WE MOVE
204 West 84th Street
New York, NY 10024
E-mail: wemove@wemove.org
wemove.org • mdvu.org
Tap Dancing on Egg shells
Although you have challenges, don't give up.
– Toby Libert
The Five Boro Bike Tour May 4, 2008 By Toby Libert
The Five-Boro Bike Tour began in Lower Manhattan and looped through all five boroughs ending up on Staten Island. An annual event takes place in May. The course, from beginning to end is 42 miles. All of it is traffic free. I have been living with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) for over ten years and I am proud to say that I was one of the 30,000 participants in the Bike Tour. My boyfriend, Steve, and I began the day at 6:30 AM by carrying our bike onto the Number Six Subway to the Brooklyn Bridge stop. After carrying it up the subway steps, we mounted up and rode toward Battery Park stopping at the corner of Church and Vesey Streets where we joined thousands of others waiting for the tour to begin. Standing where the shadow of the Twin Towers should have been, I thought about the thousands of people whose lives were forever changed on that fateful day, of September 11, 2001. Life has a way of throwing a curve ball when you least expect it. My curve ball came when I was 47. Since then, I have gone rock climbing, white water rafting, taken flying lessons, and now entered the New York Bike Tour. I have trouble initiating movement and balance is a huge issue for me. Steve and I solved that problem with a bicycle built for two, called a tandem. The front rider is called the driver and the rear rider is the stoker. The stoker has two jobs, first to generate power especially on an uphill. The second is never trying to steer. Riding a tandem takes cooperation and trust. When the whistle blew, we pushed off and joined the sea of bikes that headed toward Sixth Avenue and past Herald Square. Men and women, young and old, tall and short, fat and thin, and those with physical challenges. All on bikes. Bikes for two and bikes for three, recumbent bikes and hand pedaled bikes. All wearing helmets and blue bibs displaying their entry number. The tour continued through Central Park. We pedaled past some, some pedaled past us. We traveled into the Bronx, down the FDR Drive and over the Queensboro Bridge into Astoria, Queens. When we started the tour I was nervous, we were literally surrounded by bikes, being bumped by handlebars and tires, as we continued the riders thinned out. The sun was out, people were cheering on the sidewalk, but I was getting tired. For a few moments, I thought I wouldn’t make it to Staten Island. Especially, when we came over the Pulaski Bridge then through Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Just before we entered the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a sign indicated a short cut. It offered skipping Staten Island and returning to Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge. My aching calf muscles made me consider the option, but I had come so close to completing the course, I decided to continue. Instead of the Brooklyn Bridge, we continued on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the Gowanus Expressway to the Belt Parkway up and over the Lower Level of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The race ended on Staten Island. The trip home to Manhattan on the ferry was exhilarating. Surrounded by bikes, and bikers I felt proud that I hadn’t given up. I had done it! It was a personal victory, a day to tuck away and remember on the days that I have trouble moving or times when I feel sad for what I have lost. I am a person living with Parkinson’s Disease, it does not define me, and it does not own me. I have learned not to waste one single day, to grab for the gusto, to live each day to the fullest, and try not to worry about tomorrow.
