This column is written as correspondence between Byron the Bicyclist and Patty the Pedestrian
Dear Byron the Bicyclist. In the last column you wrote about an electric assist trishaw and Cycling Without Age. How did it start?
Signed; Patty the Pedestrian
Dear Patty.
Cycle rickshaws in various forms have been in existence since the late 1880s. “Tri” combines with the suffix of rickshaw to make the word trishaw.
Cycle Without Age comes from Denmark. Ole Kassow was cycling to work every morning. On the way, he noticed an elderly man sunning himself outside his seniors’ home.
Ole Kassow had just looked through old pictures of life in Copenhagen in the 1930s. So, he thought, this elderly man probably cycled to work when he was younger.
Then one day, Ole Kassow rented a rickshaw and rode to the nearby seniors’ home. He asked a staff member if someone might want a ride on the trishaw. The staff member disappeared. She reappeared saying, “Gertrude and I would love a ride.”
Gertrude wanted to go to the waterfront boardwalk in Copenhagan. The ride reminded Gertrude of the years she lived with her family along the waterfront in Greenland after the war. She said she could also most smell the tar, hear the seagulls and sense the hive of activity. The ride lasted an hour. For both of them, it was a thrilling experience.
The next day, Ole Kassow got a call from a manager saying, “What did you do to Gertrude? “Now all the residents want a ride!” After that, whenever he had spare time, he took more elders out.
What about the elderly man? On his ride past the palace, he excitedly told Ole he had lived there in when he was a palace guard in 1938.
Elders have stories, just let them get some wind in their hair!
Sincerely; Byron the Bicyclist.
Bert Groenenberg is a pedestrian, cyclist and motorist.
