Arthritis Took My Mobility—This Electric Tricycle Gave It Back: How I Ride My ETrike w/ Arthritis

Hi, I'm Kelly, and this is my e-trike. I got this e-trike because I have arthritis in my knees. I also have arthritis in my hands and i wanted a trike so that i didn't have to worry about balancing while i'm trying to ride also I love this bike, or this trike, because it's easy to get onto i still have a little bit of difficulty just because sometimes my knees are stiffer. Then at other times. So let me show you how I get on my bike. I make sure this armrest is up, and then I just sit back on it, holding my handlebars up front. And sometimes I have to use one of the pedals to kind of help me adjust a little bit. And then I can put my foot over and then put my other armrest down, and they helped me get up into the seat all the way. Okay? So that's how I get on the bike. Riding the trike, right now, what I do is I ride with full throttle assist so that I'm not pedaling yet. There is a footrest that you can use right here. I don't use the footrest because my knees won't bend enough. And so what I do is I just rest my feet up on the pedals like this when I'm riding, okay? One thing about this trike is that it is recumbent, so it's got the pedals out further in front of me, and so it's easier.

I don't have to have my knees bent up like I would with a regular bike that has the pedals more underneath you. They're further out in front. The seat also helps a lot. Because I can ride comfortably and just lean back. And I don't have to, like, you know, feel like I have to tighten up my body or anything. Because I'm going to get hurt, and it's a very relaxing ride. The throttle is on the right side of the handlebars, and it's a twist throttle. It's not just a button. It's a twist. And so I thought, ooh, that may bother my hands some. But so far, I haven't had a problem. And we've gone on some pretty long rides. And it hasn't been an issue yet. So we'll go on a short ride for all of you guys who have arthritis. Come on, let's go. As you can tell, I'm going down the road pretty quickly, not having to pedal, but getting to see everything out here. So this doesn't hurt my knees at all. Now with having bad knees, I can't walk very far. I use a cane to walk with. I was using a walker, but even with the cane for the walker, my knees would still start hurting. So I wouldn't be able to go very far.

Now I can go out to areas to see different things that I might not have been able to do before, without being in a lot of pain. So this takes away from a lot of that paint. We went out to a sand sculpture contest, and I was able to ride through there because we could have our bikes and trikes on the sand out on the beach. And then even rode out on the beach some. The bike, the trike, does great. It's got fat tires on it. So you can go all sorts of places that you might not be able to walk. I do want to add in that one of the ways that I'm working on bending my knees more is where I have my feet resting. When I first started, I had to do my feet kind of like this. And I have been able to go a little bit further up like that and can ride with this knee bent more than I had been bending it before. And so that's a way to just gradually work into getting the muscles around your knees to want to bend again and to help you learn or help you be able to ride pedaling again.