mentorship

i still didn't have a bike. but i wanted to! i found on the nabd forum a topic for left hand disabled people. most of them were either amputees or paralised in their arm. i started looking at the pictures. the dudes and dudettes realy looked like they knew what they were doing. and they were doing great! i learned that you can ride a motorbike hard, knee sliding in the racing track having only one arm on the handlebar. an i was worrying about having a hard time riding even if i can move the bar with my left hand! slap me pls!

i already had a username on the biggest romanian motorcycling forum - motociclism.ro. there i saw lots of people showing off, bragging around, i saw people hunting accidents topics with the arrogance of road kings, people that pretended to know it all and who always gave lessons to anybody, either willing to listen or not. i saw there kids that defended their fiends who caused serious accidents, even killing people. it was all gross. i had no reason to be a part of this quarrelling community.

i was expecting the same thing on the british nabd forum. but i needed info, and i needed it bad. so, one ay when i was bored at the office, i braced myself and put up a post on the nabd forum. an hour later i already had 2 answers to it on my email surprise-surprise: there were 2 answers with kind advice, from two intelligent people who did not claim to know it all. they were simply sharing their experience with different types of bike mods. they had reasons for which they tried one thing and gave up another. not arrogance, not lessons. only options to help me pursue a common passion. cool!

since then, i got glued to a girl's posts on that forum. i have no idea about her name, but her username was Shorts. she had a paralyzed left hand, and she used a velcro glove to attach her hand to the handlebars. she used twin levers on the right handlebar, brake over clutch like this:



and she's a big fan of this particular setup. Shorts does her own mods on her bikes, in her won garage, supported by a very understanding husband. a year ago she gave up the honda vtr 250 she rode in japan, and a week before i got my bike, she got a suzuki sv650. cheeers Shorts!

motorbike mods for disabled people

 

i have a friend who recently went on a trip in barcelona.

he was very intrigued by how many people in wheelchairs he saw on the streets. then he realized it: in romania there aren't many disabled people on streets, because they don't have the means and condition to be able to get out of the house easily. the common stereotype of a wheelchair user in romania is someone who's being pushed by a friend at the stoplight, begging for money.

i was lucky enough to get my car driving license without much hassle.
my cousin got into some nastier stuff, because he's colorblind. and the people that discriminated him had no clue about colorblindness not being a problem when getting your medical approval for your driving license. i hate pretending that i'm part of some " oppressed minority", and i take pride in being able to manage pretty much any physical activity. i also hate being told by others that i won't be able to so stuff.

for me it was obvious that i won't find many disabled bikers in my country. there probably are a few, but i had slim chances to fin them. so i started looking in the entire world :) google>disabled bikers. the first result i got was national association for bikers with disabilities, , a british website, the biggest of its kind, supported by a UK ngo for bikers with disabilities. NABD even has a grant system that helps bikers adapt their machines. on the nabd forumu people know their stuff. they have sections on the website with mods for hand issues, leg issues, a trikes section, a legal section and even a glove swap section. say you're missing your left hand, you can find another biker missing his right hand, and you swap the spare gloves. this way you'll both end up with 2 good gloves, which is pretty cool :D

on that website i started to learn about what mod would suit my disability. the options were many: thumb brake, thumb clutch, foot clutch, twisting clutch, automatic clutch like rekluse, electronic gear changers like kliktronic(the last 2 were a bit over my budget)

showroom

well, as i was saying i have a disability in my left arm. this hardly stopped me doing what i like this far. i've had a car driving license for 3 years, and i drive cars without any mods. but motorcycles are different. am motorcycle traditionally has the clutch lever on the left side of the handlebar. my left can only hold (pretty weakly) the bar with 3 fingers. my grip isn't that good, the fingers can't reach the clutch lever and pull it without taking the hand off the bar. still i can hold the handlebar and move it with my left hand with medium effort which is a good thing

i started looking at bikes on the market which i could use without mods.

and this is what i found:

aprilia mana. a great street bike with an automatic transmission. unfortunately its pricetag is over 8000 euros. i would have loved a streetbike, but i was in love with dual-sports.

oricum e o frumusete eva-track t-800 cdi e opera de arta. e si adventure, e si diesel, cunsuma 2,5/100km si are cutie cu transmisie continua variabila, ca la unele autobuze. da' pretu e cumplit! 17,5 kilo-euro. da-te ca sa imi bag...

eva-track t-800 cdi is, in my humble opinion, a work of art. it's a big adventure bike, with a diesel engine made for the swatch smart minicar. it runs on 2,5l/100km which is great too. and it has a continuous variable transmission, like some city buses do. no clutch lever there. still the price tag is 17.500 euros... way too much for a middle class guy in eastern europe

many people i talked to about me riding a bike told me to get a maxiscooter. they said it was a nice, reliable machine, and you don't change gears. how come? i come looking to play rugby and you send me to table tennis bevause it's still played with a ball?

how and why: riding beginnings

hi
i'm F. and this is the english translation of my 1st motorcycling blog. i'm not a native english speaker so bare with me :)

i live in bucharest, romania and i want to ride a motorcycle.
i am disabled by birth, having no cubitus bone in my left arm, i have some fused fingers and the hand is overall 20 cm shorter than the right arm. the strenght of my left arm and the grip of my left hand are quite limited.

i came to find out that riding a motorcycle as a disabled person isn't as easy in romania. it's not about the disability itself. it's about many other obstacles, be they financial, legal and others made up by ignorant people who find themselves in an uncommon situation and prefer putting you off rather tahn thinking for themselves.

this year i started what i hope to be a long journey. somebody told me it's a syndrome common to men around 30 yo (uh-huh... not there yet!). i really think it's a syndrome common to all people who wanted to ride for a long time, but up until 30 they didn't get enough time and resources to do that. it's not about consumerism, it's not about showing off, it's just hobby/passion/pleasure. i'm sorry i did not start the blog at the time when i started this personal project, because i had to remember too much stuff, and eventually some of the important bits will be looked over

I started by studying what does it mean to be a rider in the first place. it would have been a lot easier if i had many biker friends. but as i didn't (i only have 2 biker friends: one of them is not much of a biker yet, and the other one hasn't had a bike for about a year) i had to find out most of the info by myself. i started learning about types of bikes, engines, mechanics, braking, riding techniques, traffic survival. it was either a warning from a horrific picture of an accident, either a morale boost from a blog with cool rally raid pictures.

but with each thing i learned, one thing became clearer: this year i was to ride!