Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP,

If he isn’t gojng to give up riding his bicycle, couldn’t you at least insist he wear one of those reflective yellow safety vests while riding?

I see joggers using those all the time.

To this PP and the other one, again, who talked about getting a Garmin to alert riders to cars etc. etc., please re-read this post from above. All the reflective vests and special tech in the world do not necessarily prevent this kind of stuff:

I know of three middle aged men who had this hobby and got into severe life-altering accidents. One shattered a leg and had to have a titanium rod put in and now walks with a limp. He skidded out on some wet gravel—there wasn’t even a car or other person involved. Another broke some ribs and his wrist in a pile up with other cyclists in his group. He recovered ok but another guy in the group was pretty severely injured. The other one I don’t know the circumstances but he was a very experienced rider and he got concussed and has dealt with vision issues and headaches ever since.

I posted earlier: This is the time for OP to tell her DH that his hobby is risking his ability to function as a member of their family. I do NOT just mean that in terms of the fact he's currently incapacitated. I mean that he's risking his health and life if he goes back on a bike in the same way once he's healed from the current injuries. He has cognition issues at the moment as OP herself noted earlier. Another head injury could end up like the "very experienced rider" above who is permanently dealing with issues which surely must affect his abilities to work, interact, do things with his kids, etc.

When someone's hobby (however much it "defines who I ammmm!") puts OTHER people's worlds at risk, it is no longer a hobby but pure selfishness. OP's DH is putting his marriage and possibly his kids' futures at risk if he continues at this level where injury is so possible. I wonder if OP is financially prepped to handle things like saving for the kids' college funds, funding her and DH's retirement, dealing with day to day costs, day to day logistics with kids, if DH ends up with permanent issues where he can't work or drive or help out in the way he normally would? Not just for right now. For good.

Ok I’ll bite.

Let’s say he gives up exercising. Takes up a safe, sedentary lifestyle. And soon dies of a stroke or heart attack.

Would that be preferable to a fitness-based hobby?

Stop smothering your husband and let him be himself!

Yeah, because everyone’s who’s not into extreme cycling is a couch potato dying of a heart attack.
Idiot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP,

If he isn’t gojng to give up riding his bicycle, couldn’t you at least insist he wear one of those reflective yellow safety vests while riding?

I see joggers using those all the time.

To this PP and the other one, again, who talked about getting a Garmin to alert riders to cars etc. etc., please re-read this post from above. All the reflective vests and special tech in the world do not necessarily prevent this kind of stuff:

I know of three middle aged men who had this hobby and got into severe life-altering accidents. One shattered a leg and had to have a titanium rod put in and now walks with a limp. He skidded out on some wet gravel—there wasn’t even a car or other person involved. Another broke some ribs and his wrist in a pile up with other cyclists in his group. He recovered ok but another guy in the group was pretty severely injured. The other one I don’t know the circumstances but he was a very experienced rider and he got concussed and has dealt with vision issues and headaches ever since.

I posted earlier: This is the time for OP to tell her DH that his hobby is risking his ability to function as a member of their family. I do NOT just mean that in terms of the fact he's currently incapacitated. I mean that he's risking his health and life if he goes back on a bike in the same way once he's healed from the current injuries. He has cognition issues at the moment as OP herself noted earlier. Another head injury could end up like the "very experienced rider" above who is permanently dealing with issues which surely must affect his abilities to work, interact, do things with his kids, etc.

When someone's hobby (however much it "defines who I ammmm!") puts OTHER people's worlds at risk, it is no longer a hobby but pure selfishness. OP's DH is putting his marriage and possibly his kids' futures at risk if he continues at this level where injury is so possible. I wonder if OP is financially prepped to handle things like saving for the kids' college funds, funding her and DH's retirement, dealing with day to day costs, day to day logistics with kids, if DH ends up with permanent issues where he can't work or drive or help out in the way he normally would? Not just for right now. For good.

Ok I’ll bite.

Let’s say he gives up exercising. Takes up a safe, sedentary lifestyle. And soon dies of a stroke or heart attack.

Would that be preferable to a fitness-based hobby?

Stop smothering your husband and let him be himself!

Flag on the play



How about he stops biking but takes up bootcamps or hiking or trail running or CrossFit, or any other fitness hobby besides cycling.

Cycling and Couch-Potato are not the only two options

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP,

If he isn’t gojng to give up riding his bicycle, couldn’t you at least insist he wear one of those reflective yellow safety vests while riding?

I see joggers using those all the time.

To this PP and the other one, again, who talked about getting a Garmin to alert riders to cars etc. etc., please re-read this post from above. All the reflective vests and special tech in the world do not necessarily prevent this kind of stuff:

I know of three middle aged men who had this hobby and got into severe life-altering accidents. One shattered a leg and had to have a titanium rod put in and now walks with a limp. He skidded out on some wet gravel—there wasn’t even a car or other person involved. Another broke some ribs and his wrist in a pile up with other cyclists in his group. He recovered ok but another guy in the group was pretty severely injured. The other one I don’t know the circumstances but he was a very experienced rider and he got concussed and has dealt with vision issues and headaches ever since.

I posted earlier: This is the time for OP to tell her DH that his hobby is risking his ability to function as a member of their family. I do NOT just mean that in terms of the fact he's currently incapacitated. I mean that he's risking his health and life if he goes back on a bike in the same way once he's healed from the current injuries. He has cognition issues at the moment as OP herself noted earlier. Another head injury could end up like the "very experienced rider" above who is permanently dealing with issues which surely must affect his abilities to work, interact, do things with his kids, etc.

When someone's hobby (however much it "defines who I ammmm!") puts OTHER people's worlds at risk, it is no longer a hobby but pure selfishness. OP's DH is putting his marriage and possibly his kids' futures at risk if he continues at this level where injury is so possible. I wonder if OP is financially prepped to handle things like saving for the kids' college funds, funding her and DH's retirement, dealing with day to day costs, day to day logistics with kids, if DH ends up with permanent issues where he can't work or drive or help out in the way he normally would? Not just for right now. For good.

Ok I’ll bite.

Let’s say he gives up exercising. Takes up a safe, sedentary lifestyle. And soon dies of a stroke or heart attack.

Would that be preferable to a fitness-based hobby?

Stop smothering your husband and let him be himself!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who was recently injured on a trail when a part flew off the bike of the person in front of him, causing him to crash. Doing anything at a speed can be dangerous.

Yep. Friend hit a piece of gravel that was lying on a paved, flat trail. Friend wasn't even going especially fast as it was a shared biking/walking trail. That tiny piece of gravel flipped him off the bike and off the trail, and his head ended up hitting a light pole. Completely innocuous, tiny things can create huge problems at ANY speed.

The ER doctor said if he hadn't been wearing a helmet he might be dead or gravely injured. As it was, he was concussed and had to miss quite a bit of work to be on the safe side. The doctor added that he sees so, so many injuries including severe ones, in cyclists--and almost all the ones he sees are in men in their 20s-40s.

People who like to counter with, "But but but driving is dangerous too, and people get in car accidents, and cycling is so healthy!" on these threads are idiots who don't remember that in a car, you at least have tons of steel around you and airbags. Not on a bike.

You sound like an obese person who hates fitness and routinely takes the beltway to buy overpriced fried fast-food.

Anonymous wrote:He can Uber to appointments

He can get in home PT until he is able to drive. No need to drive him or for him to Uber. I did this for the first 6 weeks after I broke my leg (not doing a dangerous activity) and was then discharged to PT in a facility after I was able to drive. Honestly, I liked the person who did the in home PT a lot better but they didn't have all the equipment they have at the PT facility. However during the first 6 weeks I really didn't need anything the in home person couldn't provide.

OP, my heart goes out to you.

Does he at least have excellent life insurance and disability coverage?

I went to law school with someone who had a fluke cycling accident at a fairly low speed and was never able to practice again due to the head injury, with a helmet.

Your kids are watching all of this, at least one is likely to want to be like dad.

I don't think the tit for tat trying to find your own hobby gets to the issue - you want him safe and brain intact, you want time as a family, you want time as a couple, and you want HIM to want those things too.

Has he talked at all about the accident since? Was it a wake up call?

BTW he won’t care and he never wanted kids, that’s why he is gone every weekend and doesn’t worry if it kills him.

Anonymous wrote:I also don’t think of cycling as dangerous. I have biked 20 miles a day (to work and back) for 20 years and never had an incident. And you need to set the cardio benefits I against the risk of accident. Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer in the US…

These are two different things.

You and me commuting to work, we go maybe 15 mph tops, easy comfortable upright stance with non clip pedals. Nerds like me stick to multipurpose trails and maybe bike lanes — otherwise I’m on sidewalk walking.

OP DH feet are clamped into petals, he’s in a racing stance going 40mph weaving in traffic going 50+, no bike trail, few bike lanes.

But OP, you had me at triathlete. It’s a DCUM truism that is code for narcissist.

Road biking can be incredibly dangerous. My spouse had an accident and was hospitalized and has back damage as a result. I have another relative who has brain damage after an accident.

I see two issues here:
1.) The risk that he will die and be gone from your family and loss of all that emotional and logistics and financial support…the worry
2.) The cost to you in hours that you must spend taking care of the children/him alone either because he is off riding or because he has been injured and is now recuperating.

If it was up to me, I would be keeping a careful tally of every single hour I spend doing some thing I would not otherwise have to do (solo child care, care of him because he’s injured). And then calmly present him with this tally and ask him, “why do you think I should spend X percent of my waking hours and finite existence in support of this activity of yours? Are you prepared to spend just as much time supporting an activity that is important to *me*?” Are there literally enough hours in the week for him to equally support you? If not, how does he reconcile this in his mind?

So you can certainly deal with issue #2. To me that would be non-negotiable. After he recovers, you get to go off by yourself to some tropical island island for a set period of time or something like that. And if he’s gonna continue biking, there has to be some equal provision of alone time for you to pursue your interests.

#1 is much harder because it gets into his identity and sense of himself as a person, a person that you love and probably want to support in his passions. He probably is not going to want to quit. Even after this accident. It may not be reasonable to ask him to do so. The question is, can you live with it?

I remember reading about a father of young children, a mountain climber, who climbed Mount Everest and died at the top. Personally, I would not want to be married to somebody who would be willing to take that kind of risk while supposedly being a father. But the person who had children with him knew that he was a mountain climber… And knew that he was going to keep climbing Mountains…

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who was recently injured on a trail when a part flew off the bike of the person in front of him, causing him to crash. Doing anything at a speed can be dangerous.

Yep. Friend hit a piece of gravel that was lying on a paved, flat trail. Friend wasn't even going especially fast as it was a shared biking/walking trail. That tiny piece of gravel flipped him off the bike and off the trail, and his head ended up hitting a light pole. Completely innocuous, tiny things can create huge problems at ANY speed.

The ER doctor said if he hadn't been wearing a helmet he might be dead or gravely injured. As it was, he was concussed and had to miss quite a bit of work to be on the safe side. The doctor added that he sees so, so many injuries including severe ones, in cyclists--and almost all the ones he sees are in men in their 20s-40s.

People who like to counter with, "But but but driving is dangerous too, and people get in car accidents, and cycling is so healthy!" on these threads are idiots who don't remember that in a car, you at least have tons of steel around you and airbags. Not on a bike.

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP,

If he isn’t gojng to give up riding his bicycle, couldn’t you at least insist he wear one of those reflective yellow safety vests while riding?

I see joggers using those all the time.

To this PP and the other one, again, who talked about getting a Garmin to alert riders to cars etc. etc., please re-read this post from above. All the reflective vests and special tech in the world do not necessarily prevent this kind of stuff:

I know of three middle aged men who had this hobby and got into severe life-altering accidents. One shattered a leg and had to have a titanium rod put in and now walks with a limp. He skidded out on some wet gravel—there wasn’t even a car or other person involved. Another broke some ribs and his wrist in a pile up with other cyclists in his group. He recovered ok but another guy in the group was pretty severely injured. The other one I don’t know the circumstances but he was a very experienced rider and he got concussed and has dealt with vision issues and headaches ever since.

I posted earlier: This is the time for OP to tell her DH that his hobby is risking his ability to function as a member of their family. I do NOT just mean that in terms of the fact he's currently incapacitated. I mean that he's risking his health and life if he goes back on a bike in the same way once he's healed from the current injuries. He has cognition issues at the moment as OP herself noted earlier. Another head injury could end up like the "very experienced rider" above who is permanently dealing with issues which surely must affect his abilities to work, interact, do things with his kids, etc.

When someone's hobby (however much it "defines who I ammmm!") puts OTHER people's worlds at risk, it is no longer a hobby but pure selfishness. OP's DH is putting his marriage and possibly his kids' futures at risk if he continues at this level where injury is so possible. I wonder if OP is financially prepped to handle things like saving for the kids' college funds, funding her and DH's retirement, dealing with day to day costs, day to day logistics with kids, if DH ends up with permanent issues where he can't work or drive or help out in the way he normally would? Not just for right now. For good.

Anonymous wrote:Hi everyone - it's OP again.

For those of you who are absolutely dying to know, yes, it's road cycling, and by extension, he dabbles in triathlons (olympic + half ironman), so he has 3 time consuming sports to train for. So the time spent away from the family for training + events is annoying enough, but it's the road biking that gets to me the most. Not to mention the $$$$ for all of the latest high end gear + bikes + travel.

Several of his riding buddies have gotten scraped up pretty badly over the years, and it's not unheard if you follow the sport to hear of people gravely injured or killed as well. I'm sorry but whoever said it is just as safe as running is just plain wrong - any sport where you are riding at high speeds (30-40+ mph) along with people driving 4000lb SUVs while texting is a serious risk. Even if you follow all of the rules and do everything "right", you will never win an argument against a car (or a pothole on a sharp downhill turn).

And yes, he is also into all of the indoor biking options, but in the warmer months prefers to be outside. But right now he is dealing with multiple broken bones and a head injury with short-term memory and cognition issues, so I need to accompany him to all of his doctors appointments.

I guess I'm not really sure what I'm asking here. Just venting. Thank you to those of you who have shared similar stories and can relate

I’m so sorry for your husband and for you. I hope he has a speedy recovery because that head injury could cause long-term problems. I hope you have support and help with the kids. I also hope this is a wake up call for him. I hope you have a strong support system for yourself and friends that you contact with and just get things off your chest.

Hi OP,

If he isn’t gojng to give up riding his bicycle, couldn’t you at least insist he wear one of those reflective yellow safety vests while riding?

I see joggers using those all the time.

Anonymous wrote:Sorry cycling is not really what I would call a dangerous hobby. Get the viara radar from garmin that will notify you if a car is approaching from the rear. Watch the rider in front of you and lookout for drivers opening their doors

I know of three middle aged men who had this hobby and got into severe life-altering accidents. One shattered a leg and had to have a titanium rod put in and now walks with a limp. He skidded out on some wet gravel—there wasn’t even a car or other person involved. Another broke some ribs and his wrist in a pile up with other cyclists in his group. He recovered ok but another guy in the group was pretty severely injured. The other one I don’t know the circumstances but he was a very experienced rider and he got concussed and has dealt with vision issues and headaches ever since.

OP, is there any way you can call in the cavalry and get more help with the kids? I would get the most expensive short term nannies you can and present DH with that plus his medical bills. Explain that his hobby has a real cost to the family outside of even his health and personal risks.