Two years ago, at the age of 72, I collided with an SUV, got thrown off the bike, landed on my lower back, suffered a fractured collapsed vertebra. About a week later I experimented with sitting on my basement Zwift bike and found the drop-bar position actually less painful than any other. A week later I was on the road. It seems to me that if you're well enough to pedal a stationary bike in the basement, you're well enough to pedal a bike on the road. The two positions are pretty much the same in their demands on your body.

As for the danger and fear of being out there among the life-threatening motor vehicles, that's harder to talk about. There is no more personal existential issue for a person than the question of his own death and the risks he is prepared to take in the face of it. For myself, I will say that I have survived more than fifty years riding road bikes on some pretty dangerous streets and roads and that I am somewhat less fearful now than I have been before , by the simple virtue of having fewer years left to me to preserve. My feeling is that there is no greater justification for one's life, one's existence, than his enjoyment of it. And I really enjoy biking and would hate to give it up sooner than I have to.