Rolling Again

continued

I tried to pay some bills that evening, I couldn't even sign my name. A series of barely felt small strokes had remodeled my body.

I can't mount or balance on an upright bicycle anymore, but I can sit down and pedal a recumbent. I've been laid low, a tall tree felled. Now magnificent trees are a sheltering canopy for my self-propelled bed. Everything in my life has changed except for this arbor.

By next summer I'll have reached a landmark: as many years living within a few blocks of Liberty as I spent in Detroit after college. Though the two cities couldn't be more dissimilar, they both have a gorgeous river that they've managed somehow to make it difficult to reach.

As soon as I figured out how to handle my marvelous new contraption, I made my way to the Huron. My old favorite route out Geddes to Gallup Park and the bike path all the way to Parker Mill was way beyond my strength, so I headed for Bandemer Park, making a harrowing descent around the potholes on Hiscock and then a frightening jaunt up the jagged sidewalk on North Main to cruise the bike path from Bandemer to Riverside Park.