Cycling Without Age

Oak trees arc over the road, the bright sun beams through their branches and rust-colored leaves scatter along the curb. Whether it is after a long day indoors or a brief moment of stress, biking through nature has its grounding effects. But with age, getting outside for those calm moments can become less accessible. That is where the organization Cycling Without Age comes in.

Cycling Without Age is a worldwide movement that works to spread joy and vitality by providing bike rides to seniors of varying abilities. Since the Wausau chapter hit the ground running eight years ago, it has offered hundreds of rides for local seniors on a vehicle called a trishaw. Two seniors get to sit right up front and enjoy the scenery and senses while a volunteer is on a seat in the back pedaling. As a biking volunteer and ride coordinator for Wausau’s chapter, 78-year-old Ron Bielen works to preserve that feeling.

“Other people say they feel the wind in their hair, but since I am totally bald, I don’t feel that,” Bielen joked. “But I get the thrill about riding and just engaging with the people that we have on the trishaws.”

As time can make the indoors feel too familiar, the trishaws are an accessible opportunity for seniors to switch up their environment. Oftentimes, these trips allow for past experiences and old memories to bubble back up to the surface too.

“We have people who have taken rides from memory care facilities who haven’t been outside in over a year,” volunteer and trishaw technician Chris Filtz said. “They’re closed in; they don’t speak much and they don’t have much going on. When they get outside and they’re with a family member, they’ll smile, they’ll squeeze their hand or ... they will tell me who lived in this house, or ‘We had a farm out past this place and when I was a kid I helped with this,’ and ‘I used to work at that factory and we built rubber rain jackets off of Sherman Street,’ ... When they get outside, get that sunlight and have someone that’s interested in hearing from them, they just really open up and start telling you wonderful stories that you will now get to remember.”

The routes that the trishaws cruise along start from different designated starting points, such as The Landing at the downtown Wausau YMCA and Mount View nursing home. These outdoor journeys wind through the rest of the community, sparking reactions from passersby.

“Everybody seems to love us. We get waves; our volunteers always have smiley faces, they’re waving at people and they’re saying hello. One of the things I notice is traffic will even stop to let us cross a road,” Filtz said. “They’re like ‘What is that?’ and we get to tell them what we do, and a lot of times then they will call a place like The Landing or they’ll say, ‘Well my mom is at the health care center and you have a trishaw there,’ That’s right, get on the schedule there with the people that run the health care center and come for a ride.”

These rides also help to enhance the perspective of volunteers. With more than two years of volunteering for Cycling Without Age under his belt, Filtz is getting well acquainted with Wausau. Still, the community surprises him every season.

“I didn’t expect us to have 50 volunteers when I joined. I wasn’t aware the number was that high. I thought it was a real small group,” Filtz said. “Every year that I’ve taken part in the training and seeing 15 to 20 new volunteers come in, new faces and people that want to do something to help out is pretty incredible.”

For Bielen, on the other hand, volunteering doubled down on his understanding of Wausau.

“[Volunteering] reinforced that Wausau is a great place to live and that there’s a real vibrant volunteer community here, not only with Cycling Without Age,” Bielen said. “There’s really a lot of natural beauty in the southeast side of Wausau, and it’s a beautiful neighborhood with the houses that aren’t cookie-cutter. They’re small, typically smaller yards, and really well kept ... It also emphasized the great cycling opportunities in the area here. [Wausau] is really a kind of a neat recreational center and this allows these people who wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to get out and do things to be able to partake.”

Cycling Without Age is also a nonprofit organization, meaning every trip seniors take — whether along the Wisconsin River, to Dairy Queen or Briq’s for a free ice cream, or around Rib Mountain — is at no cost. To keep these trishaws on Wausau sidewalks, Cycling Without Age depends solely on donations from the community.

“We just survive on the generosity of other people, and that’s why everyone with us is a volunteer, even the board,” Filtz said. “Nobody takes a salary; nobody takes payments. I donate my tools, my time, my trailer, my vehicle to haul them around. It’s all done just out of the kindness of people.”

The clarity, peace and solace that cycling brings through nature are universally felt, no matter one’s age, and it is Cycling Without Age that throws the wind through the hair of those whose abilities have kept them from experiencing it otherwise. Cycling Without Age provides rides for seniors through the rest of the summer until Labor Day weekend. The public can access rides through The Landing at the YMCA in downtown Wausau, and rides are offered to residents at Island Place, North Central Health Care, Mount View Care Center, Birchwood Highland Apartments, Renaissance by Rennes and Primrose Memory Care.

To learn more, visit cyclingwithoutage.com/marathon-county.