Welcome to DougTrails!

If you are new to this site, I welcome you and wish to assist you in making sense of my mission and website. Please feel free to explore. BUT! If you want to avoid confusion:
1. Visit the About page first, to read about the DougTrails mission and story. Or, visit Documentary to watch a short introductory video.
2. The DougTrails 2011 TBI Tour ended successfully in Toms River, NJ at 56 days and 3256 miles – if you’d like to read posts starting from Day 1, click here. 
3. Post-XC Journey, my mission to help brain injury survivors continues. Read recent posts below to see what I’m doing!
Scrolling down, you’ll see the most recent posts first. I’m glad you’re here to read more about DougTrails ! 
Disclaimer: most posts were written via iPhone – please excuse misspellings or errors.

Come to Ambler on June 30!

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‘This Beats a Coma’ Documentary Premiere, Expo, and Ride!

    You have been looking forward to watching the documentary for months. But, you’ve waited patiently, knowing that a video that takes more time to produce than it does to bicycle 3256 miles has to be amazing.  One word overheard after watching this documentary: “INSPIRING” !

This is NOT your ‘standard’ documentary screening… It’s 3 events all wrapped up into one! 

     Premiere  Details 

Date & Time:  Saturday, June 30th @ 1:00pm
Location:   The Ambler Theater  
108 E. Butler Avenue, Ambler Pennsylvania 19002
Cost of Admission: $5/ticket (goes towards brain injury care, advocacy and research, 501c3)

After the screening, Producer Scott Richardson, Doug Markgraf, and potential guests will speak and participate in a Q & A session. You will not want to miss this!

2012 ‘Mend the Mind’ Brain Injury Recovery & Revitalization Expo

        Prior to the screening, attendees, brain injury rehabilitation specialists, researchers, psychologists, athletes, sports equipment suppliers, and brain injury associations will have the ability to connect and educate each other about current technology, ideology, and initiatives that those recovering can utilize to help mend injuries.

           For the Mend the Mind Expo, groups and individuals are encouraged to arrive at the venue early to enjoy the company of like-minded individuals who seek to promote brain injury recovery via active lifestyle choices and the most advanced rehabilitation and scientific methods.

Date & Time:  Saturday, June 30th @ 12:00pm
Location:   The Ambler Theater
108 E. Butler Avenue, Ambler Pennsylvania 19002
Cost of Admission: Free! ($5 admission to screening still applies)
We are currently seeking more groups/organizations/companies to be a part of the expo. Send us an email for more information.
Raffle tickets for bicycle helmets, gear, DVDs, equipment, and services will be available! Tickets will be drawn following the Q & A session of the screening.

Event Sponsors:
   

The 3rd-Annual Head Injury Ride for Recovery

Now in its third year, the Philadelphia Head Injury Ride for Recovery (Formerly Raisin Hope in Philadelphia) will set itself to prove a new motto: riding from Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park to Ambler, Pennsylvania (and back?) really does ‘beat a coma’!

Date & Time:  Saturday, June 30th @ 9:30 am
Starting Location:   Sedgely Rd & Lemon Hill Drive, Philadelphia PA
Distance options: 
To the theater:
- 18 miles, rolling hills and safe roads, 1 rest stop
- 30 miles, more rolling hills, more challenges, 1 rest stop
Back to Philadelphia options:
- Ride 20 miles, via Conshohocken and the Schuylkill River Trail
- Catch a ride on SEPTA from the nearby Ambler Train Station, arriving at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station (1 mile from Lemon Hill)

Cost of the Ride: $10 suggested
What’s required to bring: Helmet! Bicycle!
What’s provided: Cue sheets, Support & Guidance (SAG) Vehicle for repair and aid, pre- and post-ride snacks, 1 rest stop, large quantities of smiles

We look forward to seeing you at the event! Online tickets and registration will be coming VERY soon. Check back soon. 

Experiences Of a Young Keynote Speaker, part 2

Last time you and I met up, I was telling you all about my mission to aid others who suffer from recovery and loss as a result of brain injury. Today, I’ll tell you about the experience I had 7 days ago, that of being keynote speaker at the 21st Annual Brain Injury Association of Delaware’s (BIAD) Conference. Settle down, grab something to munch on, and I’ll be as descriptively-amusing as possible. Smiling.  Photos will be scattered throughout. Some taken by me on my camera, ones that have my face in them are courtesy of BIAD. 

My involvement with BIAD started many months ago, when I’d just gotten back to school after returning from my cross-country journey. I got an email, then a phone call from Esther Curtis, BIAD’s executive director asking about my interest in possibly coming to some support groups to talk about my experiences with recovery and returning to cycling. After meeting for the first time with the amazing BIAD publication (Brainstorming) editor, BIAD board member and leader of the BIAD Art Club, Tracey Landmann, I think that set the idea in somebody’s head to be the keynote speaker. Since that first meeting with Tracey, a fellow brain injury survivor with plenty of energy and a drive to help others, I’ve enjoyed her company in Philly and in DE countless times, both for BIAD reasons and just goofing. I was told a few months ago that I’d be the keynote speaker, and as you know, I’ve been excited ever since. 

But let’s get right down to business here. I signed up to actually speak twice in Delaware. First, to address the conference’s reception attendees last Tuesday, and then the following morning at the official conference. 

For the conference reception, I decided that I’d address those excellent men and women differently. I found out that 85% of the attendees that day would be there to see my official keynote address, so I figured I’d make my speech very unique from the following day. I showed the documentary trailer, to pump everyone up. After that, I’d spoke about what my missions were as I rode cross-country, and how my recovery intertwined with it. What next? For the last part of my 20-some minute ‘journey’ that night, I made sure that my audience wasn’t just an audience. What’d this robotics teacher have his audience do? Play with Legos!  I had 5 tables all work together to design and build something out of Legos (that I brought with me to the Delaware Downs, along with my touring bicycle, bags, helmets (!) , computer) that would represent something that had to do with Brain Injury recovery or injury. Or, simply, something that is unique having to do with Brain Injury.  After 6 minutes wound down on my stopwatch, I was stunned by my participants’ constructions. Really! One group made an entire scene recreating one person’s cause for his/her brain injury, but chose to recreate it with the ATV in question actually missing an obstacle that had in real life caused the brain injury. Very awesome. Another astonishing highlight of the projects: a harness-assisted treadmill, for relearning how to walk after injury. It was complete with a string to hoist the ‘harness’ legos! I’m upset that I didn’t take photos. Seriously.  I announced a winner (just like during my K-8th grade classes) and ended my talk.         Catching up, here, I can tell you that I was very well received, and I was just flabbergasted by how everyone was so happy to meet me and talk with me. I made some great new friends that night. 

Courtesy Sarah Lebo

After an amazing night’s stay at the hotel at Dover Downs, where the conference took place, I woke up bright and early to prepare. At the 8am hour, I pushed my touring bicycle down the halls, with 6 helmets in tow, to the conference room(s). Boy, was I excited. 

As keynote speaker, and by definition, I addressed the entire assembly of attendees directly after the conference was kicked off (9:00am). Just to keep people awake and on their toes, I decided to address all 205 men and women sans-microphone. Just like the previous night’s speech, actually.  I hope that this wasn’t a poor choice. I really don’t know!

 This speech was the main course, while the other was merely an appetizer. The entire audience was the very first group to see the documentary-length-version of the story of my accident. While I ran back and forth, showing relevant clips of the documentary to describe key challenges with my recovery process, I enjoyed giving insights as to who I am, what I dealt with, and my suggestions on how to avoid the frustrations. During key slides of my presentation, I asked members of the audience to raise a ‘finger’ to respond to questions I gave. “How many of you have had a brain injury yourself?”  ”Raise a finger if you are a researcher!” or simple, basic questions like, “How many of you like peanut butter?”   … Yes, I actually asked that. I loved how everyone laughed.   But they laughed here and there the entire time. After talking about my recovery, I spoke about some people and friends I met while traveling cross-continent. I mentioned Bob and Ann Brown, Gina Simonek, Kathy Kirlin, Isaac from IA, the Brain Injury Group in IL, and lastly, Alexis and Madonna Rehab. I made lots of friends cross-continent; I will mention the rest of you in upcoming speeches. :p  I left about 15 minutes of my speech for questions. Which, honestly, was a pretty poor idea… Being a teacher, I know that I hardly get as many questions as I really ought to get. However, shockingly, members of the audience kept me on my toes with questions for all 15 of those minutes! Yes, I worried about my self-image while I was returning to school to finish my Bachelor’s, yes, I still am recovering, and yes, all of you are AWESOME!  

Courtesy Sarah Lebo

Everyone had great things to say about my presentation, so I think it was a success. Afterwards, I made myself [and the rolling monster] available to ask questions, sign my commemorative fluorescent orange-painted bike helmet and my mailing list. And I participated in the lunchtime survivor speaking panel, where I answered questions along with my friends Sandra, Tracey, and Sarah. I sold some DougTrails t-shirts, got lots of requests for This Beats a Coma shirts, and I can’t even count all the smiles I received, too. 

I’m very sorry to anyone who meant to visit me and my bike later in the afternoon, after I left. I had to hop back to Philadelphia with my amazing parents, who came along with to see me speak and give me much-needed encouragement! To those of you who signed the mailing list, expect an email shortly. I can’t wait to see where things lead! And to figure out a way to get you a copy of the documentary! 

I’ll save what I did after returning to Philadelphia for part #3 of this series. And! I still have yet to announce my new initiatives! Come back within the next few days for another enthralling and refreshing update… I dare you. 

Thanks,

Doug

Experiences Of a Young Keynote Speaker, part 1

        I am driven by missions. Missions to not sleep in on Saturdays, to eat ice cream whenever possible, to play a few notes on an instrument daily, to calm young children in my tiny robotics classroom, or yes, to ride my 75-pound, loaded bicycle thousands of miles. These missions define –and govern- my life. I wake up each morning, and the gradient of missions begins appearing on my cerebral agenda. First, to silence the 5:30am disruption of my seemingly-dreamless sleep, I hop out of my covers, bound over a colorful array of fabrics ‘left’ on the floor, and switch my alarm to the ‘off’ position. There was no time for snoozing on March 20, 2011.  Or any day, for that matter.

I believe that I have just one brief opportunity to change the lives of those struck by the misfortune and disaster that is brain injury. After all, these injuries normally take just one devastatingly quick moment to change –or destroy- a life forever. My intuition, my implication is that the time is now to minimize the frequency of that simple, fleeting moment during recovery from a brain injury when a soul has, just simply, ceased to try.

Amusingly, that peculiar moment happens along a wide sliding-scale of time post-injury. For the young and restless, it may take years for an unsharpened steel weight to send even a thin, irreversible crack marching across the surface of a survivor’s inch-thick plate glass worldview.  For others, I imagine the same plate glass, but the steel weight replaced by a sharpened, split-second 50-caliber rifle shot. I wouldn’t dare set the [statistically unlikely] weight of a physically-therapized foot upon that compromised clear mirage of good intention. Instead, I’ll work to replace the glass.

I’m reminded of a visit to a Subway deli at nightfall in South Lake Tahoe during the first week of my cross-continental bicycle tour. I pondered ordering a tasty foot-long sub. Make that a foot-long sheet of bulletproof Lexan, please.

But one sheet of that life-saving material isn’t enough, oh no. I’ll consider buying stock in Subway, because we’ll need lots of our metaphorical foot-longs. To be succinct, we’ll need at least 3 times the amount that you might have calculated. Why? Because not only do our survivors’ upbringings, good intentions, and lives get steamrolled in the path of a single centimeter of injured cerebral landscape, but so does that person’s family, caregivers, and healthcare providers’.

Finally: fast forward from that moment in a quiet franchise restaurant to present day. I’m now an appreciated keynote speaker, still seeking the acquisition of more stock in that Subway establishment. Or, perhaps just stock in bulletproof viewpoints, bulletproof mentalities, and bulletproof diagnoses. Hoping that someday, I can live with the knowledge that nobody is an advocate and caregiver of a disabled, head-injured loved-one. I hope that instead, each and every survivor of brain injury leads a life of joy, love, and of course, hope. Can’t that happen, like, right now?

The mission gradient, after a few hours of working, settles comfortably in a red hue, proving my passion for change.  And so it did, on March 20, 2012.

(photo by Sarah Lebo)

The Power of Social Interaction on My Recovery from Brain Injury

         ** This was written for the Brain Injury Association of Delaware‘s semi-annual newsletter. Please feel free to republish, tweet,  tumblr, email, etc! 

          In late May 2006, I was struck by a large pickup truck while riding my bicycle (wearing a helmet in the bike lane). I had been studying engineering at Drexel University and was in my second year, with plenty of friends and a very fulfilling life. Then, as we all are so familiar with, well, my life changed drastically. Having spent 6 weeks in hospitals following a severe diffuse (closed) TBI and subsequent coma gave me an understanding that I never ever wanted to realize: recovery is devastatingly lonesome. I’d love to compare a brain injury to that of being Bruce Wayne – after all, he can’t tell anyone he meets about his secret life as Batman; the real reason he comes home with bruises, or how he’s realized that there’s danger everywhere… TBI survivors unfortunately can’t all stop crime-committers, either.  We struggle with the simple fact that our remarkably unique and different struggles are often unseen and unrecognized by the uninjured or uninvolved. And when we speak about our deficits, a common reply is, “Oh, I have the same problems!”.

            But, there’s really much more hope for TBI survivors than there is for Batman. Most importantly, we have many more sidekicks than does our brave, spandex-clad compadre! I can’t even begin to count all the men, women and children I’ve met who are recovering from brain injury; each one of them has moved me a new step towards the skyscraper I’ve arrived at now.  I’ll never forget Barbara, my first real TBI friend. While in physical therapy as part of our inpatient rehabilitation, we competed with each other to find out who would become more capable of doing everyday tasks like walking and moving up steps. When I was being discharged, she made sure to tell me just how motivating I was to her; she never found out that she had motivated me as well. Competition is a wonderful avenue to support interaction and recovery.

Or there’s Brian, who I only met at the very end of my recent cross-country TBI bicycle tour. Brian is a victim of a hit and run just as I am, and he wears his new brain-injury knowledge and legal jargon like a badge of honor. He pushes me to overlook my own deficits and find ways to help others, as he has done. Brian is recovering brilliantly, and my being impressed by another survivor inspires me to imitate.

But we can’t leave out the social interaction that I have benefitted from having with those who haven’t had head injuries; lack of a detrimental experience or two is not always a bad thing. Family and friends make sure that I keep smiling or focused when I’m unable to break the phase by myself. A calm, independent friend can be an excellent source of logic and advice. After having had so many months of wishing I was normal, I can relax when my non-injured acquaintances treat me like any other human being. Because the truth is, I am just another person!

Social interaction is in itself a superhero for recovery from brain injury. It promotes inspiration, imitation, happiness, acceptance, competition, and amazingly, strength.  Without it, there’s no telling just where I’d have ended up. But, there’s a good chance I’d have had much more need for a superhero without it.

Keynote Speaker at 2012 BIA of Delaware’s Conference!

I can’t believe it- DougTrails continues! Okay, I can believe it, but I’m still really really excited.  On March 21, I’ll be a keynote speaker at the 2012 Brain Injury Association of DE‘s annual conference! 

I can’t wait to share my stories with other survivors, therapists, healthcare professionals, psychologists, industry insiders and more at the event. This event is a conference, but it’s shaping up to be a brain injury conference that is very different, too!

        Many conferences act as a way for professionals in the industry to connect and share methods and ideas… But this conference aims to help the brain injury survivors even beyond their months of hospital and specialist care. Being organized, designed, and planned by a traumatic brain injury survivor herself, Tracey Landmann, it will have a few different tracks. These  ’tracks’ will be different from eachother; one might make it so that people like me, TBI-survivors, can go and discover ways to promote their whole-life recoveries. Not just their cognitive skills, but everything. 

I’ll be there with my fully-loaded (plus all the helmets) touring bike in the lobby, and I hope to pump everyone up for a day of learning, interacting, reflecting, and discovering potential. I’ll say it a billion times, we all can do amazing things. And yes, they’ll start (or continue) on March 21, 2012!

 

 

Philadelphia Marathon Race Report / Summary

Hi Everyone,

After having read the awesome race report that my hero, Joe, wrote about his finishing the full marathon as well, I finally got motivated to write mine. After all, we know that all adventures are doomed to be forgotten without some sort of a follow-up description… Here’s mine, if you’re curious.

I’m not entirely sure exactly how to start my report! If I had to name just one over-arching theme of the marathon, it’d probably be, simply, the word ‘solo’. I was very solo.

I woke up around 5:30am that day, and was rarin’ to go! The night before, I had gotten all the stuff I thought I needed all lined up and ready to quickly change into, eat, do, and then leave. So I did that. Then, I hopped on my commuter/touring bike with my spare clothes on to keep me warm, and was off. But! I realized, a mile down the road, that I had forgotten to put on my Garmin gps watch, which was needed to help me keep perfect pace! Fortunately, I had plenty of time, so I steered ’round and recovered it easily at my apartment, which (might I add) it pretty much on the course.

The overall description of my race: mainly just survival. Feel free to follow along with my synopsis along my Garmin Connect Stats, too. Here we go:

My bib number was 904 – very small! I registered with hopes of finishing in 3:10, so I was put in the first corral. This was really fun. I started the marathon and decided that I’d try to keep up with the 3:10 pace leader for as long as possible. Now, I should mention here that my plan for the marathon was to keep my first 3 miles at an 8-min pace, so that I could be sure not to injure myself (which usually happens in the first 3 miles). So, running at the 7-min pace was well, really risking things!

For the first 12ish miles, I kept up with the 3:10 pace leader, which felt so amazing. Often, we’d be running at closer to a 6:30 pace, which was great. But, the hills came (at 34th street and then heading up to memorial hall) and I had a very difficult time keeping up with the pace. So by the time I was headed down to west river drive to finish out the 13 miles, I had begun to drop my pace to about 8:30. Alll alone by this point.

I didn’t ever have a problem with my ankles or with temperature or anything else. That was really great! But, what I did have problems with was keeping up a fast speed, past the point when I had finished with the hills. SO, I just chugged along at my own pace, got passed a lot, but kept running.

By the time I was at mile 18, I was really feeling things. I wanted to stop or take a break by that point, but instead chose to use other means of motivating myself: food! I had become very hungry and was picturing myself eating all kinds of things. I could taste the gel packs in my mouth from miles before those stations!

In manayunk, around mile 19-22, I was running but walking up the hilly portions for no longer than a minute. And when I got to water stations, I would get a water, stop after the table, drink it, and then get back to running. While in manayunk, I actually managed to get a mini-cup of lager and a bag of snyders thin pretzels! As soon as I left manayunk though, the eating was over. 

The final stretch, down Kelly drive, was hard. But, not as hard as the way to Manayunk, because I kept close to the middle. While I ran at my slow pace, I would cheer on the people who were headed the other direction! This made me think less about my own pain, which was nice.

I made it to the final stretch where I could see the finish line and by that point, I had trouble just managing to keep running instead of walking! My savior just a half mile from the finish? Someone was giving out gummy bears! So in that final bit, I was happily chomping down candy. And I finished the race running.

Nother final tidbit: I got a high five from Mayor Nutter at the finish line. That’s really swell that he does that.