Adapt2play

About Adapt2play

You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. Something will ignite your spark. Go find it! Experience, play and find yourself!

Hundreds of non-profits across the US and Canada organize a variety of participatory events that are accessible by people of all abilities. Surfing, skiing, cycling, hiking, acting, creating art, rock climbing, kayaking…. The list goes on.

Adapt2Play enables you to find the opportunities near you.

Butterfly

They start life as a caterpillar. Meh. Then they become trapped in a cocoon. "What is happening to my body!?!" Things are changing - for life, as they metamorphosize. Stuck, trapped, concerned…. Then they burst out of their cocoon, and discover they are a beautiful butterfly and can soar!

This timelapse video of the insect going through this process was taken by my friend Linda. Linda is a beauty, loves nature, and is a career meteorologist. She was also hit by a car, and her injury left her partially paralyzed. She also has several tattoos, mostly insects, including butterflies.

How You Can Contribute to this Movement

Volunteer! These events are not possible without the contribution of many amazing volunteers. If you like to play and enjoy helping others, you can contact the organizations that provide these events and ask about volunteer opportunities. Many of the org include this info on their websites.
Participate! You can do it. Yes, you can! These adaptive events are run by people who have already encountered other humans with your disability. Most have been trained to assist. Find what events bring you joy!
Get social! Connect and participate on our Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Interact on those sites and on this site. Each event page on Adapt2Play is open for comments and conversations. Also… share your story! We are honored to promote you and your achievements.
Support this site! We have a Patreon so you can donate. We also sell Merchandise. And if you are a business or have items to sell - can sponsor us! This will help fund our efforts to hire staff, add more functionality to this website, foster community, organize events to bring folks experiencing this lifestyle together, and pay photographers and videographers to capture the events and produce alluring content to share.

My Story

I have been commuting by bicycle since I was 18. I've long been a cycling advocate, into hiking, rock climbing, skiing, and traveling. I got very into backcountry skiing, mountaineering, and kitesurfing. My career was an Agile Innovation Tech Product Owner, and my previous employer was an impactful, social-good-focused credit union, BECU, which happens to be the largest credit union in the country. Work went remote during COVID, so work became remote. On my journey, I was in San Diego for a few days.

And then I was hit by a vehicle while cycling.

It was a hit-and-run.

I was critically injured, my skull cracked open. When the ambulance took me to the hospital I had a Glasgow Coma Scale of 3, which is the most severe Traumatic Brain Injury possible. Only perhaps 5% survive that. Each TBI is unique and the lasting impacts vary wildly, but after such a severe TBI, very few heal.

In the hospital, I had multiple surgeries, including 3 brain surgeries. What lasts forever? My pituitary gland was damaged and now I have hypothyroidism, and I acquired Hydrocephalus, which is very rare. We all have cerebral spinal fluid in our brains that drains naturally - unless you have Hydrocephalus. I now have a pipe called a VP Shunt from my skull to my pelvis with a pump in it that removes the additional cerebral spinal fluid.

I was in the hospital for FIVE months. I have no memory of the day I was hit nor the next four months. I had to re-learn to talk, walk, recognize my family…. When I was discharged from the hospital doctors said I would always need a wheelchair, feeding tubes, and an at-home nurse.

Fortunately, they were not accurate. I healed beyond possibility. On the journey, I was introduced to Adaptive Sports. I am blessed to say I do not have visible physical disabilities, and instead, I am able to volunteer at these impactful events and help other people play outside.

How the Site Came To Be

2022

Attending Love Your Brain retreat in Maine. So did Dave Nichols. First time Dave and I met in person. Dave and I were introduced by mutual friends because he and I both had the most severe type of TBI with a Glasgow Coma Scale of 3. We'd had multiple video calls but this was the first time we met in person.

Love Your Brain is a non-profit providing yoga, retreats, and community building for TBI survivors and their caretakers.

2023

Familes for Safe Streets (FSS) - Invited me to participate in the National Bike Summit in DC. FSS was founded by two women who lost a child after their child was hit by a vehicle. FSS does impactful work and now has several chapters around th country.
I was invited to Cycle NYC 5 Boro Bike Tour with LYB. Charities start the ride first. Next to us was Achilles International. Visually impaired folks cycle on the back of a tandem. And several hand cyclists.
Dave invited me to join him for disabled outdoor rock climbing in Idaho. I did not want to travel. I was so excited to stay still….
FSS invited me to join others for a US Department Of Transportation call. We had 3 minutes to share our story to incite USDOT to fund safer streets. The other participants were amazing. One of them was Glenn Hartrick. Glenn completed multiple Ironmans, and was on the cover of Running magazine. He was hit by a car while cycling, I think. Now he's partially paralyzed, but he's back to participating in sports. Wow. Wow!
Okay, I'm joining Dave rock climbing in Idaho. Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) outdoor rock climbing in Idaho's City of Rocks was amazing. Here is their video of the event. The key speaker was Mark Wellma - the first paraplegic to climb El Capitan in Yosemite. There were about a dozen climbers that had prosthetic legs, and 4 that were partially paralyzed. Mark Wellman created the equipment that enabled them to climb. Wow. Wow! Dave has Ataxia and shakes consistently. He had an assistant climber that joined him on routes and held his feet solidly in place so he could stand on them. Dave acquired Ataxia and his severe TBI when he fell outdoor rock climbing six years ago. This was his first time outdoor rock climbing since then.
A month later I'm in San Diego to see Neuro practitioners to prepare for the trial against my hit-and-run driver (who was found!). And the day I arrived…. It was the US Open Adaptive Surf Competition in Oceanside. There's only 4 at this caliber around the world so folks flew in from other countries to participate. It takes special equipment and multiple volunteers to enable these talented disabled surfers to get out there and compete. They used my photos of the Award Ceremony on their website. The staff member who informed me of this via email said he, too, was victim of a hit-and-run.
At the event I discovered Waves 4 All an org in Oceanside that hosts open adaptive surfing every month. I volunteered at their next event. More magic happened. And it quickly became apparent that there are hundreds of orgs across the country organizing these events, and they are challenging to find.
I can make a filterable directory to assist this endeavor!
I kept driving east to Florida. I stopped in Austin and stumbled upon this book "Awesome by Accident". Gene Rodgers wrote this memoir. He became mostly paralyzed when he was 17, then got into adaptive sports, some of them extreme, he became and academic and an entrepreneur and thrived.
Outside of Dallas is the Adaptive Training Foundation and I visited their establishment and wow they are so impressive!! ATF was founded by David Vobora, a prior NFL athlete. Their multi-week programs are available at no cost for folks with disabilities who want to get back in shape. Their program is attended by many aspiring paralympic athletes.

2024

Move to Florida, find a home, become productive.

My first weekend in Florida I Googled “adaptive sports West Palm Beach” and an event popped up that was happening at that moment, so I went. Shifting Gears United is the only adaptive sport org founded by a person who has garnered medals in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, Jacqui Kapinowski.

Micah's firm is called Bot and Rose. I hired them to build this website you're currently using, which uses that same code base as my first startup - the code base where Micah was the top contributor. Oh wait. How do I know Micah?

Time… for a Flashback!!

2009

I was at Portland State University completing my degree in Environmental Studies. While in school I created external side projects. I interviewed a few hundred Canadians and made a documentary about Canadian Healthcare. Somehow 2 filmmakers discovered it and that metamorphosized into a full-length documentary, narrated by Kiefer Sutherland and it screened across the country, called The Healthcare Movie.

2011

While that was still in production, I was still in school, and I was bewildered that despite my immense involvement in these issues, I was not aware of various political protests or documentary screenings or prevalent authors coming to town. So I decided there should be a website for that: a city-specific calendar of social good events. There was a tech calendar in Portland called Calagator. It was Open Source. Web developers who believed in my vision forked the code and we built on top of that. The calendar is no longer useable, but this video illustrates its function, and this is the homepage of ActivateHub.org.

It had amazing functionality. I got accepted into an incubator program, Fledge in Seattle, which focuses on social good companies. In a few months the site was live in multiple cities with thousands of users. But… I had no funding. Despite its success, I was solo with no co-founder and zero experience with tech. At multiple events I was offered positions to apply for. So I got into tech.

2021

I am a Product Owner at the country's largest credit union: social-good-focused BECU. COVID happens, so work goes remote. I go to Baja to spend a few months down there working remotely and kitesurfing.

My first week there I meet Micah. He joins me and Jess (an angel to whom I owe much gratitude) for lunch. Micah is a web developer. He used to live in Portland. I ask if he's familiar with Calagator. Turns out, Micah who I just met in this small little beach town in Baja, happens to be the lead developer for that Open Source platform I used for my first startup.

Flashback Foward to 2024

So. I was able to hire Micah & Michael's firm Bot and Rose to use that same source code he developed to create this Adapt2Play site.

So we're building the site. I initially filed the LLC as Disability Inspiration. It became apparent that name was questionable. So I sent a survey out to about 30 people. It included the option to provide a suggestion. One friend responded with multiple suggestions and described why each was important. That friend is Michelle, who I went to highschool with in New Jersey and now she lives 20 minutes from me in Florida. She is the Chief University Officer at Instrid, assisting companies in providing education for their employees. Thanks to her suggestions, we came up with the name Adapt2Play. Michelle also used Chat GPT to create the masthead image of the butterfly with folks participating in adaptive sports.

I hired a virtual assistant named Sharon who lives in the Philippines. She's helping me stay organized and accomplish many things, She is also an incredible pencil artist. She created the logo with the butterfly. You can see more of her work here.