The Able-Bodied & Amputee Athlete

My entry into the New Zealand Workforce. My introduction to the workforce was as an apprentice carpenter for a local very reputable builder whom my mother had organised for me. I began working on a contract where overtime was available so I was allowed to work the maximum number of hours an apprentice could work – that was around 60 hours per week – and I even amassed 70 on some weeks. I was physically fit and soon discovered I was capable of the overtime. However, all wasn’t as well as I expected. In short, my apprenticeship ceased after a few months and after that I found my own employment with another very reputable local surveyor as a chainman-labourer and I instantly loved the work and the men I worked with. It was a completely opposite working environment to my previous employment. At about the same time as I was offered a position as a trainee surveyor in the business I had found another job that paid very good wages for a young 18-year-old, and I accepted it. I am more than hap...

School Years. I was initiated into the world of bicycles via my mother’s 26 inch women’s framed bicycle that had a rear child carrier fitted that I sat in as a small child. Here are my mother’s exact words about when she rode the bike with me sitting in the rear carrier behind her. ‘You would put your little palms of both your hands on my lower back and say ‘faster mum, faster’. I must have absolutely loved riding on the back of my mother’s bicycle because as it had 26 inch wheels, this allowed me to have quite a high outlook of all that I could see around me, and I discovered the feeling of riding along with my mother piloting as liberating and the ultimate expression of freedom, and this feeling would continue with me for my entire life on 2 wheels. An indication of my physical strength as a child was when I was given my older sister’s red tricycle to ride. I wonder if my parents were a little timid in wanting me to ride a 2 wheeled bicycle because of the fear of me falling off it an...