|
| | Welcome to HandBike America
Adaptive Sports Technology
 From
two hoople heads in Colorado
News about just recently
adapted TopEnd XLT with Avid disk brake
.JPG) This is the disk brake system
for adaptive handbikes which
requires shipm.JPG) ent of your XLT forks to Adaptive Sports Technologies
in Colorado where the new brake adapter is brazed on, painted and
installed. It can be installed with an Avid Brake for road or mountain
bike levers. The adapter is made and brazed on by Mark Nobilette, a
respected frame builder and fabricator.
Check out Mark Nobilette's web site.
www.nobilettecycles.com
Testimonial from a customer
“Eureka Canyon Road was the
real test of the disc brake modification: the road is very rough with many
curves and restricted visibility so speed must be kept down. The road also
drops steeply. The disc brake was definitely worth the investment.”
“The Old Santa Cruz Highway
has nice smooth pavement but the steep curving descent through the woods
makes me nervous about getting much above twenty mph. The torture test of
the disc brake continued on Alma Bridge Road where the grade actually
increases. This would have certainly caused heat flats with the regular rim
brakes. The sustained descent ended at Alma Bridge and I continued around
Lexington Reservoir. There was another brief test of the brakes going down
the dam.”
----Wayne Bailey’s Blog, XLT
Gold Adapter, March 18th and 19th 2006,
www.aidslifecycle.org/1230
Steve Ackerman (The
Eddie Merrick of Hand Cycling ) and Mark Drake (THE WRENCH)
check out Steve's handcycle at the Blaze Sports handcycle Clinic at Boulder Reservoir,
Colorado. Drake served as a medic and X-ray technician in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 and has struggled with post traumatic stress syndrome
ever since . Drake has found ways beyond professional care to heal. One of those ways is through hand cycling, a sport that helps him work off stress and mentally rejuvenate. Times-Call/Erin McCracken
. See the complete article that appeared in the 7/14/2005 Longmont Daily
Times Call posted below.
1st ANNUAL RABBIT MOUNTAIN ADAPTIVE TIME TRIAL!!!!
August 28th, 2005, It's in the books folks. We all
had a "Blast". This was a 6.6
mile self timed time
trial up Rabbit Mountain in Longmont, Colorado. We met on a Sunday morning at The Prague Inn
parking lot at the intersection of 75th St. and CO Highway 66. This is a popular
time
trial for local Boulder and Longmont bike clubs. At the start we headed west for
a slight downhill of about 2.5 miles and then turned north and started a series of gradual climbs toward
Rabbit Mountain.
There is is paved access road to the top of the pass (did I
forget to mention the
uphill category 1 finish?). Mark did
this in approximately 40 minutes (above average hand biker) , his AB wife Cathie
was 30 minutes something, while it took Denny
(below average, God- Awful handbiker)
1 hour and something. Damn you, Mark, damn you!!! Next time I
The race is over!
What HandBike America stands for
HandBike America (HBA) Adaptive Sports Technology (AST) promotes adaptive handbiking
and disability awareness.
Hopefully, you will also find us a useful source for help with handcycle
upgrades for the handicapped and
disabled. ADAPTIVE SPORTS TECHNOLOGY first project has been a successful
hand bike-friendly , Ride the Rockies proven, front disc
brake with awesome stopping power .
(Webster's Dictionary definition of "disc brake"
: a brake, as on a car, with two friction pads that press on a disc
rotating along with the wheel.)
Clean, safe, and easy to install, it can replace or
compliment factory installed caliper braking systems. Mark Drake has spearheaded
this project and would like to help others who are in need of total braking
power. Mark has also come up with a nifty roof rack system that has recently
(Ride The Rockies 2005) transported two Freedom Ryder hand cycles and two road
bikes on top of his Suburban. He is working on various seat cushion upgrades and
specialized hand shifters for the shifting challenged.
As you can see, the HBA web site is in the process of starting
to get the word out to fellow handbike, handcycle, handtrike owners
and make them aware of aftermarket possibilities. HBA understands
that aftermarket adaptations such as a disc brake, STI shifters that work for
quads, and other custom bike add-ons are hard to come by.
HBA/AST is into
many aspects of adaptive sports (wheelchair racing, mono-ski
racing, Nordic sit-down, and handbike racing).
Hand Bike America is into the adaptive needs of
the amputees, paraplegics, quadriplegics, and all other people with disabilities who wish to
do sports. If we can, we would like to help you out with your special
wheelchair adaptive sports needs.
Contact Mark Drake of Longmont, Colorado at 303-485-0325
E-Mail
handbikeamerica@yahoo.com
The following is copied from
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/handcyclists/
in response to a letters requesting advice on selecting a hand bike and how to
finance it.
Help for new and future hand bikers:
The last two postings are tough ones to answer. As far as choosing a
type/brand of hand bike, I think a free test drive should be your
first priority. A company that will loan you a hand bike for a demo
for a day or, better yet, 30 days, speaks volumes on how they stand
behind their products. I demo'd a Freedom Ryder in 1999 and after 30
minutes I knew this bike would take me places I never dreamed of; and
it has. When they say freedom, it's no BS. There are two great
hand bikes I'm familiar with; Freedom Ryder and Top End XLT. Freedom
Ryder uses rear articulation steering and Top End XLT uses front pivot
steering. Both will be around in the future to service your needs.
Financing is a little tricky. For those of us who were lucky (what
the!) to get hurt on the job there is always insurance or the VA. Lobby
and present your case to them in person and with perseverance. It's
all about face time folks! For the rest, you need to be more creative
with your insurance and local community organizations. Local Rotary,
Kiwanis, VFW, Optimists, etc. usually will lend you an ear if you know
a member that will sponsor you to a meeting. That is when you present
your proposal and how this would help your quality of life. Meeting
and greeting in person makes a better impact on a group.
If you can only scrape up just a little cash, there are smoking deals out
there on used handbikes. A good rule of thumb is they have a huge
depreciation rate like that of a new car. Just like a used car, you can get a
much better deal on a used handbike.
Denny G.
handbikeamerica.com
Life after war
More help available for those with post traumatic stress
By Pam Mellskog
The Daily Times-Call Publish Date: 7/14/2005
LONGMONT — On Day One of boot camp, the U.S. military begins exploiting the aggression and primitive survival instincts latent in every human, according to Stew Brown, a psychologist at the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs Readjustment Counseling Services Center in Boulder.
Some, he said, call the gut response to danger the “berserker” or “war beast” within.
“It keeps people alive. It keeps units alive,” Brown said.
But outside of combat zones, people who have committed acts of violence or witnessed them may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The public once called this psychiatric condition “shell shock” or “battle fatigue” for the way it tended to isolate and disengage affected soldiers and veterans from society.
People with PTSD often suffer intrusive thoughts ranging from nightmares, flashbacks and images; avoidance of emotional closeness; and hyper-arousal, a feeling that danger is always near, according to the Arlington, Va.-based American Psychiatric Association.
Brown said related sleeplessness, irritability and concentration losses can make settling into civilian life extremely difficult.
Vets returning from Iraq with these symptoms have better resources than ever, according to U.S. Army medical command spokesman Jaime Cavazos.
He said the military has for the first time during war time sent 200 mental health professionals to Iraq and Afghanistan. Troops also go home with their units instead of in “onesies and twosies” as they did during Vietnam to reduce isolation.
The military also conducts mental health evaluations before and after a soldier’s service, and offers support on the spot or through an anonymous hot line called Military OneSource, Cavazos said.
But very little was known about PTSD — called “Da Costa’s Syndrome” during the U.S. Civil War — until after Vietnam vets exhibited alarmingly high PTSD rates, which prompted research.
More than half of all Vietnam vets deployed to war zones experienced “clinically serious stress reaction symptoms,” according to the National Center for PTSD.
An earlier era
Longmont resident Mark Drake, a medic and X-ray technician in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, unloaded body bags from choppers and stitched up men with war wounds.
“I was saving lives to send them out to kill again and be killed,” he said.
Drake suspects those experiences, combined with American disrespect and living on a base near Tay Ninh — a small city north of Saigon known as “Rocket City” for its daily Viet Cong shelling — contributed to his PTSD diagnosis.
“War is hell. Combat is something else,” he said.
Drake, 56, said the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs ultimately deemed him permanently and totally disabled four years ago.
Looking back, however, he sees that he needed help decades earlier.
In the 1980s, he unknowingly suffered an anxiety attack so acute it landed him in the intensive care unit.
“Lots of times it feels like you’re having a heart attack,” Drake explained. “It’s difficult to breathe. ... Things don’t feel right in your body. ... It feels like everything is closing in on me.”
His other PTSD-related symptoms included violently coughing every morning, disturbed sleeping and needing to sit with his back against the wall and his eyes on the door when dining out.
Drake said the slam of a screen door still sounds like a rocket to him.
“I thought it was going to take a few months to adjust,” he added. “It’s taken me my whole life.”
Drake ultimately sought help when his life became unmanageable, and that’s when he began learning more about PTSD.
His therapy now includes group counseling, medication and hand-cycling — a sport that helps him vent his “nuclear level” anxiety.
“Aerobic activity actually releases anxiety. It’s really good for the soul,” said Drake, who also suffers from post-polio syndrome, which weakened his leg muscles.
Like so many vets grappling with PTSD, Drake still struggles at times to feel safe outside of his home. But he is proof that it’s never too late to get help. Treatment and fresh opportunities have not restored him. But both have improved his quality of life, he said.
Hand-cycling, for instance, has given him a springboard to coach sport newcomers such as Longmont resident and fellow veteran Allen Overton one-on-one.
“It gives me purpose. It’s something I can do to be safe,” Drake said of his rides.
A brighter future
The National Center for PTSD has estimated full-blown PTSD in approximately 8 percent of Gulf War veterans.
In general, about 8 percent of men and 20 percent of women develop PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event — combat related or otherwise. The center reported approximately 30 percent of those people will develop the chronic form of the disorder Drake has.
PTSD will dog a certain percent of vets returning from the Middle East no matter the official interventions.
“There are tough guys who don’t want to admit (PTSD symptoms),” said Dr. Brian Mathwich, a family physician with Rocky Mountain Family Practice in Longmont. Some, like Drake, just don’t know enough about it to reach out.
Mathwich, who served in the Marines 25 years ago, re-enlisted in the U.S. Army after the Sept. 11 attacks and in 2003 treated soldiers’ families living in Germany.
He returns again to that country Oct. 6 to resume his service, but understands veterans and their loved ones may need the most help stateside.
“We support the military — and that is good — by sending care packages and flying yellow ribbons,” Mathwich said. “But when they return ... we kind of let them move on. We let them turn back into civilians when that’s when they might need the most support.”
To drive that point home, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Pogany of Colorado Springs in February spoke at a University of Colorado luncheon sponsored by the Boulder County Mental Health Foundation. Though still young and able-bodied, he said he suffered “injuries to the mind.”
“But I refuse to be imprisoned in my own mind, like so many veterans before me,” Pogany said.
Dr. Gene Bolles, a Longmont resident and neurosurgeon at Denver Health Medical Center, also spoke at the luncheon in support of vets wrestling with PTSD.
“I’ve had colonels — even a general on one occasion — break down and cry,” he said of his private contract to treat soldiers with spinal and brain injuries at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany from 2001 to 2004.
Stateside, he said, more needs to be done to support veterans trying to reintegrate to civilian life.
He and Pogany suggested a potential program called Operation One to One, which would link returning vets with private health services providers.
Bolles said he plans on talking more with VA Hospital leaders to figure out a way to open this partnership.
He also noted that Congress is making progress in supporting soldiers and their families by recently approving a death benefit increase from $12,000 to $100,000.
“But this is dealing with death. I don’t want to belittle that, but not enough is being done for those who don’t die,” he said.
02/02/07 06:10 PM
|
Longs
Peak