With your help we hope to build capable adaptive mountain bikes that we can sell from approximately £2,000 and up. That's £1,000 cheaper than any other hand-cranked bike, and half the price of any other adaptive mountain bike!!! Please read on to find out more about what we are doing, and why...
About me:
Hi, my name is Chris Jones. I suffered some life-changing injuries whilst serving in the British Army, which caused me to re-think a lot of the things I used to be passionate about doing, and meant I had to find new ways to do the things I love. One of those things was mountain biking, and in 2011 I decided to find a way to go mountain biking again. This is always going to be tricky when you’ve lost almost 50% of the mobility in both your legs, but having spent years watching my Wife and Son head off across the moor on their bikes, I was determined to find a way to join them. After some extensive searching of the internet I learned that almost all of the hand powered bikes available were designed for road use, and the cheapest hand-powered bike I could find cost £3,000. Those bikes that claimed to be designed for off-road use were mostly road frames with off-road tyres on, which meant they were suitable for canal paths and other well made tracks, but wouldn’t handle the kind of terrain I wanted to ride on Dartmoor, and bikes specifically designed for off-road use started from £5,000.
Having bought myself a hand-cranked, off-road bike, and discovered first hand just how poor their performance really is, I decided that disabled people deserve to have high-quality, affordable mountain bikes, just like everyone else. As a result I have spent the last 10 months working with a professional design engineer to develop a bike that is not just a proper mountain bike, adapted to suit a variety of disabilities, but which will sell for less than half the price that a disabled person would currently have to spend on an adaptive mountain bike. We believe this is the first time that an adaptive mountain bike has been designed in this way; from scratch by a professional engineer, first and foremost as a mountain bike, and then as an adaptive bike.
Your money will help us to now bring that design to life, and allow us to test it fully before bringing it into production for the millions of disabled people in the UK, and around the World, who simply want to ride a bike through the countryside with their friends and family.
Your investment and reward:
We now need to raise £40,000, which will allow us to achieve the following:
- Completion of the design to a manufacturing spec, allowing the design to be put straight into production once testing is complete.
- Construction and testing of prototype bikes, tested not just for the range of conditions they can handle, but for the range of disabilities they can accommodate.
- Addition and testing of existing adaptive components to fit an even wider range of disabled riders.
- By completing all of the above we will be ready to put the bikes into production, hopefully by the end of 2013/early 2014.
In return for your money you will receive:
- From £5, a hand-written letter of thanks.
- From £50, a limited edition Merici Sports t-shirt from Supersaturated.
If we don’t raise the full £40,000 we will still put the amount we have raised into building the prototype, it just may take us a little longer than we’d planned as we will have to raise the remaining amount from other sources, which will take time and will detract from the main focus, that of testing the bikes.
The Impact
- Disabled people are often excluded from normal daily activities, or at best will receive a marginalised, watered-down version of the experience that able-bodied people get.
- Adaptive equipment often costs a vast amount more than the able-bodied equivalents, creating further barriers to disabled participation.
- Most families with a disabled member will forego normal family activities so as not to isolate the person with the disability, meaning the whole family miss out on opportunities that normal families take for-granted.
- By helping us to move forward with this project you will allow us to finally show disabled people world-wide that they need not accept the status quo.
- Your support will allow us to show the world that people with disabilities will take up active sports if the right equipment is made available at the right price.
- You can be part of a project that will give people with disabilities affordable, independent access to places they have simply not been able to get to until now.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you are unable to support us financially, we really do understand that! Please though, support us by simply spreading the word about what we are trying to do, which is most easily done using the share buttons on this page. However you choose to support us, we would like to thank you for your help :-)
