Imagine being born with spina bifida. Then imagine being confined to a wheelchair since you were eight. Now imagine being a fifteen year old putting that chair through the paces in a half-pipe at the local skate park.
You try new tricks. You fall. You get up to do it again until you perfect it, just like all the other kids. Not exactly a stereotypical picture, is it. Welcome to Aaron Fotheringham's life.
It's easy to spot Aaron Fotheringham spinning, "grinding" and stopping for a moment atop the rim of a half-pipe before plunging back into the mass of teenage boys zipping around the neighborhood skate park.
He's the one in the wheelchair, the one with the bright yellow helmet, the one who does the back-flip that has made him an Internet and international celebrity. His friends slap him high fives as they pass on their BMX bikes and skateboards. They call him "Wheels."
"It's cool what he does," says 14-year-old Cody Manring, leaning both elbows on the handlebars of his red BMX bicycle. "He's inspiring other people."
Adults call the 15-year-old Fotheringham one of a kind, a pioneer carving a niche somewhere between BMX and skateboarding.
He learned the the flip at Woodward West, an action sports summer camp in California.
He finally accomplished the flip on the night before he was to go home.
"He's definitely out of the mold," says Buzzy Sullivan, a coach at Woodward West who videotaped Fotheringham's first flip. "He's not following. He's making his own path."
Fotheringham does stationary spins like a BMX rider and "grinds" like a skateboarder — riding an edge with the wheels of his chair straddling a railing or curb.
You can see a video of Fotheringham here.
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You can read an interview with Aaron here:
http://www.newdisability.com/interviewaaron.htm
Posted by: Rollstuhl | February 13, 2008 at 01:37 AM