Hello ladies and gentlemen!

It's been a while since my last visit to this great forum but I've been busy!
I thought I'd share with you a video from last summer when me and a couple of friends went on a fantastic journey across the wilderness of Iceland.
It was a coast to coast tour that took us from the north coast of Iceland to the south western corner and ended in the capital Reykjavík.

If you like this video, kindly share it as I'm raising awareness for equal rights of people with disabilities to travel and be able to use the facilities that are available in each area. Also I'm starting my own company that will specialize in arranging ATV tours for disabled people around Iceland that has almost everything to offer for the adventurous ATV enthusiast!

The tour was done on my 2008 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI Touring and my friend was riding a 2008 Polaris Sportsman 800 6x6
Both ATV's performed flawlessly during our 790 Kilometer route.

Enough talking, here is the video: YouTube - ATV Touring in Iceland - Paraplegic quadbiking across the highland interior of Iceland

Enjoy and please give me some feedback, both negative and positive, preferably positive )

Thanks!

Jon.

 

Wow, impressive! Not just the video or beautiful landscape but your abilities to perform a task like this! I really respect and admire your ambitions and hope your video inspires more mobile challenged (I have a permanent leg disability of left leg with knee and now recovering from bad foot sprain) folks to take on the ATV adventure ("The way out!)

Great and thanks for sharing!

Regards,

R'

 

Thank you RticKwad!

I wish you a speedy recovery.

Best regards from Iceland,

Jon.

 

Amazing and the dedication

 

Great ride and excellent video. What an accomplishment! Iceland is such a starkly beautiful land.

 

So....just what is "raising awarness for equal rights of people with disabilities to travel and be able to use the facilities that are available in each area"? What is your ultimate goal in this regard and in what capacity do you mean? Private or public? Will this require funding and legislation or just letting folks know of those with disabilities? I guess I'm confused about this. I would think the requirement of the individual that is disabled would be to modify an ATV to suit their particular needs....riding areas already exist for everyone...don't they?

 

Thanks for your question rangerAT

The riding areas exist but the main problem here in Iceland is that the facilities that are offered for tourists in the Icelandic highland areas (were the video is shot) are not suitable for people with disabilities. There are usually no ramps and the doors are too narrow.
This needs to be fixed so I went on this journey to bring that to the attention to everyone who cares. I got a lot of media coverage and after having gone on this trip I managed to raise some funds to fix one of the main facilities that services travelers on the highlands and now I'm hoping others will follow.

Best regards from Iceland,

JG.

 

I like your approach of asking for donations and using them to retrofit facilities for the disabled. I think this is a great way to go about it. Kudos.

 

I think asking for donations and raising private funds is a great way to go. My only concern (here in the states) is to get government involved. Whenever that happens, the 'officials' that would be involved in providing access (still don't understand how ramps/gates would have any bearing being that most parking lots at ATV access points are either open paved lots or gravel areas) often make the already over-burdened taxpayer pick up the cost for a VERY small minority of people. I'm all for equal access and certainly 'rights' for all. But sometimes, where I live, the local and federal governments go way overboard (often at huge expense) when a much more simple private solution often exists. Nobody wants to deny access for the disabled.....but legislating and taxing from an already intrusive government is my concern.
Thank you for not taking offense at my comments. I tell it like I see it and try my best to be honest and up-front about issues.
Best of luck acheiving your goals up there in beautiful Iceland.