At the end of the summer, Rob and I will be participating in the New Jersey Gran Fondo (www.granfondonj.com), which means Big Race in Italian. What will be unique about our experience, however, is that we are each riding on a tandem bicycle, and our respective partners, another husband and wife team, are both blind. In this blog I’ll share with you my love of biking, how we came to be involved in this event and how much I have learned just in this short time about working with blind people.
The first big purchase of my life, at age 15, was a 10 speed Raleigh Gran Prix. I was a latch key kid, so that bicycle meant everything – transportation to school, after school events and sports, transportation to my first job, freedom, independence, and, of course, fun. In high school, my friends and I would sneak out of the house in the middle of the night and go for moonlight rides. For those of you who live in and around Morris County, we used to go screaming down Long Hill Road in Harding Township in the dark, with no headlamps. To this day I am amazed we survived. I loved that bicycle (and it stayed with me for 15 years). I also decided at some point in the intervening time that one of my life’s goals would be to ride across the United States. I haven’t done it yet, but it’s not too late.
