A Most Unusual Day

Today is my birthday and I officially turned the page into the Septuagenarian phase of life.  That's right, I turned 70 today.  

Months ago, I started getting a wild hair idea.  As I mentioned back in 2019, in my right sidebar's About Me box, it has included the term "roadie cyclist" for as long as I can recall.  Cycling used to be one of the main activities Mrs. Graybeard and I engaged in; our main exercise/outdoor hobby.  After I started the blog, we went into a phase of riding less often, less distance, and eventually stopped riding altogether.  I'm not sure when we stopped but I made a reference to riding in late 2010 and some other posts into late 2011 make me think we were riding then.  I started riding by myself again in 2018.  

Back around late August, early September, I started getting a wild hair to do one of those things we did in the '90s and '00s.  For our birthdays, we'd ride our age.  While I was riding three days a week in the range of 13 to 14 miles/ride, I got the wild hair to ride 70 miles today. Because we had ridden the local (-ish) club's century ride every year for a decade (100 miles, not km), I had a pretty good idea of how to add miles, and the experience that told me that if you can ride your one day ride's mileage in a week, you'll probably be able to finish your goal ride.  Starting in September, I set a goal to increase my weekly mileage by 3% every week which would get me to 70/week by the first of the year. 

My bike - a 2005 Airborne titanium bike.  There's a bit of a story behind it, at that link up at the top.

Things were going along pretty smoothly until the start of the cool months, when we started getting weeks of really unpleasant weather to ride in, alternating with better weather.  Not "cold" - we've been nowhere near any extreme cold - just either rainy, very windy, or both.  My mileage ridden in December was five miles less than October, and about 70 miles less than November. 

There's a ton of small stories in here, but I'll spare you.  The bottom line is today was the day, the weather was probably the best we've had since November, but I didn't make the 70.  On top of that, it was because of things I should have done automatically - without having to think or plan - and probably would have if it hadn't been nearly 20 years since the last time I did a long ride like this.  

I messed up my hydration and electrolyte balance.  The old rule of thumb about drinking was "drink before you're thirsty" and I didn't obey that.  On top of that, I had nothing like those sports drinks - you know, the ones that are horribly sugar-laden and they dump some table salt into them.  That's not fair.  They put in more than just table salt.  At around mile 62, as I was planning how to get the last 8 miles, I decided to stop for another drink at a gas station/convenience store and had to step off the bike.  I couldn't do it.  I got a horrible leg cramp as I went to pull my leg over the bike.  And then I couldn't pedal because of the cramp.  I eventually called Mrs. Graybeard to come drive me the last 2-1/2 miles home. (Yeah, getting the full eight miles I needed would have been a different route.) 

So that's how I spent my birthday.  As well as much of the last five months. 

No Content Night

I'm calling in sick.  Well, not calling and not sick, but that's the idea.  

For the first time in four years, I took a fall on my morning bike ride today.  My ride is on side streets and it's genuinely very light traffic on weekdays, but a bit busier on Saturdays.  A little under three miles away is an intersection that tends to be among the busier, at which I just cross straight without turning.  As usual, if there are no cars on my side of the intersection, I take the lane and stand over the bike, waiting for traffic to clear.  Two cars coming on the left, three on the right says no big deal.  I'd be crossing the street in seconds.

Being a small city, this is a polite area, and it's not uncommon to get into one of those "after you," "no, after you, I insist" exchanges like the old Goofy Gophers Looney Tunes.  So a nice woman stopped (there is no stop sign in her crossing direction, just mine) and waved me across.  Rather than waste time saying, "no, after you, I insist," and holding up the cars behind her, I gave a wave of thanks and started across.  I remember a few images out of the next couple of seconds, of something going wrong and hitting the ground.  Almost before I could mentally process what was happening, guys were getting out of their cars to check on me.  Then a city police car, then a fire truck.  The fire truck had a paramedic and someone had called an ambulance. Once they took my vitals and we had a talk the fire truck called the ambulance dispatchers to cancel that.  

It seemed like a good idea to cancel the rest of my 14 mile ride and head back home.  When I got here, I found a bunch of scrapes and small nicks.  My right eyebrow was bleeding slightly and bruising just below the eyebrow.  In the last several hours, the excess blood from my eyebrow migrated downhill on the right side of the eye, so I look like I've been punched.  It wasn't until I was home a couple of hours that I noticed I have sore ribs on the right side of my chest, too.  Those have gotten a bit more sore as the hours have gone by.  Pretty common, after all.  Second or third day tends to be the most sore.

Back tomorrow.  Most likely.  

The Long March to Peak Stupidity

The first month of the Biden (Jo/Ho) administration has seen proposals, executive orders, and proposed legislation that's staggeringly out of touch with reality.  From the absurd ideas of making middle and lower class taxpayers pay for the college of the doctors and lawyers (let's be real, the highest amounts of college debt aren't from Starbucks Baristas with a degree in aggrieved minority studies, they're from professional schools) to killing off America's energy independence and lots of good paying jobs, to today's gun control nonsense, they just keep going farther and farther down the road to unreality.   

I tell myself that they can't possibly be at peak stupidity yet because they've hardly started. Today, I see the latest bright idea is give a refundable tax credit of up to $1,500 on the purchase of a new bicycle.  Not just any bike, this is for an electric-motor driven bike, also known as an e-bike. 

If you're a long term reader, you probably know I'm a cyclist; I don't talk about it much, but have posted on occasion.  While I've looked at e-bikes now and then and know a guy who rides one all the time, my bike is low tech: if I don't push the pedals it doesn't go anywhere.  My friend's bike is the kind that is electric assist.  If he doesn't pedal, it doesn't assist, and he used it to much benefit preparing for hip replacement.  Even coming from the bike world, this is a stunningly stupid policy proposal. 

Authored by Congressmen Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), the Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment (E-BIKE) Act supports the use of e-bikes as a zero-carbon transportation mode. Compared to other transportation modes, the bill recommends e-bikes because they are more affordable and accessible.

“E-bikes are not just a fad for a select few; they are a legitimate and practical form of transportation that can help reduce our carbon emissions,” Panetta said. “My legislation will make it easier for more people from all socio-economic levels to own e-bikes and contribute to cutting our carbon output. By incentivizing the use of electric bicycles to replace car trips through a consumer tax credit, we cannot only encourage more Americans to transition to greener modes of transportation, but also help fight the climate crisis.”

Where to start?  How much do you want to bet that Congressmen Panetta and Blumenauer come from districts that have e-bike manufacturers, or have other incentives?  Second, e-bikes are not "zero-carbon" transportation.  The energy that charges the batteries is coming from the power company.  Is it natural gas?  Is it coal?  Owners have no control over that.  But look a little deeper.  Even my bike, powered by me, isn't zero-carbon.  I give off carbon dioxide all the time, and more when working harder riding the bike.  An e-bike would be lower in carbon emissions than a car, but it's not zero. 

Although I've seen many tables of calories per hour a cyclist burns, depending on speed (and a host of assumptions), I've never seen numbers for the energy supplied by the rider and the e-bike to compare to the car.  When I first returned to riding as an adult in the early '90s, there was factoid spread around that the average bike rider riding 15 miles would burn around 600 calories, while a car would burn about 15,000.  That implied the car would burn about 1/2 gallon of gas to go 15 miles - 30 MPG around town - a pretty efficient car.  My 11 year old Explorer doesn't get 15mpg around town, more like 14.  It would use over 30,000 calories to go 15 miles. I'd use more like 690 on my bike.  

The bill would create a refundable tax credit up to $1500 for 30% of the purchase price of a new e-bike (that maximum credit is on a $5000 bike).  Note that says e-bike and specifically does not include tax credits for a human powered bike.  An e-bike isn't carbon-free, it's just lower carbon.  The energy to get someplace comes from somewhere.  It either comes from petroleum products, those same petroleum products converted to electricity, or it comes from the rider's body, converted from food.  They're trying to bribe people to give up using their cars by giving them some cash.  For a more modest bike, like this one, a quick check tells me the credit would be $780.  That check starts looking less good when it has rained, or snowed or any other sort of inclement weather.

A Townie Go! now from Trek Bikes, one of the most popular brands and models of e-bikes (although I gather this picture is an older model.  Just grabbed a stock photo.)  The battery pack (where it says "townie") is less obvious than the models that have a large, black plastic battery pack there.

It's a dumb idea based on the concept of a Weather Tax that I've dismissed years ago.  The only thing the idea has going for it is that the real cost will probably be low.  There will be a few people who take advantage of it but I can't imagine it will be many.

Answering an Unrelated Question

I had a question from an emailer, rather than a comment, to my post two weeks ago about getting back to cycling after long break.  In it's essence: what's different about cycling after being away a long time? 

I answered by email, but thought there might be someone else in the wild world of the internet that cares, so I thought I'd re-post it here. 

The short answer is: not much.  If you're not on the bleeding edge of technology trying to get every last gram out of your racing bike and willing to spend thousands of bucks to do that. 

The single biggest thing, and the only thing I've actually bought (other than replacements for some gear that just wore out) is one simple idea: daytime running lights.  The same high-capacity, rechargeable, lithium ion batteries that have pushed into our phones, tablets, laptops and so many other things have pushed into cycling headlights and taillights.  Most of them are sold with a USB charger cable to plug into your laptop or other USB charger. 

For my headlight, I bought a Cygolite Dash 460 headlight.  These are more for being seen than seeing; at least from my use.  With 460 lumens, though, they'll make a good headlight at night, too.  Here's mine on my everyday ride - the weird background is a tire on my garden cart standing up in the shop.

Similarly, I got a Cygolite Hotshot Pro taillight, with 200 lumen output.  In this case, though, I had originally bought a light recommended on a bike forum that I also got from Amazon, a Blitzu.  This one gave me troubles and the USB charging port broke off the printed circuit board in the unit, leading to replacing it with this Cygolite.  I would recommend the Cygolite over the Blitzu. 

I have more experience with Cygolite as a brand.  Back in the days when Mrs. Graybeard and I used to ride in the evening after work, I had a couple of Cygolite headlights and they still work (although the 10 year old NiCd and NiMH batteries have long since gone belly up). 

Both my head and taillights are set to flash and they incorporate a pattern that isn't metronome steady.  There are tests that say the irregular flashes are more noticeable and a regular flash.  That said, I'm not aware of any studies that demonstrate riders with daytime running lights are safer than those without them, it just seems to be a reasonable bet.  They should give me something like six hours on a charge, but I recharge them after each hour ride.  I'll try long tests someday.

Let me just list throw out some of the other changes in the things I know

• Disk brakes and especially hydraulic disk brakes really took off.  They're starting to make inroads into road racing, slowly, but the big growth has been for the two off-road style bikes: mountain bikes and:
• Gravel bikes.  The last time I was riding a lot ('11 or '12?  Before that?), the big thing was cyclocross - essentially road bikes with wider tires, and a more relaxed geometry.  The idea was to race on dirt and gravel roads.  Now the word appears to be gravel bikes for the same basic kinds of riding. 
• Recumbent bikes and especially recumbent tricycles have continued to grow in popularity, although not as quickly as proponents have been saying since I started hearing it in about 1994.  Recumbents are bikes that are ridden in a sitting position.  Both two and three wheeled designs are popular; like everything else, they have good points and bad.   
• The substitution of smartphones for all sorts of other devices on the bike.  To the right of the headlight in my photo is a plastic case marked "CATEYE".  That's my bike's speedometer and odometer.  There are models on the market now that just have pickups near the back tire and display on the phone by Bluetooth.  The same idea goes for heart rate monitors, GPS, route planners and any electronic gadget people might like to ride with. 

Finally, it seems as if titanium bikes, like my Airborne, didn't really take over the market as the true believers thought back in 2000 or 2005.  Carbon fiber has become the material for lightweight racing bikes and the choices are still largely carbon fiber vs. aluminum or high-end steel.  There are still titanium bikes made in the US (Litespeed in Tennessee and Habanero down the coast in south Florida to name two).  I would think titanium would have the advantage due to the frame being weldable, but I guess carbon fiber has gotten less mysterious to repair.

Riders and Mamils and Omils, Oh My!

Since the last few posts have been serious, and it's the weekend, I figure I'll be less serious and bring y'all up to date on something else around here. 

Are you puzzling over the title?  Besides it being an homage to "Lions and Tigers and Bears" from the Wizard of Oz? 

In my right sidebar's About Me box, it has included the term "roadie cyclist" for as long as I can recall.  Cycling used to be one of the main activities Mrs. Graybeard and I engaged in; our main exercise/outdoor hobby.  Twenty years ago, a fun Saturday might be to ride up to and through the Kennedy Space Center and back, a ride of about 80 miles round trip from home.  Which is how we'd ride it; we'd leave home in the morning and get home in the late afternoon.  In the last 10 years, since I started the blog, we'd ridden less often, less distance, and eventually stopped riding altogether.  I'm not sure when we stopped but I made a reference to riding in late 2010 and some other posts into late 2011 make me think we were riding then. 

The point being that I had not been living up to that term for quite while. 

Back in August of '18, a random neuron fired in my brain saying, "you really ought to get back to riding again."  I ignored it.  A couple of weeks later it started up again.  We'd never gotten rid of our bikes and gear, just pushed everything into convenient corners.  I started looking at my "indoor bike", a bike far too good to be relegated to riding on an indoor magnetic resistance trainer.  Pumped up the tires, brushed off the spiderwebs and dust.  By the end of August, I took my first indoor ride on the trainer.  I don't think it was 15 minutes long. 

It was also August in Crematoria, where being outside carries the risk of spontaneous combustion, so I rode indoors until I could comfortably do 30 or 40 minute rides on the Magneto trainer (I'd do a link but the model I have is also over 10 years old and not on the websites anymore).  By the start of October I was ready to ride outdoors.  By the middle of October, I rode my bike on what used to be our several-nights-every-week ride, out to a lake west of town.  It's a 13 mile round trip using the backroads I take.  I took this picture January 7th of this year.  You can tell it's January - I still have ice in my water bottle.

All cyclists like to tell you about their bikes.  This is a titanium bike from a company called Airborne (as you can see).  Airborne built very nice bikes and had built some touring bikes for a company that takes tourists on bike tours - referred to as supported touring.  They'd take people across Vermont, for example, and go from town to town, carrying the customers clothes, overnight bags and more, so that they didn't need to hang that stuff from their bikes.  For some reason, Airborne had a few leftovers and put these up on eBay.  I got it for well under a k-buck, while finished titanium bikes like this were easily $2500.  It was setup as touring bike but with odd components and very lightweight wheels.  Within the year I rebuilt it as a comfortable road bike, changed the handlebar from straight to drop style, changed shifters, wheels, tires, and the rear gear cluster, so a rather complete rebuild.  I think with all the parts I bought for the rebuild, it still came in under $1000. 

So what's all this Mamils and Omils stuff?  I ran into the term MAMIL in 2010 and used it in a blog post (which is one way I know I was riding in '10).  As you can see, MAMIL is an acronym for Middle-Aged Men in Lycra.  The only problem is that since I'm 65, I can't claim to be middle-aged, so I changed that into Old Men in Lycra.  By Riders, I'm referring to being too young to claim even Mamil-hood.  I was there once, but I don't remember it.

These days I ride three days a week, by myself.  Retiree privilege allows me to ride at 9 or 10AM on weekdays when traffic along my route is essentially nonexistent.  My rides over the year have ranged from 10 to 20 miles; no full days riding anymore. 

I have many friends who simply can't do this.  I have one friend waiting on knee replacements who can hardly walk.  Others that get around but have various conditions that impact their health in serious ways.  I know that my riding doesn't do a thing for them but I feel that since I can do this it would be wrong not to.  Every time I throw a leg over the bike and leave the house, I feel blessed to be able to do it.

I Know This Isn't Really Important...

...but I just want to get it off my chest.

Lance Armstrong, you are dead to me.

The time trial up L'Alpe d'Huez, 2004.  I was watching that day, and, basically every stage of every Tour de France that Lance rode in, if it was televised.  I had a US Postal Tee shirt, and sent money to Livestrong.  Sucker.  (I may have bought a Tee shirt, but I never went for the full "kit" - a USPS jersey and bike shorts - let alone the Trek USPS bike - I may be crazy but I'm not insane).

We bought into the hype and the story.  In 1997, the year after Armstrong's bout with cancer, Mrs. Graybeard was battling cancer.  We were dedicated cyclists; it seems inevitable and natural we follow Lance.  As someone had put it, Armstrong became an ambassador of hope.  Maybe he didn't even really intend to, but after "the book" he became the symbol of hope to millions of Americans going through cancer treatments.  People would hang their fears on his powerful, gaunt body and watch him scale mountains.  You'd see pictures like this one in oncologists' chemotherapy rooms all over America - probably all over the world.  We wanted to believe - and it was an easy story to fall for.  A guy stricken with the most feared disease, beats it, then goes on to win the most grueling event in sports, faster time trialing and better climbing than anyone alive.  If he was stronger than his rivals, like Jan Ullrich, and able to climb better, it was because he trained harder.  Having gone through the agonies of chemo and surgeries, it was easy to believe the perspective helped him to endure more pain.  While Jan could train hard, Lance could turn himself inside out with pain, and be just that much better.

What a pile of crap.

When Jan Ullrich was busted for doping, he said something to the effect that if Armstrong could beat him when he was doping, he knew Armstrong absolutely had to be doping.  We idiots said, "he's just a genetic freak - there has to be one on the planet who can do it".  Chris Carmichael, Lance's coach just said, "At that level, they're all genetic freaks".  The clues were all around.  But, still, he never failed a drug test.  Being a professional cyclist meant they'd come to his house on random mornings for screenings.  Being a stage leader in le Tour means you get tested every day, as well as the random testings. 

So it turns out, he was not only the biggest fraud in sports, but a terrible excuse for a man.  He not only lied about what he was doing, he viciously attacked other guys - former teammates and friends - who told the truth about him.  A despicable, pathetic man.  You know what the ironic part is?  I'll take odds the hormones and stuff he was taking either gave him the testicular cancer that made him famous, or made it much worse. 

You may have also noticed that although all seven Tour titles were stripped, not one of them has been re-awarded to the second place riders.  They have all been stripped for doping, too. 

Lance, you are dead to me.  And I think professional cycling is, too. 

Cardio When You Can't Run

While it's true that excessive cardio may damage your heart (this post  or this one or elsewhere), few deny that a moderate amount is good for you.  In view of what appears to be dark days coming, and more of a need to fend for ourselves, if not engage in some sort of outright “kinetic action”, the subject of aerobic fitness and cardio exercise, is common.  In a country where a large amount of the population is insulin resistant, if not already diagnosed with Type II diabetes, cardio is one way to reduce insulin resistance. 

It's hard to top running for an aerobic workout.  You simply put on a pair of shoes, enough clothing to meet the environment (or common decency, if you live here in the tropics) and off you go.  The thigh muscles are the largest muscles in the body, and you get more metabolic impact running than from swimming, rowing or other exercises that work the upper body.  (Disclaimer: a kid I work with was on a college crew team: his arms were as big as my legs).  You shouldn't ignore your upper body, though, because you may need to carry things around, perhaps chop firewood, or do other things that require upper body strength.

But what about people who can't run for medical reasons?

If you have medical issues that prevent running, you're not going to be on the front lines unless something terrible and unanticipated happens; you're going to be holed up in your home or retreat trying to avoid contact with the outside world.  There are many people that simply should not run - even if caught in a downpour, or another situation in life where most of us would.  They may be only able to run just far enough to get out of the way of an oncoming car and may require surgery afterward.  If you've had a hip or knee replaced, your orthopedic surgeon has already told you this.  If you're “working toward” getting that replacement, with arthritic hips or knees and already have reduced mobility, you already know you can't run.  There are also people who may be able to run once in a while in an emergency, but who would be hurt by the steady training. 

So what can you do?  Anyone can walk.  Dead people walk; you can see them mall-walking in groups every Sunday morning around most city malls.  Or you can ride a bicycle.

Western Rifle Shooters Association linked to this article on a “Couch to 5k” running program that started me thinking about this.  If it doesn't immediately register, 5k is 3.1 miles; it's also about the most you should consider running regularly, unless you're young and training for specific running events (according to the M.D. who wrote that “Cardio May Kill You” link).  It's hard to equate running miles to cycling miles, because the difficulty in cycling goes up more than that of running when the road tilts up, and approaches zero on a downhill, but on level ground a 3.1 mile run would be equivalent to cycling about 12 miles.  As a runner, I've never run further than that, while as a cyclist, I've ridden across Florida (120 miles), a testimony to how low-impact cycling is.  In running, the marathon (26.2 miles) is considered the benchmark endurance event; in cycling the equivalent is the century (100 miles) and you can use that roughly 4:1 ratio in miles.  Another way to equate the effort is that 5k running plan aims at getting you to 10 minute miles, making the 3.1 mile event take 31 minutes, so your cycling equivalent would be to cycle at moderate intensity for that amount of time.   

Taking that running plan and translating it to cycling is fall-off-a-log easy.  Where it talks about running hard for 60 seconds and resting for 90, for example, just substitute riding hard vs. riding easy.  I'm a fan of cadence meters on a bike (part of your cyclocomputer), but I know that adds expense.  If you have one, you can consider cadence in your workouts, warming up by spinning at a known rate (90 pedal rotations per minute, say), and then working to maintain that cadence when you're riding harder.  A high cadence minimizes stresses on arthritic joints.  Yes, you can measure cadence by counting your pedal revolutions in 6 seconds and multiplying by 10, but that requires coordination.  It's easy to read a number off your bike computer. 

Compared to running, road cycling is extremely low impact.  In the days after knee or leg surgery, often the first thing that your physical therapist will have you do is ride a stationary bike.  On a good road bike, on flat roads, you can do the same level of work on a freshly post-surgical leg; I was on a stationary bike 4 days after arthroscopic knee surgery and my own road bike 9 days after the 'scope. 

The problem, of course, is that cycling requires a bike.  While a runner can get a good, if not top end, pair of shoes for around $100, a good entry-level bike is going to cost 4 to 5 times that.  While the department store bikes may be lower priced, they usually have features that make them a poorer choice like steel wheels as opposed to aluminum alloy wheels on “bike shop” bikes (the issue isn't the weight; it's that the cheaper chromed steel wheels are harder to stop – especially when wet).  There are decent bikes in some sporting goods stores like the Sports Authority; I've seen Fuji at my local store (a few years ago), and Diamondback bikes.  In general though, the bikes at a bike shop will be a better choice for a handful of reasons. 

One reason is that a bike shop will help you get the fit right; and the fit is vitally important (I can't emphasize that enough).  A friend I was helping to buy a bike was surprised by my talk about bike size.  He remembered riding a 26” bike as his last one as a kid, and just assumed that's all there was to know.  26" was the wheel size, and bikes with the same size wheels come in a wide variety of frame sizes, and different geometries, which vary the amount of reach to the handlebars.  It drastically effects how comfortable the bike is to ride.  

Most bike manufacturers today offer a bike specifically for the fitness rider, or someone who has not been on a bike as an adult.  Called a city bike, an urban bike, a fitness bike, a hybrid, or sometimes a cruiser, they have a more relaxed and comfortable geometry than you probably are thinking.  The geometry determines the position you sit while riding, from the aggressive, head down position of the road racer (not recommended for a beginner!) up to a rather high sitting position, excellent for seeing around in traffic.  Some will use touring bike tires (metric 700C size) while others will use mountain bike tires (American 26” size).  A selection of these bikes might be hard to find in a small shop, but the manufacturers all offer them.  Incidentally, high end bikes are still an industry where America is very strong; more Tour de France winners have ridden American bikes than European in the last 20 years.  While they all have offshore factories for their low priced bikes (typically in Taiwan, not the PRC), the high end Trek, Cannondale, Specialized, or Cervelo bikes are made in the US. 

(Trek's popular 7000 - a hybrid that retails around $425)

In addition to a bike, you'll need a helmet.  I find padded cycling gloves to be essential - and they'll help protect your hands when you fall.  Add a water bottle, and a cycling computer (speedometer) and you'll easily be close to $100 over the price of the bike.  You don't need clip in pedals (which require special shoes) or even the old-school toe clips. For short rides of 35 or 40 minutes, you won't need the dreaded, padded Lycra shorts like this model is wearing, either.  Any old gym shorts will work. 

(upright exercise bike that retails for about $250)

Indoor, stationary bikes are certainly an option and may be best for some people and places.  Personally, I hate 'em.  If I'm outside on a pleasant day, it can be tough to make myself go home.  Indoors, I've never wanted to ride an instant past the timer telling me I'm done.  Guess which one is better for overall fitness?  Still, there's a nationwide trend called Spinning, done entirely indoors on stationary bikes, and it's a good workout.  And if you're not an experienced rider, I think riding outdoors on snow would not be good way to start.  

In the case of both regular bikes and stationary bikes, used ones are frequently available.  Since stationary bikes are more adjustable, finding one isn't as hard a finding your exact size in a bike.  Plus, exercise equipment frequently becomes an extra clothes rack while it's still new, so they might be easier to find. 

If you'd like to discuss types, brands, models or anything - we can do that, but my main point was to remind readers that just because you may not be able to run, that doesn't mean you can't get a good cardio workout and be better prepared for whatever may be coming our way.