Leaving Treadmarkz Across the Universe

by Treadmarkz

Robert Hensel of Oswego, NY holds the record for the longest long-distance wheelie in a wheelchair, at just over six miles (that’s almost a 10K race on a wheelie!). It took him over two hours to cover that distance when I set the record in 2002. Hensel set his record for a worthy cause - to raise money for wheelchair ramps in his home town.

I’ve never tried that, but I am pretty sure that somewhere along the line, on a boring, rainy summer day, with nothing better to do, I sat in my bedroom with my stop-watch running, trying to sit stationary on a wheelie as long as I could. I am almost certain I did it for two hours once.

I am not trying to steal Hensel’s thunder, I am only trying to impress upon you how one - namely me - can really waste his youth if he’s not careful! I should have done it for charity like Hensel did to make it meaningful. Or if nothing else, I could have at least called the Guinness Book of World Records before I started!

Then again so could have my brother before he tied life preservers to my chair and vaulted over home-made ramps off the end of a dock into the Mississippi River. Real trailblazers we were. He was just more adventurous, and almost twenty years ahead of Aaron Fotheringham (though my brother is not disabled). I, on the other hand, never had fewer than two wheels on the ground at any given time, whether it was the back two, the front two (sometimes called a dork-wheelie), or penduluming from side to side.

Anyone pull off anything more adventurous than this on their (or their brother’s) wheelchair when they were a kid?

by Treadmarkz

Can you imagine an employer going to jail for three years for discriminating against a job applicant based on disability? That appears to be a possibility under the new law in the Republic of Korea. Punishment’s will start being handed down one year from today after a “preparation period”.

The law is supposed to be a step away from affirmative action, to give disabled citizens more dignity, freedom and choice. To me the situation described in the paragraph above doesn’t sound like affirmative action - it sounds like UBER-Affirmative action.

I said ADA-style because that is the intent behind it, to “let (disabled people) live as normal a life as possible with assistance” Many aspects of the new law seem to be quite ADA-like. But as the story in this LINK shows, there are still a few leaps forward to be made, going by ADA-like standards, that is.
Of course the ADA is not the 10 Commandments. It has faults of it’s own, as we all must recognize. Though it has allowed us a tremendous freedom that I am thankful for every day.