Trike brings freedom to man fighting genetic disorder

Six-and-a-half years ago, Dan Zimmerman tried to pick up an old hobby — mountain biking. He got on the bike, started to pedal and crashed. Then he did it again.

Riding was an ambitious goal. Just four years earlier, Zimmerman, now 52, suffered a stroke caused by Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT). After three months in a hospital, doctors told him he’d live the rest of his life sitting in a wheelchair, and it was unlikely he would regain the ability to speak.

“So I beat it,” he said, smiling.

Zimmerman stayed in Whitefish for a few days in late June, just one of many stopping points on his 2016 Sea to Sea stroke and HHT awareness tour. The trip began in Anacortes, Wash., on June 4 and will end in Boston on Sept. 10. This is the third tour for his foundation, Spokes Fighting Strokes. The first trip took him from Anacortes to Key West in 2014, also passing through Whitefish on the way. Last year’s trip covered the Midwest via rail trails, old railroad tracks converted into usable trails.

HHT is a disease that fails to allow the lungs to filter blood clots efficiently. Lise Neer, one of Zimmerman’s companions on the tour, said about one in 5,000 people have it, and a main symptom is a constant bloody nose.

“It’s not that rare, it’s just not well known,” she said.

The disease has had a big effect on Zimmerman’s family. His mother, grandmother and brother all died from HHT, and one of his sons has it as well.

After surviving the stroke, he spent the next four years on his couch in Fountain Hills, Ariz., watching TV, gaining more than 60 pounds in the process. Following his failed attempts to mountain bike again, Zimmerman looked for alternative ways to move and exercise. In that search, he found adaptive cycling.

Rather than fighting his lack of balance on a confventional bike, he knew he’d have to try something different. On a whim, he decided to try out a recumbent tricycle, what he calls a “lawnchair on wheels.” On the day he first tried cycling, Zimmerman said he could barely walk half a mile before he was completely exhausted. Once he sat down on the recumbent tricycle, however, he went 40 miles before stopping.

“I found freedom, independence,” he said. “I can’t explain it better, but I can ride my trike left, right, slow down, speed up; I decide.”

“It’s hard to get me off the trike.”

He hasn’t always been recovering while riding though. Zimmerman remembers taking one sharp curve too quickly, flipping and breaking a few ribs on his right side. Just three months later, he misread another curve and did the same thing, breaking a few ribs on his left side this time. Despite his helmet and other protective gear, Zimmerman doesn’t always proceed with caution — on some downhill roads, he’s reached speeds of 54 miles per hour.

Always at Zimmerman’s side during the trip, Neer has her own reasons for getting involved. After her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury from a bike crash in late 2010, rehabilitation efforts were made to get the once avid cyclist back on the road, similar to Zimmerman’s recovery. Sadly, those efforts were unsuccessful, and he passed in 2013. When Zimmerman’s 2015 tour passed through Denver on her birthday, Neer was able to meet and ride with him. There they told each other their stories and looked ahead to this year’s tour, and Neer wanted in.

“I thought, it is possible, maybe I can get involved and help some other people,” she said. “Here we are, going cross-country now.”

After this year’s tour wraps up in the fall, Zimmerman is working on a winter program back home in Arizona called “Adaptive Cycling with Spokes Fighting Strokes,” to help other stroke survivors recover through adaptive cycling. Neer also wants to set up a similar program in Denver. After that, he’s not sure. He’s talked of biking across Canada or down the Pacific coast from Alaska to the U.S., or even re-riding one of his last three tours.

The only certainty seems to be that wherever Zimmerman goes, he’ll be pedaling to get there.

More information on Spokes Fighting Strokes and Zimmerman’s story can be found at spokesfightingstrokes.org.