Bike riding alone- when do you stop?

VikingHawk

My dad has Alzheimer’s.  He is in the latter middle stage.  He is coherent and fine at times.  Then, other times, he is out of sorts and has difficulty communicating.  In recent years, he has started riding his bike a lot more.  Sometimes, he does fine.  He takes the same path and makes it home ok.  However, twice in the last couple of weeks, he couldn’t find his way home even though he was pretty close.  He carries a cell phone so he used it and called my mom.  I talked about retiring the bike because I was afraid of his safety.  He completely disagreed and says I’m not his boss.  Am I being too harsh too soon?  Or do I need to push the issue?

harshedbuzz

A bike carries many of the same risks as driving a car and being out in the community alone. 

Someone should be biking with him so he doesn't get lost or end up in an unsafe place. Some people have hired younger caregivers to be a companion in such instances.

If that's not possible, you skip the pointless* discussion with him, disable the bike and "disappear it to the bike shop where it will wait permanently for a part delayed from China". 

*Rule one of Dementia Fight Club is that you do not attempt to reason with a person who has a broken reasoner. In the middle stages he can't follow a reasoned argument and even if he could, he'd likely forget he agreed and you'd have to rinse and repeat. 

It's very possible he has anosognosia and no personal awareness of his new limitations, so any attempt at suggesting he isn't up to riding will be seen as gaslighting. 

HB

Battlebuddy

   My husband was a long distance cyclist . He spent thousands of miles on that bike. His Alzheimers bike journey started out with him biking up the same bike trail ( never the street) I would track him using the Life 360 app which would show his exact route real time. If he left the trail I could call him and say you just took a wrong turn. 

   That worked for a while, but when I had to leave a meeting , because he was getting lost , and I had to go and pick him up, I began going with him.that worked for a good long time. He would let me lead and we had many fun rides together.

   I thought he would ride till he couldn’t balance on the bike, but what made him retire was him not understanding that there were two lanes on the bike path. He got dangerously close to another cyclist who yelled at him to back off. Then he crossed into the oncoming lane causing three cyclists to have to go around him on the grass. I was afraid there would be a collision causing injury so no more cycling. One of his saddest days in this journey. 

  I guess you have to understand the rules of the road and abide by them whether car or bike 

  

VikingHawk

Thanks - I really appreciate the insight.

French

Almost the same as Battle buddy. As we live in a city center, our main means of transportation was bicycle. At the beginning, I let him go with his bicycle. I also had the life350 app but he often forgot his phone. 

When I was with him, I noticed that he put the lock only on the bicycle or only on the support, or on both of them but on the handlebars... so I decided he can’t go alone anymore because his bike would be stolen.

The neurologist wasn’t for cycling in the city due to visual disorders. My argument was that he wanted to continue and the risks were mostly on his side. We continued together Until he was no longer able to stay in the bike lanes and stop at red lights, 9 months ago.

aod326

I was in a similar situation with DH, but with running. He would want to go out during the day when I working from home (COVID) and didn't like to take his phone. One thing that helped was I had a "dog tag" made with my info on in case he got lost and that could be helpful. (He wouldn't wear any sort of medical ID, or even a Road-ID, if you're familiar with those, because of course he didn't think there was anything wrong.)

In the later stages he tended to stay in our neighborhood so if he was gone for longer I'd be able to find him. However, the last time I "let" him run on his own was when he got thoroughly lost, in a different neighborhood, and thank goodness a stranger noticed the dog tag around his neck and called me.  Of course I felt terribly selfish that I hadn't rearranged things so that I could have run with him all the time. Honestly though, I think I was relieved to have some time to myself (even working), but I learned my lesson.