First Adventures: Cycling Without Age

Biking to the beach and then to get ice cream with my 99 year-old mother revealed how a program to increase access to the outdoors can truly flourish under the right conditions.

Our efforts through Kennett Outdoors to identify adaptive biking options presumes that the person has some minimal level of fitness and skill needed to pedal. But what if they don't... or don't yet?? So we were excited to finally get a chance to see another option in action, through a Cycling Without Age (CWA) program I discovered at my mother's memory care program in Kelowna, British Columbia. My mother Jean, pictured below with my sister Nancy, turns 100 in January. They enjoyed a one hour tour with a CWA volunteer "pilot" that included a stop for ice cream, the first time Jean had been on a bike in more than 60 years! We think that this might offer a model for how to give people with Intellectual / Developmental Disability and/or Autism (IDA) a chance to experience biking for the first time, perhaps encouraging to them explore other options potentially available to them.

In sum, CWA was started in Denmark in 2012 to give seniors the chance to ride again (click here for a brief history and click here the watch the the wonderful TED talk by its founder, Oleg Kassow). Each chapter organizes rides for local seniors or other groups using one or more "rickshaws" - e.g., e-bike pedicabs like the Trio Taxi we acquired for use with Margot that can accommodate two riders and a "pilot" - and volunteer "pilots" trained to provide a safe and comfortable ride.

I discovered the Kelowna CWA chapter when helping my sisters move our mother from her retirement community into her memory care unit. I saw a poster pinned to the notice board at each site inviting seniors to sign up for a weekly ride. One email later, I was invited to join a ride the next day at a third retirement community. Three pedicabs piloted by CWA pilots pulled up ready to offer rides of about 45 minutes to 6 seniors at a time, in this case accompanied also by two staff from the retirement community (see above). It was clear from the excitement of the other residents waiting their turn that this was a highlight of their week. Indeed, one confessed to me that she hoped a fellow resident might not be up for a trip so that she could go out for a second ride!

The experience also highlights some of the opportunities available when offering a CWA program. For example, CWA pilots are drawn from a pool of volunteers who love helping seniors, love sharing the experience or cycling, and love getting exercise themselves. The schedule of weekly rides helps both the residents and the volunteers plan their fun and make best use of their time. Kelowna is ideally suited for a CWA program like this: the retirement communities are clustered around a downtown core that has excellent biking network with separated bike lanes in front of the homes connecting residences directly to the lakefront. Kelowna is also home to one of the most spectacular sections of rail-trail in the continent: the Myra Canyon Trestles (pictured right) with 18 wooden and steel trestles and two tunnels high in the Rocky Mountains an easy drive from Kelowna. Unfortunately, the lack of accessible restrooms at the trailheads limit the use of these trails for people with disabilities... for now.

The experience also highlights some of the challenges of offering a CWA program. For example, the Kelowna chapter houses pedicabs at the retirement communities themselves so they are readily accessible (especially for those communities that are close enough together that pilots can just ride the pedicabs over to wherever the rides are to be held that day) - otherwise, you need a plan to transport the pedicabs. CWA pilots with the Kelowna chapter rely on retirement community staff to help residents get on and get of the pedicabs to limit liability: the fact that two staff accompanied the volunteers on my CWA ride allowed one rider to get off the pedicab to use a portapotti in the community. And the preferred pedicabs are not cheap - the entry level Triobike Taxi starts at about $16,000 US. Nonetheless, the number of chapters in the US are increasing as seen on this map.

So at Kennett Outdoors, we have been exploring how this might work for people with IDA. Once you have acquired a pedicab and identified the shared use path you will ride on (and a way to transport your equipment!), an outing on a pedicab with a person with IDA and a caregiver becomes one of the easiest ways for someone to experience the joy of riding. There are challenges to promoting cycling among people with IDA, however.

• Some schools and other agencies providing services to people with IDA are becoming open to promoting adaptive outdoor recreation, but caregivers have been slow to take advantage of this... perhaps opportunities like these are simply not on their radar, or the burden of caregiving is simply overwhelming, especially for those with severe / profound levels of IDA.

• Margot's Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) require multiple opportunities to practice piloting our pedicabs before they are comfortable and confident using the Trio Taxi or Urban Arrow Tender with her (although riding in Kennett's quiet and hilly roads creates much more stress compared to a ride on a flat rail-trail).

• We also struggled to identify insurers willing to offer the coverage required, without which we cannot schedule events at local parks.

• People with IDA who require 1:1 levels of support limit the number of people who can be accommodated at a given event when each pedicab can only accommodate the person with IDA and their 1:1 support... this makes scheduling group outings more complicated.

We are looking forward to taking these challenges on!!