Travel with the US Paralympic Cycling team

INSTRUMENTS
hj mooij has just launched a new website, it's pretty exciting...
http://hjmooijink.com/

Different Wands for Different Tones
post by hj mooij

Construction of the tinkler has begun and is progressing nicely. So far it features a side cut wheel hole for easy spinning and an open top for playing. A top cover will be created soon with a nice angled hole so one can play the tinkler with one or two hands while reaching the entire spectrum of spokes. The tinkler makes different tones with different playing wands, find your own or just use a nail, it all sounds great.

CHARCOT MARIE TOOTH

Anthony Zahn is a bike racer, a damn good one at that - He just won bronze at the Paralympic World Cycling Championships. He has CMT, and is a successful athlete with it, which is why I approached him to write a post. Anthony was very friendly and wanting to help with the project, yet this was his initial response: "I honestly don't have too much to say about CMT as I don't really dwell on it. I just try to get through my day and do what I have to do without thinking about things I can't control." I think that is inspiring in its self, but I'm very happy that he went on to write the following post describing his racing over the past few weeks to share a little of what's involved. (Tim)
[To see more pictures and news, follow this link: http://usparalympics.org/athletes/anthony-zahn/news]

Travel with the US Paralympic Cycling team
post by Anthony Zahn

Wow. What a week. Or three I think since I've been home. The summer's been a long blur. Starting in late April/ early May with 2 weeks of stage races in Spain and France, home for 2 weeks, a week in Oregon for road Nationals, home for a week, off to the Chicago area for 4 days of Superweek, straight to Colorado Springs for track camp and track Nats, home for 10 days, then back to Co for 10 days of prtp camp and off to 10 days in Baie Comeau Canada for Paralympic World Cycling Championships.

2010 Paralympic World Cycling Championships

This is a bit more travel than typical for the US Paralympic Cycling team, but it's what we do. There are about 18 American athletes here with various disabilities ranging from being born without a portion of an arm, to limbs missing from various injuries, to CP CMT (Me) and paraplegics. With all of the other countries thrown in, there are more injuries here than I think anyone can imagine. Many have full time jobs and use vacation and sick days to travel to one or two events per year, others are full time athletes, but everybody here lives and conducts themselves as a professional athlete.

The travel is a bit tough, for instance it took us four two hour flights to get here, our mechanics had to rent a truck for out bike to drive them from Montreal which took 11 hours, and our luggage didn't get here for another 3 days!

Hands down the hardest part is the 100 days or so per year away from home. That's about all there is to say about that.

The team is the greatest bunch of people though, which makes things a lot easier. Spending roughly 1/3 of a year together in 10 day to four week chunks could get pretty crazy but everyone on the team athletes and the 10 or so staffers are among the most professional and funny people I have ever met! Everybody knows when to be where, what to bring (and leave home) and what to do to make things run smoothly and win medals.

I'm done with racing now so I get to pack everything up to put on the truck for shipping, go watch the last few races and cheer for some teammates, go to the closing ceremony, find dinner somewhere in there, sleep for a few hours and hit the road to the airport for the first of another four flights home!

2009 Paralympic World Cycling Championships (Zahn on the right)