Salvation from a Strange Source

Seventy-two days ago, my patella calved off a slab of bone and created a malicious, lip curling wave of suffering that smirks at my feeble attempt to surf the setback. A hold-down set; I’ve been underwater for ten weeks.

What is there to say about another knee surgery and two more months on crutches? The quiet misery of immobility, the knowing realization that it will be a long time until the feeling of wind in the face, of velocity, of reclaimed control. Time goes glacial, hope refracted, dimmed.

I can’t think of anything from this session worth sharing. Tally up the score—three knee surgeries, a splenectomy, and oral surgery in the last ten months—accept the losing end of the ledger, and look to the horizon for a better set.

Salvation shows up from sources you hadn’t thought to query. In my case, it’s Facebook, or more specifically, Facebook Marketplace. I’d just conferred with the good doctor, Eric Heiden, who’d yanked on my knee and pronounced it well enough to allow for spinning with very low resistance on a stationary bike. This was just the prescription I’d been hoping for. At least one part of it, the part about the bike. The stationary piece? Not so much. I’d been stationary plenty. I needed movement.

What if I could get on a real bike and spin with the doctor-approved low pedal resistance? Hmmmm. That would require a gradual downhill. Not practical. But what if I could simulate a gradual downhill with adjustable pedal assistance?

The idea of an e-bike forms and makes complete sense, except for one snag.

Don’t I despise those things? Hadn’t I cursed the fat-ass, barely sweating, self-satisfied, smug-faced yobs who’d passed me by as I pedaled, puritanically on my simple, human-powered machine? Yeah, that was me. One of me, anyway. But maybe that me is slipping vaguely into memory, his self-assuredness sufficiently dimmed during the dark purgatory of the last year.

Whatever the case, on this bright day in mid-March, that guy is more than ready to shed whatever old skin needs sloughing in order to slither back to the light. This is where Facebook Marketplace offers salvation. I know. That’s a strange sentence, one that I’d never anticipated, but depression and desperation drive all manner of change.

The search takes all of 60 seconds and a few clicks to reveal a small bike shop in Magna, Utah, that apparently purchased more Specialized Levo e-bikes than it needs for its rental operation. The bike on offer is svelte, demonic, matte-black carbon fiber, and never ridden. The price is substantially below market, and extravagantly more than I’d ever paid for a bicycle, but if it could bring me back into the light, well then, what wouldn’t you pay for salvation?

Goran, of Eastern European descent, keeps a tidy shop and is enthusiastic in his e-bike primer. I crutch from his garage to my truck as he wheels the bike. Resting the infernal aluminum crutches against my Chevy, I carefully loop a leg over the saddle, which is mounted on a dropper seat post that, at the moment, is dropped into the down position. Thumbing the e-control to Levo’s Turbo setting, I push to a standing position on the pedals and stab the dropper seatpost button. I’m rolling pleasantly as the seat rises up to meet my tush in a most pleasant and sure manner.

And now I’m pedaling. My knee seems to creak, and I imagine it groaning inwardly, but there is no pain. The pedals turn over with barely any resistance, and I’m rolling. There’s a salty breeze in my face—just over the bluff sprawls the Great Salt Lake—that’s never felt so welcomed. And with the swipe of a card, I own the promise of pedaling to better, brighter days ahead.