Two’s company on three wheels
BIKER gangs have a reputation for breaking rules and going against the trend. And so it is with a pair of Galway grandmothers who got back in the saddle after many years.
Marie Silke thought she was a real rebel without a cause when she bought an adult tricycle to zoom up and down her estate during lockdown.
The 77-year-old has mobility problems after two hip operations – and with the help of her son, she was having one of her first tentative spins on her new three-wheeler, which is more stable than a regular bike.
But then she spotted her neighbour across the road, Mary Farrell, 75, on the exact same trike that she had bought the week before by complete coincidence – also being helped by her son.
‘As it happened, the lady across the road got one the week before, the exact same bike, it’s amazing,’ Mrs Silke said.
‘It’s great company because I live in an estate, and I’m not young, but there are a lot of young families and young children.’
Mrs Silke said the fact that she now has a riding companion close to her age ‘makes such a difference’. The pair now arrange to meet up in advance. ‘We call each other when we’re ready to go out, and then we have quite a nice circle to practise in in the estate,’ Mrs Silke says. ‘I would have been much slower to go out until I met her and the two of us went out together.’
A picture of the two whizzing about their estate has now gone viral online.
Her son Richard, a member of the Galway Cycling Campaign, insists getting the tricycle was all his mother’s idea.
And after a few days of struggling up and down the driveway, it was only when the two neighbours saw each other on their trikes that things got going.
‘Within less than a minute, the two of them were flying down the street together,’ he said. ‘It was genuinely amazing.’