A blind cyclist and his daughter work together

Good morning. It’s Friday. We look at a father-daughter team who is preparing to ride this weekend in the Five Boro Bike Tour. We will also discover what a composer has encouraged to write a tribute after Robert F. Kennedy was murdered in 1968 while campaigning for President.

Thomas Panek has run more than 20 road races. His time in the New York Half Marathon last year was 2 hours 9 minutes 21 seconds.

On Sunday he will cover part of the same soil in a different way, as a rider in the Five Boro Bike Tour. “I’m a little nervous,” he said. “I don’t know what to expect if you use another group of muscles in your body.”

That sentence skipped over two things that distinguish him from most of the 32,000 other riders. One is that he will ride a tandem bike.

The other is that he is blind.

He has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative condition that legally blindly left him by the time his daughter, Madeleine, was born 22 years ago. She will be the one on the front seat of the tandem, shift the gears and call when turns come or she should brake. They practiced stopping because, as he said, “If she suddenly braked, I would be thrown forward.”

Many faceless athletes talk about their collaboration with their guides. “Harmony and Synchrony” was how the blind runner Jerusa Geber Dos Santos of Brazil described the relationship during the Olympic Games in Paris last year. Madeleine Panek spoke about how she and her father trust each other, an idea that he was echoing.

“Holding my hand when she was 2 years old and helps me cross the street, it’s a second nature for her to guide me,” he said. “It requires some coordination to trust the captain if you are blind and you don’t know the person. We already have that relationship. That will be the easy part. The hardest thing is to get it done.”

He knows the route of Rennen – It is similar to the course of the New York City Marathon. The two races start and end in different places, but both cover the 2.6 miles long Verrazzano-Narrows bridge and highways such as the Brooklyn-Reens Expressway and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. Some dangers are also similar, such as holes that can look as large as craters on the moon.

But some dangers are different for cyclists: Expansion connections between parts of paving can be problems. Riders who do not spot them on time can fly over the wheel.

Thomas Panek started a new job last monthas president and chief executive of LighthouseA non -profit organization that offers services to blind people. When he heard about other cyclists from the Lighthouse Guild who would ride, he signed up.

He waited to ask his daughter to be the pilot “because she had just finished her Mcats,” he said – the standardized test for medical school requests. “I didn’t want to add extra pressure,” he said. She comes to New York for the weekend while they graduate at Binghamton University and applies for the medical school.

Bike New York, which runs the Five Boro Bike Tour, says that 210 riders with a disability will be in the ride on Sunday and that 101 of them will be visually handicapped cyclists on tandem bikes. Ken Podziba, the president of Bike New York, rode a tandem bike for the first time in the Tour in 2002 with Matthew SapolinA friend who was blind and was the commissioner of the mayor of the mayor for people with disabilities under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Podziba, the sports commissioner under Bloomberg, thought it was great and eventually worked for Bike New York.

Thomas Panek said that their tandem is ‘a long vehicle’, adding that “you have to take into account the fact that it is almost like pulling a trailer.”

“On a tandem bike,” he said, “you train for two. If I get tired at some point, Madeleine can pick up the level of effort.” And vice versa, he said. “But on the Verrazzano it will take everything from both of us.”

Weather

There is a chance of showers during the day, but also sun and temperatures near 80. In the evening there is a 30 percent chance on showers and thunderstorms, with a layer around 63.

Alternative

In fact until 26 May (Memorial Day).

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One day in June in 1968, a man named Frank Lewin drove his three daughters to a train station not far from where they lived in Princeton, NJ, he wanted to look forward to a train that would pass by. “I especially remember that I was standing there, and that it was very hot,” said one of the daughters, Naomi Lewin.

The train that Frank Lewin wanted to see was wearing the body of Robert F. Kennedy, the former Attorney General and Senator who was murdered a few days earlier while campaigning for President in Los Angeles. The funeral was held in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. The train was on its way to Washington; Kennedy would be buried on the Arlington National Cemetery.

Frank Lewin was a composer who was perhaps best known for scores for television shows such as “The Defenders” and “The Nurses” on CBS. But he also wrote serious music, including an opera based on the short story of John Steinbeck “Burning Bright”, and decided to write a Requiem Massa in memory of Kennedy. It will be given First New York version, with Matthew Lewis and the St. George’s Choral Society, On Sunday in the Rutgers Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side.

“I think my father had the feeling that there was a need for a Requiem in the English language,” said Naomi Lewin. The works of Mozart, Verdi and Fauré follow Latin texts. Lewin’s setting of the Lord’s prayer in English is very beautiful.

“Dad wanted to put together music for a whole Catholic Requiem service,” said Naomi Lewin. “So instead of letting the congregation speak the prayer of the Lord, as they would normally do during a church service, he wrote music for it and labeled it to be sung by the congregation.”

As far as Kennedy is concerned, “my father clearly admired him,” said Naomi Lewin. The Lewins were German Jews who had come to the United States “looking for freedom – and the kind of freedom for which Robert Kennedy is fighting,” she said. “Robert Kennedy had a legacy of civil rights and helping poor people. This is history.”

Frank Lewin turned to the Roman Catholic chaplain at Princeton University and others of the university Aquinas Institute who gave him instructions because he did not know about the Catholic liturgy. ” The piece was first performed in the Princeton University Chapel in 1969.

“Dad used the Catholic text” for the prayer of the Lord, “ending with” Relossings of evil, “without” Kingdom “or” Power “or” Glorie, “said Naomi Lewis, who was a professional singer and a classical music radio personality.” Years after I had to put together a prothestant ending. “

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