Still Here

I ride in Saddle River County Park — from Rochelle Park out toward Ridgewood and back, adding extra loops when I want to push harder. That’s my riding world now. No more rides up to Harriman Park or into the Ringwood hills.

It’s not a dramatic route. No sweeping views, not many hills, though I take the ones that are there and skip the lowest gears on purpose. I want to feel it. I want my back, shoulders, lungs, and arms to know they’ve done something by the time I’m finished.

I ride there because it’s one of the few places I can. I don’t ride on open roads anymore. After my accident fourteen years ago, that became one of the many adjustments. I ride low to the ground on the handcycle, and even with a flag, I’m not easy to see. I barely survived the first time, so I’m not keen to risk another. Parks now. Usually this one.

Andrea and her crew to help get me out of my contraption

Andrea from Achilles set me up. She got the handcycle out, helped me in, handed me water, and off I went. The same path, the same turns, the same familiar markers telling me how far I’ve come and how far I have to go.

Some people would find it too repetitive. I find it clarifying. Sometimes my life feels like a room with walls built to keep me in. My quest is to keep pushing against those walls — to expand that room however I can. Maybe that’s a little Sisyphean. So be it.

On Wednesday, it was warm, even hot, but I love those days. Those of us with spinal cord injuries don’t regulate temperature well, and I don’t like the cold. When it’s hot, I even sweat, which is another thing we with SCIs don’t do much of. Sweat feels human. My body is participating in the world again.

I went back and forth, loop after loop, not racing anyone or training for anything in particular. I applied to ride the New York City Marathon this year and didn’t get in. No event on the calendar, no finish line to aim for. Just me, the same stubborn path, and the choice to go hard anyway.

By the end, I’d covered 24 miles. That’s not nothing. Not on a handcycle when only half your body is doing the work. From the waist down, nothing works the way it once did. From the waist up, I’ve made up for a great deal. My arms and shoulders have become what my legs used to be — the engine, the power, the thing I count on. On a warm Wednesday in the park, they delivered.

There’s a version of my life where I don’t do any of this. Where the losses accumulate into a story about what was taken, and I live inside it until it subsumes everything. I understand that version. I lived in it for a while. I kept replaying that day, hoping for a different ending. In that version, she wakes up and steers the SUV back into her lane. Zach and I finish the ride and head home to our families.

The extended Achilles family that supports me each week

Eventually, the question changes. Not why this happened to me — I’ve spent enough time with that one to know it goes nowhere. The question becomes what I’m going to do with what’s still here. And what’s still here turns out to be more than I sometimes give it credit for.

You threw everything you had at me. And I’m still out there, skipping the lowest gear and taking the hills as hard as I can.

Not standing. But here.