My Daddy Use To Always Say...

"Don't let anyone ever tell you you can't."

(My dad's probably reading this, brow furrowed wondering when exactly he ever said this. Honestly, I'm not sure he ever did...but it did make for a SWEET title, didn't it?)

Thanks to the good people at The Adaptive Adventure Sports Coalition (TAASC), Bryson took a chance in the single digit weather (probably sub-freezing with the windchill) of last Saturday to do something I never considered as I lay in the rock-hard-imitation la-z-boy chair in the waiting room of Nationwide Children's Hospital as his leg was being amputated: SKIING. TAASC, based out of Columbus, Ohio, offers opportunities to individuals with disabilities to "enhance their quality of life" through adventure sports (kayaking, skiing, water skiing, cycling, sailing and ice skating). In English, we paid $40 for a family membership so that on select 2 hour segments through the week, we pay $15 for ski lesson, ski rentals, and lift tickets...DID YOU HEAR THAT!?! $15!!! Thank you TAASC! (You can check them out at www.taasc.org.)

The plan was simple: because of the weather, take 2 or 3 trips down the slopes, go in and warm up for a few minutes, and repeat for an hour or so. After 3 trips down, and an average of four falls per trip, Gary, Bryson's below-knee amputee ski instructor, and the other five observers asked Bryson, "Are you hands cold?" ("No.") "Are your feet cold?" ("No.") "Do you want to go again?" ("Yes" with a smile.) And so again he went...for 1 hour and 15 minutes straight!

The first several trips down the slope he was putting most of his weight on his left (real) leg, so every time he'd try to turn to the right (you do so by putting pressure on the left ski), he had too much weight to begin with and he'd biff. It was pretty cute as he lay there in his bulky size 6 ski coat as 5 adults gather to pick him up. (He couldn't move at all in that coat.) They'd pop him up on his skis and, with little hesitation, continued down the slope. By the end of the day, with a grin frozen on his face, this is what you would have seen...

Again, after 1 hour and 15 minutes on the slopes, a cup of hot chocolate, and a call home to mom (see below)...

Home we went. On the way home my dad (the wise one not necessarily quoted above who accompanied me, he with the camera and I with the camcorder), he turned to me and said, "I needed to see that." According to dad, it was one of the first things he's seen that's convinced him that there's more to Bryson's future than we can possibly begin to imagine at this moment.

I agree...what a day.