How a Community of Biker Chicks Helped Me Get Back in the Driver’s Seat

Discovering I may drive with out the usage of my legs was nothing in need of a revelation. Earlier than a automotive crash left me paralyzed from the chest down, I had no information of the variations obtainable to Disabled drivers till the second the occupational therapist in spinal rehabilitation instructed me that it was, in actual fact, nonetheless attainable for me to get behind the wheel.

A number of days later, I transferred clumsily right into a learner automotive, buckled my seatbelt, and positioned one hand on a steering ball and the opposite round a “push-pull system.” I felt the automobile edge ahead as I pulled the hand controls gently in the direction of me, though my legs sat unresponsive within the footwell. My life, which had to date been unrecognizable in these early days of restoration, felt prefer it was again in my management.

Adjusting to residing with paralysis means, largely, coming to phrases with accessing the world in a wheelchair, however the prospect of present solely throughout the limits of 4 manual-powered wheels by no means sat nicely with me. From that first drive onwards, I spotted I would want to by some means discover other ways to navigate my environment—to reinvent the wheelchair, so to talk. In any case, there’s solely to date a wheelchair can go.

Driving represented freedom and gave me company at a time when my destiny felt desperately unsure. It additionally gave me some escapism from the confines of individuals’s perceptions of what life lived with a Disability may or couldn’t be. I didn’t really feel so paralyzed within the driver’s seat, and to these round me, I didn’t look it, both.

My complete world as a Disabled driver modified as soon as once more once I found the Can-Am Ryker. Though not designed for somebody like me, with two wheels on the entrance and one behind, it’s inherently secure sufficient to trip utilizing your legs with out core power or stability. For my first trip, I made a decision to journey as much as Scotland to revisit the place the place I used to be paralyzed all these years in the past. As I rode independently over the street scar that my then out-of-control automotive had carved into the tarmac, I felt as in management as I may have ever imagined being once more. The expertise grew to become the title of my memoir, Driving Forwards, a mantra for all times post-life-changing damage.