, it was with Aaron, on our to the Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital. We locked the bikes up that day, thinking his cough was bronchitis. We both assumed we'd be back on the bikes and ride them home in a few hours.

But we were wrong, and we never rode our bikes together again. Eventually I retrieved them but Aaron passed away 8 weeks later. (that is a story for another time). Two years later, I took the bike with me when I left Chicago and returned home to Nantucket, to heal my grief stricken heart. But it rarely saw the light of day.

A few years later, when I myself was diagnosed with cancer, I made a promise to the universe, that if I made it through chemotherapy, I would learn, not only to ride that damn bike, I would learn to ride an actual road bike, like Aaron's and clip in, as he had.

To cement the deal, I registered to ride the bike section of the Nantucket Iron Teams Relay race in June of 2014. I had never competed in a race of any kind, ever, but I figured throwing in this last part would motivate me to train, and might shore up my likelihood of surviving cancer.

To my great relief (and horror), I somehow made it through my first 14 rounds of Taxol, Herceptin and AC with "flying colors".

I also survived major surgery and hormonal therapy and an additional 16 infusions of Herceptin. 6 months into treatment, It became apparent that I was slaying breast cancer, and soon it would be time to slay my debilitating FEAR of riding on skinny tires.

I had to keep my end of the bargain.

The first time my friend Big Ed took me out on my new (used) steel Greg Le Monde 10-speed, we rode from my house on the south shore of Nantucket, some 15 miles out to Sconset on the east end and back. I averaged 12mph. With a body wrecked from treatment, it was slow, slow going. He patiently taught me how to unclip before slowing at an intersection and I remember how hard and fast my heart was beating. I was terrified.

Terrified, but thrilled, and just like that, I fell in love. So in love in fact that, a month after finishing the Iron Teams Relay, I signed up for the bike leg of the Nantucket Triathlon: more miles than I had ever ridden at a single day; let’s call it 30. That seems like nothing now, but back then it sounded like an insurmountable distance. But I was a newbie, and I cruised along fueled by a lust for live only the threat of terminal illness can inspire.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.
~Eleanor Roosevelt”

Recently I just bought my first mountain bike.I fell 3 times the first day I road it. Cornering around trees with handlebars much wider than I am used to, I watched my heart rate soar to a whopping 180bpm. I fought my way through moments of bike handling anxiety, and a panic-induced trail decent in Ram's Pasture, but I eventually I made it through the woods.

I think this is the beginning of a new love affair.

For me, learning to ride a bike was scary. But so was going through breast cancer. But I got through both.

At the end of next month, a group of riders from Nantucket are joining up with Destination Cycling to travel to Mallorca, Spain for 7 days of riding between 30 and 80 miles a day. There will be flats, beautiful rolling hills, and some days of heavy climbing. Some of our local riders have been going for years, yet I have always been too scared to sign up. So this year, I signed up.

Learning to ride a bike

Truth be told, I have spent a huge part of my life being afraid to ride a bike. Like my son, who is now 9 years old and still refuses to learn, I avoided riding a bicycle until my double digit years.

I had to keep my end of the bargain.

We have the power.

Learning to ride a bike

Truth be told, I have spent a huge part of my life being afraid to ride a bike. Like my son, who is now 9 years old and still refuses to learn, I avoided riding a bicycle until my double digit years.

I had to keep my end of the bargain.

We have the power.

You’re Never too Old to Dance

Life After the Knife