This year, LeadingAge kicked off their annual meeting in Boston with a Joy Ride. On November 2, 2025, people gathered at the UMass Boston campus to raise awareness of the joy that bike rides can bring to older adults. The event—sponsored by Cycling Without Age (CWA), Leading Age, and UMass Boston Gerontology—raised enough money to buy a trishaw for the Plymouth CWA chapter that will allow more older adults to experience the fun of bike rides, even if they’re unable to pedal one themselves.
Cycling Without Age began in 2012 as a solution to a problem: Ole Kassow of Copenhagen, Denmark, wanted to find a way for people in a local nursing home to experience the joy of a bike ride, even if they had limited mobility. He began to use a trishaw to offer them bike rides, and the joy they experienced showed him that this was an idea worth spreading. Today, Cycling Without Age has 3,500 chapters in 41 countries.
The Joy Ride at UMass Boston began with a breakfast and a screening of a documentary about the organization, attended by about 50 participants. (Watch the documentary trailer below.) Then about 20 people—a mix of LeadingAge members, UMass Boston faculty and staff, CWA volunteers, and older adults from the CWA network—gathered for a group bike ride around campus. Some people rode their own bikes, some rented them, and others rode trishaws with older adults in front, enjoying the wind in their hair and sun on their faces. Riders included three members of UMass Boston Gerontology: Marc Cohen, co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston; Edward Alan Miller, chair of the UMass Boston Gerontology Department, and Martin Hansen-Verma, program manager of the Gerontology Department.
“My favorite memory from the day was hearing the delight in everyone’s voices as they commented on the beautiful campus and weather, and especially when they saw the trishaws,” Hansen-Verma says. “These are really cool contraptions!”
The trishaws used by Cycling Without Age allow two older adults to sit comfortably in a front bench seat of the bike, as a volunteer pedals the bike from behind with electric pedal assist. Rides on these trishaws aren’t just fun for older adults; they’re a special kind of medicine as well. A study published in Innovation in Aging showed that older adults who had twice-weekly bike rides for 12 weeks experienced a boost in happiness and well-being.
“It’s calming for people, and it gets them outside,” Cohen says. “It’s almost like a nature walk for people who may be immobile. During our ride, we had a bright if chilly day, and you’d see the riders bundled up with blankets, enjoying the sun. You see the happiness on people’s faces.”’
CWA has more than 39,000 volunteers around the world who are trained to offer rides to people who live in nursing homes. This allows people to take a break from an institutional setting, to explore their community with the wind in their hair.
“For older folks in assisted living, cycling is a welcome respite from what, for many, is a largely indoor routine,” Hansen-Verma says. “It’s a chance to experience a sense of freedom and exploration, and connect with others in that active, joyful mode. I’m really pleased we were able to be part of that!”
During the Joy Ride, participants took a route around campus, by the Campus Center, by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and then alongside the harbor.
“A bike ride may seem like a little thing, but it can set someone’s mood,” Cohen says. “It can make people feel seen, make them feel important enough for someone to take on a short ride. It’s really a great thing.”
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