MBA RIDERS WHO INSPIRE
An unlikely mountain bike leader
Brian Bushway was 14 when it happened.
He had been on his school’s mountain bike
team while in seventh grade in Rancho
Santa Margarita, California, and loved to ride.
Then his eyesight started getting bad.
“The doctors didn’t know why I was going
blind,” says Bushway, now 26. “I was an
active 14-year-old, skating and stuff. My
vision started affecting all these things in
small ways. Finally, I remember waking
up one morning and I had barely usable
vision. And then, the next morning, I
woke up and it was gone.”
Doctors diagnosed it as optic nerve
atrophy, but they couldn’t stop it. In
four months, he went from having normal
vision to a world of darkness. “I
remember being in a state of unknowing.
I didn’t know how to process it. I
felt ‘done’ as a mortal being. I asked
God why it was happening. There’s a
natural grieving process when this happens
to someone. Still, the hardest part
about going blind was how everybody
treated me differently.”
Brian’s parents enrolled him in a
school that teaches mobility skills to
the blind. While there, he learned that
Andy Griffin and Dan Kish, two
instructors on staff, were experimenting
with mountain biking for the blind.
Griffin, a fully sighted instructor and
regular mountain biker, had found he
could ride his bike blindfolded, using
the sound cues of his girlfriend riding
in front of him, and he thought blind
students might enjoy riding, too. Kish,
who had grown up completely blind,
had learned to ride a bike in his neighborhood
with his friends as a kid.
Brian Bushway and some other students
heard about the blind mountain
biking experiments and wanted to do it
too, so the Blind Adventure Travel
Society, the name they came up with
for the group, was born.
The BATS began to go on regular
mountain bike rides in the hilly trails
south of Los Angeles. With zip-ties
clicking against their spokes, they
could follow each other by ear, with
instructor Griffin leading. A story on
the BATS appeared in our May 2001
issue, and that led to exposure by
Australian, Japanese and European
media outlets. Television crews traveled
thousands of miles to tape the
group’s rides. Bushway, the most
skilled blind rider, was featured prominently
in the coverage; taking on stairstep
downhills, narrow singletrack
trails, and rocky stream crossings.
The BATS shrunk over the years as
riders headed off to college or careers.
Griffin got a job at another school, and
Kish left to start his own nonprofit
business, World Access for the Blind,
teaching mobility skills, including
echolocation, to the visually handicapped.
Bushway attended Pepperdine
University and then joined Kish’s organization,
which they now run together.
Brian found that mountain biking
helped blind students face the world
with confidence and courage. In recent
months, Brian’s mountain biking has
usually been done for the benefit of documentary
crews and cameras, but that’s
about to change. A number of his
teenage students recently started bugging
Brian to take them mountain biking.
It’s time for the BATS to rise again.
You can contact Brian Bushway at
www.worldaccessfortheblind.org
www.fantamag.com
Here is a clip of him on the TV show The Doctors:
