By the time our youngest graduated from college, biking was a part of who we were. Over the years, we biked up, down, and around the black fiords of Norway and in red-rock Bryce. We pedaled past herds of bison in Yellowstone, through otherworldly Cappadocia in Turkey, and across the blossoming spine of Sardinia. And on and on. Often, when the scenery became particularly spectacular, he’d pull alongside me and marvel: “Can you believe us kids from Brooklyn would ever see a place like this?”
It was seldom just the two of us, as we often traveled with biking groups. The exception was our trip to Nice, only weeks before my husband was struck. We had brought along an international phone, but it didn’t work from the moment we landed. I had my old-fashioned doctor – normally on call for all patients, friends, acquaintances, and close and distant relatives – all to myself.
Instead of packing our bikes, we had decided to rent. But, astonishingly, once in the land of the Tour de France, we found we could rent only clunky bikes suitable for a ramble down the Promenade. So, as my husband would have said, but didn’t have to, because we’d grown to think alike: “If you can’t dance on one foot, hop on the other.” Without the hoped-for bikes, we hoofed it, enjoying things we avoided at home: daily marketing, public transportation, and long lunches. And though we weren’t able to bike, we talked about it: Where next?
Now, without him, I wonder if I’ll ever pack my bike again. Is there anywhere I want to go?
I take it as a sign of progress that I’m back in the saddle, and, miraculously, biking without trepidation. And furthermore, I recently did something I never would have done with my husband. I hiked Mount Washington with a grandchild and a great-nephew, staying at an Appalachian Mountain Club hut overnight, a first. (Sleeping in a room with 14 strangers on stacking cots was not my husband’s idea of fun.)
