Lessons in Communication from the Visually Impaired on Bicycles

I spent the morning cycling with TRAILBLAZERS Tandem Cycling Club, a registered charity in Toronto providing recreational cycling to people who have limited or no vision the opportunity to cycle with sighted volunteers on tandems. I volunteer as a captain, the cyclist in front, while the stoker is the term used for the second person on a tandem.

Today I was paired with a stoker (you're not necessarily paired with the same stoker ride after ride, as it depends who's available to ride on a particular day) who I shall call B in this article. Pairing is so important in tandem riding as it is best if the stoker weighs less than the captain, to prevent a case of 'the tail wagging the dog' as far as weight distribution on the bicycle is concerned.

After tuning the bicycle for our respective sizes, adjusting the tire pressures and guiding B to her saddle, we were off on a short test ride before going out onto the roads. This again showed up my shortcomings in my ability to pilot a tandem for the visually impaired (and no doubt will continue to do so for some time to come), as I neglected to communicate simple matters such as corners, uphills and downhills, perhaps irrelevant communication in the context of the sighted, but important information for B! Furthermore, as different bikes make different noises during braking and gearchanges, it became important to communicate these to B to be sure she understood that what she was experiencing was normal for this bike. It didn't take long for he to get used to those noises, and thus to soon make that particular verbal communication redundant.

Out on the road, it became a case of constant verbal feedback to ensure B could react appropriately - river on our right, traffic heavy, slowing on a downhill due to traffic, children playing ahead, narrow gate, bump, sharp turn, all vital information, especially as B indicated she wanted to get to the end of the ride FIRST! Aah, I love competitive genetics :)!

Yet within the challenges of her constrained sight, her strength became apparent - perhaps uniquely in the case of B - but it had me reflecting on it for some time. You see, there was quite a long uphill back to the end of the ride, so I told B we now needed to work hard and fly up the hill in order to guarantee coming in first. So we thumped it to the top, passing everyone and reaching the top comfortably first. Now considering that B was a relative newbie, after 30 years cycling myself, I can almost guarantee that any sighted newbie would have paled at the sight of the hill, and would have chosen to rather crawl up it. But enter the dark world of the blind, and perhaps it was simply yet another challenge that needed to be overcome, with grit.

The outcome of this week's ride and my lessons as captain (leader) are fourfold:

• To ensure constant communication every step of the way until your charge is comfortable with what is happening in terms of the particular activity driving that  communication, e.g. gearchanges
• That the visually impaired view challenges in different ways that can be a complement to the work of the sighted. Indeed, B was still pushing hard when I was starting to feel the consequences of the exertion, perhaps because she had no visual cues about the hill other than what I could provide her. It seemed to her not to be so much about about steep, long and hard as typical for the sighted, but rather about overcoming the challenge, whatever it might take!
• The whole experience continues to teach me about assumptions about what is known about a particular situation, and it is beginning to make me question every move on the bicycle. For example, slowing down - it's one thing to communicate slowing down, but it's also important to communicate WHY I am taking this particular course of action, thereby helping her to react appropriately to the conditions present on the road at the time.
• Observation is key, as the communication of every observation, which might be implied in the mind of the sighted, serves to increase the picture available to your charge to more effectively complete the task at hand.

So if by volunteering in this way, it means I become a better communicator, am better able to leverage diverse experiences, am better able to give supporting information in the form of answers to the question, "why", make fewer assumptions and become a better observer, then I believe this will all serve to make me a better leader. We'll see!