“Wind in their hair,” Seniors ride through city parks on three wheels

Catholic Eldercare’s RiverVillage East residents were treated to an unusual tour of Northeast on Aug. 16.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) adopted an innovative program that gets seniors to ride in the open air. 

The program, “Cycling Without Age,” is part of a worldwide non-profit movement started in Copenhagen in 2012 when a local man offered free “trishaw” rides to residents of nursing homes, and has grown to more than 2,500 Cycling Without Age chapters. 

Its purpose was to help older people who wanted to get back to bicycling but who were prevented by their limited mobility. 

The answer was a trishaw, a modern version of a rickshaw, but with features like seat belts and electric-assist pedals. The pedalers, called “pilots,” sit behind an open carriage that seats two people who roll down the street with the wind in their hair.

MPRB has two trishaws, and they circulate to several city parks. So far this year there have been six park events, along with visits to six senior residences, beginning with a kick-off event on May 29 at North Mississippi Kroening Nature Center with rides for more than 20 residents from nearby Victory Health and Rehabilitation Center. A ride is typically 20 to 40 minutes long

Maggie Mercil, MPRB’s point person for the program, worked with five parks, one in each park district, that were interested in offering trishaw rides to their community. 

 “The logistics of where to store and how to move the bikes around the city was one of our biggest challenges, while our first goal was to get the word out about this new program. With the trishaws stored at a park site, we had time between these public rides that started at parks, so I began to reach out to senior residences in the neighborhoods we were serving. At first we did one ride from a park, and one ride from a nearby residence.” 

She added that as the summer progressed, the program became so popular at senior residences that they were asking for repeat trishaw visits. MPRB has a container to house the vehicles when not in use; the container is moved to various sites for events.

RiverVillage East’s Life Enrichment Director Kiran Dahlin, who was contacted by MPRB, said, “I thought it was a great opportunity and wanted to try and set it up for our assisted living facilities as well [Main street Lodge and RiverVillage]. They were willing to partner with both of those buildings too, so I set out arranging everything on our end.” 

Dahlin provided education for her team at all three sites about the Cycling Without Age program and created signup sheets for the residents. She was recruiting riders on the day of the event because of the relatively short notice. 

She noted that many residents were apprehensive about participating, not knowing what to expect. “After watching the first few rides, many others were quick to jump on board and get excited about it, especially after seeing how much their peers enjoyed their rides.”

Mercil confirmed that. She said, “One daughter commented that her mother hadn’t stopped smiling since she got off of the tri-shaw ride. One gentlemen said he hadn’t been out of the facility for a year. Another person said she didn’t know we had such beautiful parks. General comments I heard over and over were, ’The rides were fun!,’ ‘awesome!’ and ‘When are you coming back?’” 

Mercil said MPRB would like to increase their trishaw fleet ultimately to ten, plus the two they have now, to serve all five districts at the same time. The trishaws cost between $400 and $11,000 per unit, and are shipped from Denmark.