On this bright summer evening in Central Park, Maria DiMeglio really only sees the moving silhouettes of what is around her. She has a genetic eye disease that causes her to lose her vision over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to go to special schools and resource programs, and had to learn braille,.\u201d DiMeglio said. \u201cI\u2019ve had to use large print. So I was always different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pelham Parkway resident never thought she\u2019d ever ride a bike \u2014 until she heard about InTandem. The nonprofit pairs blind cyclists with sighted ones so everyone can enjoy the benefits of bike-riding.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Maria DiMeglio doesn’t let her vision impairments stop her from cycling around Central Park
\n
DiMeglio volunteers with InTandem, a program that gets low-vision and blind New Yorkers on bikes
\n
She is on the organization’s board and introduces blind cyclists and sighted ones to team bicycle riding<\/p>\n
\u201cIt opened the world to me for sports,\u201d she said. \u201cIt opened the world for me to look inside myself and find more things that I could do.\u201d<\/p>\n
DiMeglio hopped on her first bike a little more than a decade ago when she was 44-years-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, I was afraid of falling. And he assured me. He said, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, you\u2019re fine. We won\u2019t fall.\u2019 And we didn\u2019t,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She kept at it and gradually took on more responsibility with InTandem. DiMeglio now sits on the board of directors, trains new blind riders and mentors sighted ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunication: part of being on that bike, it\u2019s all about communication, teamwork,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI lost my sight about six years ago, six and a half years ago,\u201d Zak Bentley, participant of InTandem, said. \u201cAnd I would say most things in life. I found it another way, [a] different way of doing. And until I found InTandem, I hadn\u2019t found another way of doing cycling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe lets everyone know what\u2019s going on, and everyone feels good to be around her,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
DiMeglio is especially proud to work with young cyclists. It\u2019s an opportunity to encourage others in the blind community to keep pedaling, even when it feels like an uphill climb.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do everything like everyone else,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just need to do it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
For helping visually impaired New Yorkers feel the joys of cycling, Maria DiMeglio is our New Yorker of the Week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this bright summer evening in Central Park, Maria DiMeglio really only sees the moving silhouettes of what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[11931,3550,49,48,11930,635,167,11928,44,11929,82,39,1016],"class_list":["post-12681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-app-new-yorker-of-the-week","tag-app-top-stories","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chelsea-katz","tag-cycling","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-yorker-of-the-week","tag-news","tag-pat-kiernan","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}