Adaptive Cycling On the Harborwalk in MA w/Charlestown’s Riders Club

Pam Daly rides an adaptive recumbent bike behind Kathleen Comfort Salas, physical therapist and Boston Coordinator for the Riders Club, an adaptive cycling program under the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network.
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Adaptive Cycling On the Harborwalk With Charlestown’s Riders Club Streetsblog MASS

Earlier this month while city officials, transit enthusiasts and advocates from around the country participated in NACTO, a conference focused on best practices for designing cities, another program focused on mobility, disability and adaptive cycling was taking place just across the Charles River in the neighborhood of Charlestown.

Here is where we met Pam Daly, a Charlestown resident with a 33-year career in textbook publishing who became paralyzed after a car crash in 1972, during her senior year of high school.

For the last three years, Daly, who has also worked as a peer mentor and support group leader with the United Spinal Association, has been biking with the Riders Club, an adaptive cycling program from the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network. The Riders Club offers programs where people with disabilities can use adaptive bicycles to go on rides.

“It’s really the intersection between rehab and recreation,” says Kathleen Comfort Salas, physical therapist and Boston Coordinator for the program.

For six months out of the year, Salas’s staff and volunteers, mostly recreation therapists, meet an average of six participants for ride sessions at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, located next to Thomas M. Menino Park along Boston’s Harborwalk.

Here, folks can choose from different 3-wheel recumbent hand cycles or leg-cycles, depending on the type of seating and how upright they’d like to sit, as well as the adaptations needed for them to cycle comfortably. These details are worked out during the first visit, where newcomers go through a fitting process, and any measurements and adjustments needed are documented for staff to reference before future visits.

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