James Barnett will be doing the impossible this summer. June 1st, 2011 (51 Year Old) James will be riding his wheelchair from the Canadian border to the border of Mexico with his two sons by his side on their bicycles.
So my dad was involved in a horrible wheelchair crash last week which threw him out of the chair and launched him 6 feet face down on the road into oncoming traffic. This was the single most horrifying event I have ever witnessed in my life. We also discovered after a little bit that he had pneumonia which seems was brought on by the intensity of the crash, though we are not really sure. We had a scare on weds and we were told my dad might not make and possibly may have only a few hours to live. By a miraculous turn of events he pulled through and is on the road to recovery!! I couldn't be more thankful and thrilled. We have all been under so much stress dealing with this so to finally have good news was such a relief. I know we missed some days of dispatches on the blog so I thought I would share some uplifting pictures from when the trip was going well. We will probably not be continuing on at this point but we are talking of rescheduling when James is all healed up.He sustained fractures on both knees and his left arm so those will take months to heal and he needs to be in tip top shape for a road journey as crazy as ours. Thanks for all the support! Stay tuned for more info soon.
Hey Everyone, We just barely got internet to be able to send our first post from the open road. Yesterday was day 1 of the journey. We started in Blaine,WA and the weather was pretty decent, yet fairly overcast. Just as we were about 4 miles outside of Blaine we were surprised by Jeremy a reporter for The Northern Lites newspaper, taking our picture and asking if he could interview us for a moment. Our route so far has been on a lot of backroads which took us on some very steep hills. They definitely made our legs burn and the wheelchair groan. We were making some really good time until the temperatures dropped considerably and the winds picked up. We luckily missed the rain until we actually got to camp and then it proceeded to rain the whole night. There was a few scary moments along the way for sure. Due to the seriously steep hills on a downward descent James wheelchair was ran into a curb by the heavy trailer he was carrying . The weight caused his chair to be thrown into the curb, luckily he was ok so he dusted himself off and wheeled on. When we were on the outskirts of Bellingham we were greeted by a woman at Fred Meyers with her two children who asked about our trip and then wanted a photo taken with us. Her and her husband own a bike shop in Seattle and she told us to stop in when passing through. It's always nice being greeted by people as we pass through. We are just about to leave camp and start day 2 of the trip.It looks like we will be riding in a little drizzle this morning. Thank you for all your continued support! We will update more tonight.