Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life: You’d better sit down for this

All outdoor athletes take falls and get injured. I’ve seen it in trail races; I’ve experienced it in trail races. We all go down occasionally, always unexpectedly. That’s the nature of accidents. If we had the time and the acute sense of what was about to happen, we’d make adjustments or slam on the brakes. We’d mutter, “Whew, that was a close one.”

Most accidents leave us scratched or bloody.  But sometimes people can’t just get back up, dust themselves off, lick their wounds and keep going. Sometimes accidents are more severe. I’ve spent time talking with three athletes, Drew Asaro, Liz Ann Kudrna and Tom Rupp, whose accidents ventured into the severe category: all have spinal cord injuries.

“Hey, want to race?” That’s Tom rolling up to another ‘wheelie’ in a bar downtown.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m paralyzed.” That’s Drew’s darkly comic response to other skiers who see him take a fall in his adaptive ski gear.

They’re both gregarious. If Tom sees a ‘wheelie’ he hasn’t previously seen around, he’ll roll up: “There’s only supposed to be one of us here,” then tell them about services available locally. They’re engaging, disarming even. Just regular 30-somethings whose hardest falls crossed a line.

It was summer 2022, Tom was raging on his mountain bike down ‘Fuzzy Bunny’ near Teton Pass. The name is a comic misnomer; an 850-foot descent in 1.3 miles of turns, gapped jumps and rough forested terrain. Watching a video of two guys descending it brought the killer rabbit scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to mind. “That’s no ordinary rabbit. That’s the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on …” Yes. Fitting.

Tom had an “Oh shit!” moment when he realized he wasn’t carrying enough speed to span one of the gaps. His rear wheel hit the face below the landing zone, kicked up and his back scorpioned. He hit the deck hard. His lower body felt numb. A few weeks later, still in the hospital, he had an “Oh Fuck” moment when he learned he would never walk again. He was 32.

Liz Ann knew immediately that her life had changed. It was 2008; she was 48. She and two climbing partners had completed a technical route up Mount Cowen. They were taking the hikers’ route down when she was thrown off balance by a large rock in a boulder field that moved. She fell onto sharp rocks and rag dolled down about 30 feet until one of partners caught her. Her legs felt like they were floating.

Liz Ann cut her teeth climbing in Yosemite; Snake Dyke on Half Dome and Royal Arches were her first big climbs. After that she joined the San Francisco climbing scene. She found she preferred sport to trad climbing; she loved how she got to move her body, the feel of the rock on her hands and that she felt present while on the rock.

It was 9 years ago when Drew slammed a tree sideways while skiing at Big Sky. He was knocked unconscious and came too to find his spine had shifted sideways at T-10. He was 23.

Recovery is a process. There is of course the physical recovery. Liz Ann’s T5 vertebrae was spirally fractured; it had to be pieced back together. Vertebrae had to be fused. Layered atop that is the psychological element. All three ended up at Craig Hospital in Denver. Craig chooses who to accept to its program. It only takes people who are driven to live independently and reengage in outdoor sports. That’s where they begin to interact with other newly physically disabled athletes.

Tom met a gregarious wheelie at Craig who was chatting up everyone he met. “I didn’t think I could be that guy; forty-five days later I was that guy.” Craig cycles through folks but not too fast. They know this is a big transition, and they want their patients to be successful. Tom was in Craig, both inpatient and outpatient, for about 50 days.

Our community is fortunate to have Eagle Mount and Ability Montana: nonprofits that provide adaptive recreation and independent living respectively, for community members who are non-neurotypical or who have physical disabilities. Eagle Mount’s main focus is the non-neurotypical community. Liz Ann is on the board of Ability Montana, and she was Eagle Mount’s first athlete with physical disabilities. The three of them are still among the few.

Greta and Robert Mathis started Eagle Mount in 1982. They placed an ad in the Bozeman Chronicle for free adaptive skiing lessons at Bridge Bowl: 100 people showed up. The Mathises realized there was a need. Since the American with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990, guaranteeing the right to full participation in all aspects of society for people with physical or mental disabilities, Eagle Mount and Ability Montana type facilities have sprung up all around the country.

Their lives are harder, but they’re all survivors. All of them told me that they have to know their limits. Liz Ann is no longer a climber, but since the accident she has competed in 10 triathlons and done multiple long-distance bike rides: she most recently biked the coast highway 600 miles from San Francisco to San Diego—an event sponsored by The Challenged Athletes Foundation. Back around 2012 she worked hard at adaptive cross-country skiing and pushed herself to try and get a spot on the national paralympic team. Tom ran marathons, mountain biked and skied, he and Drew still mountain bike and ski. As Tom puts it, “I still get out, it just takes more preparation now.”

It takes assistance too. Liz Ann’s first hand cycles were all arm powered. These days E-assists ease the hill climbs and makes it so the three of them can keep up with their able-bodied buddies.

I went to Spire Climbing Gym a few times to hang out with Drew and Tom while they climbed and assisted Eagle Mount climbers. They work hard to get up walls—arms only; getting to the top is like doing 30 pullups. They suffer it out, and they belay non-neurotypical kids so the kids can see themselves succeed. Both of them work at Eagle Mount: Drew is Associate Director of Adaptive Recreation; Tom is Volunteer Coordinator.

In some ways it’s amazing that facilities like Eagle Mount and Ability Montana exist; in other ways it even more amazing that these facilities have only gotten off the ground in the past 40 years. What did families do and what did non-neurotypical people do before there was this support? A lot of Bo Radley’s spent their lives locked in basements. They never had a chance to live productive lives.

It’s hard enough being a parent without feeling that you have to cloister yourself and your children if they have issues. Seeing excited parents watch their kids climb the walls at Spire is just what the parents and kids both need. The kids get to feel normal, cool even, because they can do things the other kids do; the parents feed off their success.

Some of the change is attitudes; the world is more accepting of people of different abilities and orientations. Some of the change is technology; equipment is available now that hadn’t existed previously. The ADA may have helped create a market for equipment; when disabled folks came out of their houses, they found that like everyone else, they wanted to engage in their lives.

Maybe I’ve only seen the best of them, but whenever I’ve been around these three, they are just typical happy people. Tom says he’s the same mouthy sarcastic guy he’s always been, just shorter. Drew feels fortunate; he knows there are others who have it worse than him. Liz Ann says her friends don’t think of her in a chair.  Like all of us, they have bad days, but they have support to see them through.

For most of us, legs and arms are backup systems for each other. When everything is arms, one has to get creative. Either you have to rig everything so you can access your gear with arms only, or you need specialized lifts. Liz Ann has a pulley system to get her chair into and out of her van. It requires lots of arm strength and a wide range of mobility. She is recovering from rotator cuff surgery. She can still use her pulleys, but the time for a lift may be drawing near. 

Drew has tried his hand at standup, okay sit-down, comedy. “Ladies, are you tired of being ‘stood up’ on dates? Are you sick of men ‘walking out’ on you? Look no further…”

None of them let the accident define who they are. We all have moments in our lives where we face the choice of how to move forward. It could be an injustice, divorce, the death of a loved one, or a life changing injury. There will always be a period of grieving for what has been lost. At some point though we have to face tomorrow and ask ourselves what we are going to do with the rest of our lives. With the support of Craig Hospital, Eagle Mount and friends, these three choose each day to live life to its fullest.

“I’m not easily offended, but I’m telling you, there’s bias everywhere. Everywhere. What, you don’t believe me? You want an example? Sure. I rolled into a restaurant yesterday, and the sign said, ‘Please Wait to be Seated.’ Really?”