Wheel Chair Bound Korean Sets World Record
This is a pretty cool story:
People raised their eyebrows when Choi Chang-hyun unveiled his plan to travel 1,500 kilometers from the southeastern city of Daegu to Imjingak pavilion near the inter-Korean border in 1999.
The 42-year-old, who suffers from cerebral palsy, however, did more than that.
After completing his first electric wheelchair journey, he crossed the American continent over 112 days in 2001 and the Japanese islands in 2003 to demonstrate his hope for the success of the summer Universiade in Daegu that year.
The native of Daegu said he was recently informed that he will be listed next year in the Guinness Book of World Records for his latest and longest wheelchair journey of 26,000 kilometers through 31 European countries and Morocco. He travelled at an average speed of 13 kilometers per hour. [Korea.net]
Read the whole thing, but it is pretty impressive what Choi has accomplished and what he hopes to do next.
13km/h, that's pretty fast, about in town bicycle speed. But this is all in an electric wheelchair right? What's impressive about that? It'd be the same as doing it in a golf cart. If he did this all manually, that'd be just as amazing as swimming or running a long distance.