"Meet Eric"

Last evening I was sitting in my rental car at a small park lot waiting for Roo and Ky to come back from their run/ride when I noticed a man pull up at the other end of the lot in a very high tech hand cycle.  He rode it over to a vehicle and much to my surprise opened the rear hatch, and while still sitting in the bike, hauled a wheelchair out of the vehicle.  He then effortlessly hoisted his body out of the recumbent cycle, and plunked it into the wheelchair.  Of course he did all this without any assistance from his legs, which were clearly just dead weight.  He then proceeded to swing the bike up into the back of the vehicle while still sitting in the chair.  When he first arrived my mind was quite busy with some "poor peter" thinking, and I suddenly knew I had to go talk to this guy.

Of course approaching someone just to talk becomes a potential problem when English is not the common language, as the conversation may be vey short.  Fortunately between my smattering of French, and Eric's reasonably good english we managed to communicate.  I told him that I had been sitting there bemoaning my ironman experience and that seeing him so routinely deal with the lack of functioning legs inspired me to come over and talk to him.  He was a very modest 44 year old with arms as big as my legs, who puts about 200 kms per week on his hand cycle!!

We chatted, and eventually Roo got back, and we chatted some more with the help of her very good french, and we learned many things about Eric Gauthier.  Most notably we learned about his incredibly positive outlook on life.  He damaged his spinal cord in a snowmobile accident as a young adult, but has remained extremely active ever since.  Turns out that he is this Eric.

Yup!  Eric has been on the Canadian Paralympic Team for 20 years, and has represented our country at the last 4 olympic games as a wheel chair sprinter. He declined the opportunity to go to Rio in 2016 cause he's just tired of the training regimen.  Pretty cool eh?  I just knew I had to go talk to the guy!

And whether it was the positive interaction with Eric, or just the passage of time, I already feel a bit better.  I also think it helps that I really knew all along that it would have taken a small miracle to complete the race.  It was pretty undeniable that over the last 3 to 4 months I was deteriorating, not progressing.  Not to start the race would to me have been a failure, but not completing makes it just another tough workout.

Besides....I'm already making plans!!  Dream on!!

And to end my visit with Eric he pushed his wheelchair over to the drivers side of the vehicle, hauled himself in, hauled the wheelchair in after him, and drove away!  He never waved goodbye.  :)

"The only disability in life is a bad attitude."---Scott Hamilton

Love

Peter