By Connie Leinbach
Movement is medicine, says Doug Schletz, one of four staffers of the Wounded Warrior Project guiding 10 military veterans who recently completed a bike ride on Ocracoke.
The injured vets were getting lots of medicine in early April when they rode their specially adapted bikes, and some trikes, for the 13+-mile trek from the north end of Ocracoke Island to their lunch spot at SmacNally’s.
Afterwards, they rode back up to South Dock to catch the ferry back to Hatteras and then to Hags Head
The adaptive sports part of the organization has made some amazing innovations to the bikes the riders use, Schletz said.
“It’s to get everybody moving,” he said about the WWP’s philosophy, “because that’s one of the biggest things: When we stop moving, that’s when we get old.”
On bike rides, the vets are outside, in the sun and fresh air.
“It’s healthy,” he said.
While the WWP has offices all over the country (Schletz is out of the San Antonio, Texas office), the group that rode on Ocracoke April 9 came from all over to the Fayetteville, NC, office, from where they left.
This was the third year Wounded Warriors have trekked to Ocracoke, said Si Wilson, one of the staffers.
The Adaptive Cycling journeys are part of the physical health and wellness programs the project offers the veterans.
“This is how we spend the money that is graciously given to us by donors,” Wilson said.
The bike program is teaching the vets how to better ride bikes on the streets, said Jessica Rangle, a lieutenant commander in the Coast Guard and up for retiring in a few months.
“How to use our lanes and how to communicate better,” she said. “A lot of us are fairly new to riding on the streets.”
Though Rangle will retire in several months after having spent the last 15 years in the Coast Guard, she also has served in the Army and Navy where she received her injuries.
“I’m permanently and totally wounded, unfortunately,” she said, from accidents “on flight lines and oil spills and in Iraq. The military is dangerous work.”
This was the first “soldier ride” for Army veteran Maxine Crockett of Fayetteville.
Prior to the Army she was in the National Guard and has knee and back issues.
“I’m just kind of broke, but I’m making it,” she said of her injuries.
And the Project got her back onto a bike, which she hadn’t done for many years
“I’m surprised I’m able to ride a bike,” she said.
And the ride on a sunny, albeit windy, day on Ocracoke?
“I’m loving it,” she said.
WWP was founded in 2003 in Roanoke, Virginia, by a group of veterans and friends to honor and empower Wounded Warriors of this generation who incurred a physical or mental injury, illnesses, or wound, co-incident to their military service on or after September 11, 2001.
For more information and to donate to the project, visit their website here.
