Shifting into High Gear
One Man's Grave Diagnosis and the Epic Bike Ride That Taught Him What Matters
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Shifting Into High Gear charts the course of Kyle Bryant's transformation as he journeys on a recumbent tricycle across the United States in the throes of Friedreich's ataxia, a life-shortening and disabling disease. Full of humor and reflection, it's a heroic journey of a man driven to reframe the language of disease through action and service.
As you travel with Kyle during two cross-country bike rides through the American West, Texas, the Southern States, and finally to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, the grueling rides become a compelling backdrop for a series of lessons and ruminations which embrace an alternative worldview and provide practical solutions to everyday problems. A thrilling adventure story, yes, Shifting Into High Gear is also ultimately about helping readers reinterpret the conditions of their lives and learning how positive thinking, purposeful connection, and deliberate actions can help anyone reach beyond their limits and live a bolder and bigger life no matter what the circumstance.
Deeply passionate and compassionate, Kyle uses his amazing story to teach readers how to replace the handicapping language of "disability" with the agency to build a thriving and hopeful life. He bravely exposes the shadow-side of using disabling language and asks us to commit to a collective goal of understanding disease and its emotional impact and embrace the disabled population as equal individuals. In telling his story, Kyle's desire is that instead of viewing disease as a deficit, we would see it as another state of being—simply as a life which strikes out on a different path.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this powerful memoir, Bryant chronicles his life with Friedreich's ataxia, a rare neurological disorder that causes difficulty walking and impairs speech. Bryant, diagnosed when he was 17 years old, describes his coming to terms with his condition ("If I'm going to become progressively worse, then it's time to do something about it"). Nearly 10 years later, he organized a cross-country recumbent tricycle ride beginning in his home state of California in order to raise awareness and funding for FA research and patient support. Yet Byrant writes that he "didn't want FA to be my defining feature. I had things to prove to the world." He eventually traveled by recumbent tricycle across the U.S. twice and became a full-time staffer of the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance. One of the more notable themes of this work is how FA patients who face shortened lives must embrace the present; in so doing, Bryant believes, they can gain a sense of freedom and contentment despite growing physical limitations ("You have been given permission to live in the moment... do what you love and do it to the fullest extent"). In sharing this realization, Bryant gives not only his fellow FA patients, but most anyone grappling with their perceptions of their life's work, a valuable gift of insight.
