How a 99-year-old still goes on bike rides

Brut America

She's 99 years old but that's not stopping her from going on bike rides... thanks to the organization Cycling Without Age.  In partnership with C40 Cities.

Transcript

00:00Why do you like a cycling tour?

00:02Freedom, fresh air.

00:05I like to meet people.

00:07I like everybody, more or less.

00:31Would you like me to get you a drink?

00:33Yeah.

00:34Okay, I'm going to go and get some drink now.

00:36You see the bikes here?

00:38The tri-shore bikes are being used by volunteers to take elderly people out for bike rides.

00:44And we have Torba, who's 99, with us today.

00:47She's been chatting all along.

00:49So I like to take her out because she's really good fun.

00:52But I can also help her with her limited mobility.

00:55Come on, I'm 99.

00:59I'm so hungry.

01:01And I should sit home and be bored.

01:04No, I like to... anything.

01:09Fresh air, and people, and nature.

01:15Get out.

01:17I like people.

01:19And meet people.

01:21It's a great way of fighting loneliness.

01:23Because that is really, in my book, one of the biggest problems that we have in society today.

01:27Is the fact that people are sitting on their own, lonely.

01:30It's a way we've structured our society.

01:32And I'd like to help solve that.

01:40We can just cycle around in the supermarket and do shopping. Is that okay?

01:45Yeah.

01:47I think that would be really cool.

01:49I had a dad who was suffering from multiple sclerosis all my childhood.

01:54And so I knew firsthand what it meant to be mobile.

01:58And I had to be his legs.

02:01And then many, many years later, when I saw an old man sitting on a bench.

02:05Not being able to move very far away.

02:07I just got the idea that... I got the strong urge that I wanted to help him too.

02:12And in the meantime, these wonderful bikes had been invented.

02:15So I just got one of them and started cycling.

02:18So I guess it was just history that caught up with me.

02:25I like young people. They are fantastic.

02:30Some of them, they are so clever.

02:36Yes, I believe in them.

02:39But I think it's not a nice world we give them.

02:43Do you think you could have done something different?

02:45So that the world would be better today?

02:47The world?

02:49Yes.

02:50I am not so arrogant, no.

02:53The world, no.

02:55I tried in the war.

02:58During the war, yes.

03:00So what happened during the war, Tore?

03:03What happened during the war?

03:05We were sabotaging all the German things, what they did.

03:12And factories they used.

03:15So you worked in the resistance?

03:17Absolutely, yes.

03:19Everybody should do that.

03:22So you think it's people's responsibility to act when there is something wrong?

03:26Yes.

03:27And how about today, when a lot of the problems in the world today have to do with the world heating up, climate change.

03:36What can people do now?

03:39They can start living more simple.

03:45And not use so much.

03:47Not throw away so much.

03:49And eat less.

03:51Yes.

04:06The bike is a solution to so many things.

04:08It's a solution to loneliness, to all the mobility issues in cities, obesity, climate.

04:15You name it, the bike is the answer.

04:21The bike is the answer.

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