I Micha and two of his wonderful children in Alpine, CA about a month ago. My riding buddy Brent and I were scrambling through this ritzy town looking for a place to camp, by this point a few folks, including a church and a fire station found is too unsavory and turned us away, but two nice fellas, and a scrappy young lad in a van waved us down, said we could stay with them, and told us to follow their van to their place.
We arrived at this beautiful house, and as the guys unloaded from the van, we realized one of the guys Micha, was in a wheel chair, and his buddy was also one of his caretakers. To be honest this revelation was a bit awkward for Brent and I, we weren’t prepared
for such a surprise. But the kindness, openess, generosity, and exhuberance of Micha and the two of his children was so positive and infectious, it quickly turned into one of thr most memorable nights of the whole trip.
Micha is an adventurer, rock climber, base jumped, skydiver, etc. who was terribly injured just diving into a creek, is now paraplegic, and is now working with different doctors, organizations, and researchers to try to further spinal cord research, determined to adventure at with full use of all his limbs again someday.
Brent and I had such a great time hanging with Micha, his kids, and his care takers. We talked, and laughed, shared the stories about each of our respective adventures, and I even got to perform a Macbeth scene for them. What I remeber most about that night was how much Micha’s kids seemed to dote on him, not in a protective way, but really like he was their hero, like he was Superman. It was an arresting picture of what being a hero, a father, a man looks like.
I took a picture of the whole family, it’s since been lost. What I posted instead is a vid with info about what Micha is doing. Please check it out, it’s really well made, and you get to hear from Micha himself, who is endlessly positive and ultra inspiring, about what he’s doing.
God bless.
