“Bikes, the miracle cure”: My road to recovery after knee surgery

Written by Cameron Crowell, a Portland resident whose work has also appeared on Eater PDX and Portland Mercury. This essay was submitted as part of a community project to keep BikePortland going while BikePortland Editor & Publisher Jonathan Maus is tending to a family medical emergency out of town and unable to work as normal.

Springtime in Portland means cherry blossoms, brief glimpses at sunny days in between the rainy ones, memories of the Blazers being in the playoffs (RIP Dame), and finally, after waiting all winter, bike rides to play pickup basketball at neighborhood parks.

Every town with seasons has a culture of pride around how their springs are better than everybody else’s, but ours really is best. Despite the doom and gloom about the state of Portland over the past few years — that has coincided with a decline in bike and transit ridership — when the weather is nice and people are biking around outside it feels like there’s grounds for hope. Just like I’m sticking with the Blazers even when it seems like they are trying to lose, I’m sticking with our community’s particular blend of blooms, basketball, and bikes. 

This winter was particularly rough. To start the year off, I tore my ACL (major knee ligament) in a Beaverton gym while playing basketball with my recreational league team. Everyday I rode my old single speed road bike around Portland — to work, to the park for hoops, then to a friend’s house (or Bike Happy Hour), before home. But after a quick pop sound that silenced the gym, my active life as a basketball player and frequent bike rider transformed. In a second I was couch-bound, out of work, and preparing to get knee surgery. Weeks on the couch turned to months hobbling in a brace and crutches. Dragging myself off the couch to the long list of follow-up appointments was a chore. My usual breezy ten minute bike commute became a much more boring and shameful nine minute drive. Even though I was hurt and it was the only way for me to get around, it felt wrong to drive the short distances to work and physical therapy.

When the first sunny weekend arrived, I was jealous. My friends were making their way to Irving Park for the inaugural post-winter pick-up basketball run, while I wasted away a Saturday watching the Blazers get blown out (again), doing ‘ankle pumps’ (part of my physical therapy) and struggling to ignite my quad muscle. I turned off the game after the third quarter and decided I would force myself to sit in the godforsaken sunlight. Kids were screaming in between referee whistles on the soccer field next to my apartment. It was blueberry products day at the Franz Bakery so the entire neighborhood smelt like a mix of fruit and yeast. Sickening. My neighbor rode up on his old beach cruiser with a can of Mike’s Hard Lemonade in hand and noticed me for the first time in over a month. 

“Woah man, is your leg broken?” he said.

“No, I tore my ACL and had to get surgery.”

“That’s brutal man,” he replied before taking a pull.

We chatted for about twenty more minutes before he biked off to run an errand, seemingly forgetting why he even came home in the first place.

I’d regained some mobility in my leg by the beginning of April. While I still walked with a limp, I could almost straighten it fully. My physical therapist recommended I get a gym membership, and eventually I was able to get a full rotation on a stationary bike with ease. 

The return of leafy green trees and my friends complaining about allergies meant times were changing, tides were shifting, life was moving on. I saw the calendar and knew that with spring coming, the Ladds 500 — Portland’s first major bike event of the year — was on its way. Maybe I wouldn’t make it out for pickup basketball this year, but I felt hopeful that I could bike a few laps around Ladd’s Addition. 

The week of the ride I consulted my physical therapist. It was looking to be another beautiful weekend, and while she stopped short of , “It’s spring, let’s do something stupid,” (the event’s official unofficial motto) she was excited to tell me that I should totally go for it. I biked to Colonel Summers Park after work the day before the Ladds 500 as a practice run, overjoyed to see a pile of bikes next to the basketball courts and some of my friends out there getting a game in. 

Finally, the day of the Ladds 500 arrived. Despite some initial skepticism, I managed to rope a few of my basketball buddies into making a team, and we arrived sporting our recreational league basketball jerseys and tracksuits. By the time we’d finished our first few laps we’d already run into friends, friends of friends, former Tinder dates, and complete strangers handing out hot dogs, beers, ice cream, and cold shrimp. All doubts were dropped. This was fun, and I was so back. For hours and hours we took turns riding around in circles, playing dominos, and eating pizza. By the relay’s end, I finished with about 110 laps—not so bad for someone who was couch-bound just a month before. 

In the middle of one of my relay shifts, BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus rode up to me and asked me how my knee was holding up. I was huffing and puffing, but I was doing great! 

“Look at that,” Maus said. “Bikes, the miracle cure.”

I biked to work everyday the week after Ladds. There were other reasons for hope, too: my previously skeptical friends expressed much more enthusiasm for biking. One of my friends went on a “bike date” with someone he saw there, another jokingly made a group chat to plan a 500 lap relay around the Joan of Arc roundabout on Ceasar Chavez, then my girlfriend and I did a 20-plus mile ride all over town to get some slices of Pizza Week pizza.

With 2023 being our first increase in ridership since the cycling recession, the uptick in my personal riding may even extend slightly outside myself and immediate friends. Maybe it’s circumstantial. Maybe it’s just an early spring bloom. Maybe it’s getting to vote from a wide swath of candidates seemingly taking transit policy seriously under the new city council system. Maybe it’s the Blazers getting two first round draft picks this summer. Maybe it’s just relentless optimism. But from bikes, to basketball, to my body, to a better world, there’s reason to have pride and hope. We’re still limping, but we will recover.

— Read more of Cam’s “gossip about the neighborhood, unions, sports, movies, and other things” on his Substack blog.