Please, after you
I’m sitting at the bottom of the monster hill on my regular wheeling route. This hill is a beast, easily 50 metres of steep incline. Until recently I wasn’t strong enough to manage it but now I can, with some sweat and the right song in my ears, and with a few rests, just about make it.
I find a good track to battle this hill to, and I begin.
Just as soon as I start my way upwards a sedan begins its way down the hill ahead of me. That’s not a problem at all and I pull over to the side to allow them to pass.
The vehicle, with a mum and daughter in the front seats, slows at the top of the hill and, with the driver seeing me at the bottom, stops.
This is already a strange moment, with me in my wheelchair sitting at the bottom of the hill already pulled in waiting for the car to pass, and the oncoming car now sat stationary at the top of the hill. Like a game of chicken I cannot win.
The car, in what was certainly a social signal, reverses its way more obviously into a space between parked vehicles, clearly not parking but rather even more firm in their graciousness. I felt like we were both at a doorway allowing the other person to pass first, except one of us is a field mouse and the other is a dragon.
It makes no sense for me to go first. The hill would take a car seconds to climb but I have only my own arm strength to push me and usually I take breaks part of the way up, and if this pair wait for me they’ll be sat there for full minutes.
I wave them down, incredulous, surely they’re not going to sit there watching me work out, sweaty and breathless, severely inconveniencing them and making me feel weird.
And they wait.
So it’s time to get to work, and if I’m going to push for an audience, I’m going to make it one hell of a push.
I start the song in my ears, it thrums through me, and I get into a fast rhythm. I make sure to use my core to maximise the thrust I can get through my arms with each push, bowing low in the seat to get the longest ‘stride’, pushing the rims as far as I can before straightening my form and gripping the wheels just behind their zenith ready for the next drive forward.
There’s no time to rest, I have to keep going, to pass them in good time. They’re watching me.
I grind hard and find strength I didn’t know I had. How far things have come. I finally pass the woman and her daughter in their car and she winds down her window, I take off my headphones.
‘I can’t believe you managed that!’
‘It’s a hell of a workout’
I wheel myself past them and down the next hill, almost as disbelieving as they had been.