Overcoming Disabilties Team Room

[ronnie1]

Jim, some virus was on the Concept 2 website and erased season meter for many of us. Trying now to check and see if I can bring back these meters.

[brotherjim]

Jim, some virus was on the Concept 2 website and erased season meter for many of us. Trying now to check and see if I can bring back these meters.

Thanks Ronnie, I was curious as to where the team had gone
Hope you and Zander are having great seasons.

[brotherjim]

Welcome back to the team Michelle! We are an open team so join or leave as often as you wish. We are here for you. We row for our health and rehab, not for standings or competition. Enjoy the season.

[brotherjim]

Achilles Kids

Upcoming Events!





Achilles Kids Under The Sea Fun

Saturday, July 16th

Jewish Community Center

334 Amsterdam Ave (@76th St)

9:30 - 12:15 pm



For more information, please call 212.354.0300 or email us at kids@achillesinternational.org





Achilles Kids Shoot for the Stars Fun Run

Saturday, July 23rd

Jewish Community Center

334 Amsterdam Ave. (@76th St)

9:30 - 12:15 pm



Achilles Kids | 42 West 38th Street, 4th Floor | New York, NY 10018
T: 212.354.0300 F: 212.354.3978 E: kids@achillesinternational.org
http://www.achillesinternational.org

[brotherjim]

Mission of Mercy -- the Name Says it All
healthyathletes | July 14, 2011 at 10:53 am




The sentiments below were written by Jeanne Hrovat, a staff member from Special Olympics Wisconsin, after she helped transport athletes to a Special Olympics-Mission of Mercy event in Wausau, Wisconsin on June 24. Mission of Mercy is a nation-wide organization that provides free dental care to people in need, and is currently working with Special Olympics Healthy Athletes on a pilot program in 4 states to provide dental follow-up to Special Olympics athletes.

Sometimes a name is simply that - a name. But sometimes, it says it all. What I witnessed in Wausau was truly a "Mission of Mercy."

The Mission
My role was to find five athletes between Madison and Wausau, whom I could pick up on my way to the event so they could get their teeth checked. When I left at 6 am that morning, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself having to get up so early. I missed my exit on the highway and became even more self-absorbed. I picked up the athletes who were all cheery and upbeat despite the fact that I was 15 minutes late and was driving them to a dentist two hours away. Their parents say in their trucks and watched their children leave with a stranger who didn't know when she'd be back.

This was my first wake-up call to the need.

We arrived in Wausau at 11:00 am and were promptly checked in at the separate registration with no waiting. Before I could get my head around what was happening, the first athlete, James, was sitting in the chair. James had been anxious on the car ride because he knew just enough about the dentist to be nervous. His coach suggested he come because his gums would start to bleed when he talked. Within 30 minutes, his teeth were clean and he had a new filling. He was all smiles.

Each athlete took their turn. Darlene got a filling and one tooth pulled. Ashley -- no cavities - yah! DJ, fourteen-years-old hadn't been to a dentist since he was seven. He was completely enamored with the numbing in his cheeks until he realized he had to have five teeth filled. It was Ashley's hand he squeezed until it was blue. Anna, the most severe case, needed all four wisdom teeth pulled and two cavities filled.

I looked around and saw hundreds more. The need was widespread despite age, ethnicity, gender and even economic circumstances. The common thread: No insurance. No dentist.

The Mercy
The sea of purple-coated, capable, generous volunteers, hygienists, dentists, and surgeons. Dentist chairs ready and waiting for our Special Olympics athletes. The organization, efficiency and system. The kindness. The tears. The smiles.

People with the eyes to see the need, the head to pull it off and the heart filled with mercy.

The Thanks
What can I say?

Forever changed,
Jeanne Hrovat
Senior Director of Field Services and Initiatives
Special Olympics Wisconsin

[brotherjim]

CAF Supports Amputee's Trans-Pacific Voyage
Return to Sea
“I’m an amputee, but that doesn’t keep me from doing what I love most: sailing.”- John Silverwood

Every challenged athlete has their story. It begins with loss and the question of whether or not life will ever be the same again. John Silverwood faced this question in 2005 when lying in a San Diego hospital bed as a new amputee having just escaped from a harrowing shipwreck. Pounded by 30-foot waves, John’s 55-foot catamaran, Emerald Jane, ran aground and broke apart on a South Pacific atoll leaving John severely wounded after the Emerald Jane’s mast fell on his leg.

Just five years after his life-altering experience, John will Return to Sea on a Trans-Pacific Voyage to benefit CAF. He will feature the Challenged Athletes Foundation® (CAF) logo on the hull of his ship and fly a CAF flag to honor the organization and inspire others with physical disabilities to pursue the activities they love because anything is possible.

John and his 15 year-old son, Jack, will set out from San Diego, crossing the Pacific to Hawaii to complete the first leg of the journey; then John will sail the boat back to San Francisco solo. John hopes that his trip will prove to other amputees that they have the ability and the courage to rewrite their story, follow their dreams, and not let anything stand in the way of their goals.

John’s Return to Sea will help CAF further its mission and provide hope and opportunity to others like John so they too can become whole through the sports they love.

[brotherjim]

Congratulations to Michelle and Anita for reaching 1 million meters in this young rowing season. Way to row!!!!

Ronnie, I am sorry to hear that Zander is in the hospital with a serious illness. My thoughts and prayers are with him, his family and friends, and you.

[ronnie1]

Thanks Jim, we appreciate that.

[rosita]

Blessings and get well wishes from Benny, Gabby, and me too. Get well Zander!
Rosi

[brotherjim]

MILAN (AP) — Double amputee Oscar Pistorius qualified Tuesday for the athletics world championships next month and could be on his way to the 2012 Olympics in London.

The South African clocked a personal best of 45.07 seconds in the 400 meters in the northern Italian town of Lignano on the Adriatic Sea. He needed a time of 45.25 to qualify for the worlds for the first time. The championships begin Aug. 27 in Daegu, South Korea.

The time also puts him on track to fulfill his dream of competing at the Olympics. Having achieved the "A'' qualifying time, he now only needs to be selected for the South African team.

Pistorius, known as the "Blade Runner," gained international fame when he tried to qualify for the 2008 Olympics. He had to battle a IAAF ban from competing in able-bodied races after his carbon-fiber blades were deemed an unfair advantage.

He went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and was cleared in 2008. But the legal process took a toll on his training and he didn't come close to the qualifying time for Beijing.

"I vowed that that would never happen again," Pistorius recently told The Associated Press in South Africa.

Pistorius had his lower legs amputated when he was 11 months old, but has always been involved in sports. He competed in rugby, water polo and tennis and took up running as part of a rehabilitation program after sustaining a rugby injury.

Pistorius is the world record-holder in the 100, 200 and 400 for disabled athletes, and a multiple gold-medal winner at the Paralympics.

[brotherjim]

ANYWHERE WILD!
Making wild places accessible to people with disabilities.

When John Muir first arrived in California by ship, he was bewildered and overwhelmed by the raucous energy of San Francisco in 1869. He asked a passerby the quickest way out of the city. Well, where do you want to go? the stranger inquired.

"Anywhere Wild!" said Muir.

John Muir’s great-grandson is blazing a new trail into the wilderness, opening a path to be traveled by people with disabilities. Fairfield, California horseman Michael Muir, 55, has lived with multiple sclerosis since he was 15 years old. Refusing to be daunted by the relentless course of his disease, Muir believes in challenging the limits of disability. In 2001, he led an international team of people with disabilities driving wheelchair accessible horsedrawn carriages on a three thousand mile, ten month Journey Across America.

Now, after traveling by horse and carriage through seven countries, the extraordinary adventures of HorseJourney have led to the founding of Anywhere Wild!. Muir says, "We have shown that people with disabilities can accomplish amazing things. Horses, combined with innovative adaptive equipment are the links that carry us back into a close relationship with nature and wild places. I know how important this has proven to be in my own life. It is something I want to share with others."

Anywhere Wild! uses Thornlea carriages with a solar powered battery operated lift that accommodates up to 500 pounds, to bring aboard people with mobility problems, including those in wheelchairs. A simple lockdown device secures the wheelchair in place. The program has a traditional four-wheel carriage that can handle four passengers, including two wheelchairs, and a twelve passenger trolley that can carry five wheelchairs. Anywhere Wild! offers remote, scenic, multi-day wilderness experiences for people living with mobility challenges.

[brotherjim]

Chris Waddell was a promising young skier at Middlebury College in 1988 when a skiing accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. Determined to get back on the slopes, he began skiing on a monoski roughly one year later. A little more than two years later, Waddell was named to the US Disabled Ski Team.

He went on to become the most decorated male skier in Paralympic history, winning twelve medals over four games, and spending a total of 11 years on the US Disabled Ski Team. He is one of a select few who has medaled in both summer and winter games. In the fall of 2009, Waddell became the first paraplegic to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro unassisted, and in 2010, he was inducted into both the Paralympic Hall of Fame and the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame.

Waddell has been named the Dalai Lama's unsung hero of compassion and has been featured in numerous publications, including Outside Magazine, Skiing, Ski, National Geographic Explorer, and People Magazine, who named him one of 'The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World.' He has also appeared on Dateline and Oprah.

In addition to his work with the Paralympics and the International Paralympic Committee, Waddell has found success as a motivational speaker. Waddell speaks to the resilience of the human condition, with topics ranging from leadership to adversity to quality of life.

[brotherjim]

This is a continuation of the last post.





Handcycle — Most paraplegics don't go off road. It's just too difficult. In the late 90's Mike Augspurger changed all that when he developed a three-wheeled, two in the front one in the back, rear-wheeled drive vehicle. It allowed the rider to steer with his chest while pedaling and with his hands on the downhill. Not only could it get to the woods, it could climb most anything. We borrowed heavily from Mike's technology and also from the platform of his four-wheeled prototype version that allowed each wheel to articulate independently. With a few tweaks, our vehicle looked like a Mars Rover married to arm pedal power. We built two versions. The first we called Bomba because our African drivers said it meant "cooler than cool," in Swahili. Like Mike's original, it was cooler than cool. For the actual climb, we used four-inch wide tires with a profile that turned a twenty-six inch rim into a twenty-nine inch tire. It looked like a monster truck, so we called it Kubwa, for huge in Swahili.

Scott Gilman built the vehicle. Dave Penney did much of the design
The Easton Foundation donated the money for R&D, and fabrication

Specs:
Chromoly frame weighed about 50 lbs
27 gears, traditional bike gearing, three in the front, 9 in the back
Surly Large Marge wheels and tires
The Mountain—Kilimanjaro owes much of its unique nature to its proximity to the equator. The tallest mountain in Africa and the tallest freestanding mountain in the world rests in Tanzania, on Africa's south east coast, just below Kenya. Even with a location that close to the equator, it has snow on its 19,340-foot peak. In fact you climb through five climate zones during the approximately 30-mile trek to the summit, starting in a rainforest and finishing on the glacier.

Specs:
4 days of climbing for most hikers. We took 6.5 days
3300 feet (1000 meters) of vertical in 9.3 miles (15k) first three days
3910 feet in 3.1 miles (5k) on the upper mountain
Huts for the first three days. Tents on the upper mountain.
Almost 13,000 feet of ascent from 6,500 to 19,340


The Climb—Starting on September 24th 2009, Chris and his started up the Marangu Trail. The rig was brand new, owed to a broken frame a month earlier, and while better definitely felt different. The gearing seemed too difficult from the start, though much faster. I wondered if we should get the old rig, since repaired from the hotel. By the top of the Porter's road there was no question this was the rig. Yet, the sailing winch, designed for the steep, loose upper mountain, didn't work at all. It heated up, the resistance increasing to the point that it was totally ineffective. For difficult or loose terrain, the porters placed 2x8, eight-foot long boards, which I rode over. They worked great.

We saw the summit for the first time upon leaving the rainforest at about 10,000 feet. She seemed to sport just a skullcap of glacier, but the summit lay days off. We were still in the midst of dust that exploded when someone stepped and waterbars, designed to preserve the trail in rainy season, seemingly every ten feet. While most stepped over the waterbars, I dropped into each and climbed back out. Though the deepest was only three feet, my momentum ground to a crawl. We made it to camp in six and a half hours the first night. The second took ten and a half. The heat drained out of the sky with the light, leaving me cold and shivering and wondering about our prospects for the summit.

The trip to Kibo Hut at 15,500 feet was an easier day as a result of a road for the second half of the day, but nerves ran higher as we made our way into the thin air and to the foot of the cone. Now the real climb would start. The first three days were just a warm-up. The cone rose high above, three times as steep as the lower mountain. Most hikers leave in the middle of the night to summit for sunrise atop the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. We waited for the relative warmth of morning.

The winch didn't work again. I had a moment where I stared defeat in the face. After two years of work, vehicle development, tons of sacrifice, fundraising, poverty, I thought that my goal of having people notice me and people like me had evaporated in the thin air. My goal was to change the lives of the 600 million people in the world with physical disabilities. That day I felt like I rode on their power. It was one of the greatest days of my athletic career. That gear that I didn't think I could turn over while still on the pavement at the bottom moved seemingly by itself.

I didn't make the top that day, but instead camped with Bob and Nate at 17,500. Worried about the next two thousand feet of steep scree, we watched the mountains shadow fall on the plains 11,000 feet below. Dave fixed the winch for the next day. It worked but didn't make the going any easier. I tried in vain to find a rhythm, but my only rhythm was struggle, culminated by an impassible boulder field on the crater rim just below Gilman's Point.

Now I didn't just stare defeat in the face, I swallowed it whole. My team and the porters had carried me for 100 of the 13,000 feet, but that meant that I wasn't unassisted. I grappled with defeat as I rode through the desolate crater. It seemed like the bottom of a dried lake and I felt decidedly under water. Finally, I took Dave aside to tell him how disappointed I was. He let me lie to people—let me tell them that I could do it myself. He knew that I couldn't. He told me that no one climbs a mountain alone. That's what I wanted to eliminate—that feeling of being alone. If I didn't need anyone I was separate. I was alone.

The next day I climbed the top knowing that I'd experienced an epiphany, but still worried how the public would perceive it. My answer lay in the man next to me at the summit. Tajiri had been a porter on the mountain before a rockslide took his leg. We bought him a light prosthesis that fit well. When he returned to the mountain he said to the other porters, "You never thought you'd see me here again. Well I'm back." He'd recovered from a shell of a man to become complete. I worried about how the world might perceive my feat, but we'd already changed one person's life.

It took six and a half days to make it to the summit, four days above 15,500 feet, and a day and a half to return to the gate. We approximated that it took 528,000 revolutions of my cranks, though that's just a mathematical guess. One Revolution stands for something small that can lead to something big. In this sense I hope that it leads to a revolution of one—a revolution for all.

[brotherjim]

Ronnie, our newest million meter season rower!!! Awesome rowing kiddo!!!!
Ronnie has been rowing these outstanding meter amounts while competing in several sport competitions, plus helping care for her friend Zander. (Get well soon Zander) Along with all this, she is a part time nurse in a children's clinic.
After seeing my Princess Bobbie work on her rehab last year, teach her class, care for our grandkids, (and me), women are amazing, strong, resilient, and beautiful in every way.
Cheers for Ronnie

[rivka]

After reading this last post, I had to rejoin the team. Way to row Ronnie.