I’m disabled. Here’s how I biked from Pittsburgh to D.C.

Todd Balf writes regularly about navigating disability. His book “Three Kings” was published in paperback last month.

I’m not good with my hands. The “measure twice, cut once” axiom comes to me after the fact. I remember how I felt when I wanted to construct a simple bedroom closet wall. I stood and stared at the framing two-by-fours around me, paralyzed to get underway, fearing the permanence of the mistake I knew I’d make. I had no feel, no confidence. And that was before my disability.

Because of my partial leg paralysis, which is a complication from spine cancer surgery a decade ago, I need full forearm crutches to stand solidly. The act of independently making something in my backyard, already difficult, feels much more so now. I could almost hear the old circular saw and my late dad’s framing hammer breathe a sigh of relief when I finally left them be.

Then last year, I got a springtime idea. I proposed to my family and friends that we go on a bike-packing ride on the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath, a 333-mile riverside route from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C.

I had ridden thousands of miles on a handcycle, a low-riding machine powered by arms instead of legs. The idea of riding a long way on a bike was not new. However, the idea of camping with my bike, and specifically figuring out a way to get down to the ground to sleep in a tent (and back up again), was new.

My weak legs could not thrust me upward or support me downward. After much trial and error, I figured out a home solution. When on my knees, I could grab a stationary object like a bench or the arms of a sturdy patio chair and, leveraging against it, do an inclined push-up to stand.

But there were no patio chairs on the dirt and gravel trail where we were going. I needed a light, portable device. But I couldn’t find something like that on the market. No sleek camp chair that folded into nothing. I had been here before. Years earlier, in slightly different circumstances, I had reached out to Olin College of Engineering, which has a community program focused on low-cost mobility workarounds, but they couldn’t turn the trick either.

I needed to make something.

Design innovation wasn’t my calling card, but willfulness is. I thought nonstop about the problem. Because it had to be something that could be carried on a bike, the item had to disassemble after use. It had to be robust enough to withstand a human being’s full weight multiple times a day. Mostly it could not fail.

I found a design that made sense on the blog of a CrossFit madman: a pair of mini handrails made from PVC that the guy used to do handstands on. I scaled everything up, creating knee-high hurdles. I based their height on the arms of the rigid deck chair I used in my yard for lifting up from my handcycle. Wide penguin feet and a beefier PVC grade provided stability. There were nearly two dozen pieces in all.

Amazingly, it worked. When we rode the trail last May, we merrily dubbed the device the “Todd-Me-Up.” I was proud enough to send a three-minute-long demonstration video to my former rehab hospital in Boston. It was a challenging ride for me — my canes were strapped to the frame of my bike — but the minute I stopped to stand, the others would rifle their bags for the PVC pieces, and, pit crew-style, assemble them.

I rode alongside and shared a weeklong trail adventure with those closest to me, including my son, brother, several friends, and my wife, Patty. Over six days we raised money for charity and saw all the things that make the trail beloved: the bird life, the turtle life, the bald eagles, and the crashing white water of the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania and Great Falls in Virginia.

We ate super food (White’s Ferry pickle sandwiches) and were treated to trailside wisdom from the likes of “Son of Bill” in Little Orleans, Md., and George in West Newton, Pa., the resident DIY campground specialist who approved of my PVC magic.

I can’t be sure I will go on a run of making stuff. Problem-solving is an instrument of hope. The energy isn’t always there. The cancer has spread. My legs are much weaker, and even the redoubtable Todd-Me-Up isn’t enough to help me stand. There is a part of me that thinks my DIY triumph might be as good as it gets. I felt similarly decades ago, when I won a bunch of poker money one night, never having played poker before. I never played again.

Or maybe there will be another place and time where there will be something else that I must do. But first I’ll have to make something. And I will.