Parkinson's: a secret

 A Journey into Parkinson's with Nancy Mellon
Coordinated by that effervescent, tea soaked, Brit Corrine Bayraktaroglu

a secret

Let me tell you a secret. I am loving the quiet mornings.  I may carp about being up at 4 or 5 am these days, but the mornings are golden. I have always been a staunch night owl.  Reading to all hours and when I could get away with it sleeping until noon was my favorite MO. My excuse was, I was an actress,  it fit. 

I never would have believed that the morning  hours could be so sweet. But they are. I am even lusting after a recumbent trike to go bike riding in the early hours.  We went to the Springfield Bicycle Stop a couple of days ago and I said yes to the question “do you want to try one?”  I haven't ridden a bike in many moons. And I never was much of a rider, I had never used gears! I was scared, but thought “yes I'll try.”

hooweeeeeee it was fun!

• When we came back in, Diane, the sales woman who was walking us through the process of Recumbent Triking  asked  “how'd you like it?” 

•  She looked a little flabbergasted, (or maybe the right word is gobsmacked) when I said, “I loved it!  But I didn't use the gears and probably won't ever use them.”  

• She said “yes you will, that would be a waste, there are 30 gears on this bike!” 

• Steven looked at her and said “No she wont. You don't know her.” 

So she took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to solve this ridiculous problem.  I'm pretty sure, she wanted to say “how can you be so stupid?”  Instead she explained all the pleasures, the reasons for using gears.  She also said she  could teach me to use gears.  Which I thought was very nice. 

In the end, she had me try another Trike, that I didn't like and  showed me another one that was much more simplistic in the gear bit.  It just had 2. You just had to push it forward and back to go easier or harder.  But that one wasn't completely set up yet to try out.  

As we left, she was calling out to us  “come back and I will teach you how to use gears, I'll run beside the bike and shout push and pull.”

I still had the problem, did I want to use gears?  And the real crux of the problem, could I really learn how to? About this time you who have used gears from the time you were  practically a toddler are probably also thinking 'how could she be so stupid?” 

I certainly feel stupid in this tiny corner of my life amidst my gear fears. I'm afraid my Parkinson's brain is not capable to do this multitasking. I don't really understand how gears work and basically I can't believe that you have to change gears while you are peddling. I keep hearing that thunk sound when you are frantically trying to change gears and forgot to peddle at the same time.  (Yes I did try a little to change gears while I was out testing the glorious Trike.)  so whether I can conquer my gear fear is one of the problems and the other is the down payment on the mortgage it takes to buy one!

OH MY GOSH! It is totally too expensive.  

But I want it.  This is not normal for me. I don't do retail therapy. I don't spend a lot of money on me.  But I think it would be a good investment for my health. The snark and I could go biking in the early mornings. 

Stay tuned  will Nancy conquer her Gear Fear?   Will she hold a gigantic garage sale to pay for the trike?

Hope you are enjoying these glorious mornings,

Nancy and the Snark

Footnotes From Corrine: I had my semi recumbent trike for 3 years and absolutely loved it and I can honestly say I rarely ever used more than three gears. At best I used two and that’s because my trike trips were limited to going to the bike trail. The only time I used other gears were if somehow I was going uphill or downhill and I tried to avoid that. I don’t see you needing all the gears Going from your house the the bike trail and staying on the small section of trail .  Yes , I used to take a flask of tea in my trike basket , trike to Ellis Pond, whip out my China tea-mug , and read the Yellow Springs News by the pond .

Nancy wasn’t kidding about me and my tea lol!