Myriam Cabon: If adventure consists in confronting the unknown, then we can say: “We are adventurers.” We are adventurers for two reasons. The first adventure, we suffered, the other, we chose. Pierre and I met on the 13th of June 2015. We were 25 and it was at the wedding of a mutual friend. We had attended the same university for 5 years but had never met, but that evening, by chance, we are sitting next to each other. So we talk, we get on well, one thing leads to another, and we fall in love. We soon discover that we share a common passion. A passion for travel. What’s great is that we enjoy the same travelling experience. We both love nature, wide-open spaces, meeting people. So, we start travelling together, in France, then in Europe. We’re 25 and we’re making the most of it. But on the 13th of November 2015, Pierre attends a concert at the Bataclan. And, quite inconceivably for us who grew up in France, he is shot, and takes a bullet to the spine. That day, our lives get turned upside down as Pierre ends up in a wheelchair. Pierre Cabon: A completely new life begins. We know nothing about the world of disability. We have to relearn everything: daily routines, movements. It’s overwhelming. With these constraints, we think there’s lots we won’t be able to do anymore, we’ll have to give up on a big part of our lives, including our trips. And that’s extremely hard. It’s hard, but we try, we learn. We set off on a trip again, first in Europe, then Canada. We’re testing the waters, always with this idea that we can’t do as much, that if we want accessibility, we have to settle for city breaks, stay on the beaten track, far off from what we really like. Whenever we venture off the beaten track, there are practically no wheelchair users, so it really must be impossible after all. We keep going on trips, but travelling has lost its thrill. We visit, we explore, but it’s not as exciting as before. MC: We hit this glass-ceiling for a while. Until the 4th of July 2018, when our lives change for the second time. That day, we’re on our honeymoon and we decide to fly over the Grand Canyon. We board a helicopter and a few metres beneath us, a huge forest goes by at full speed. We see the cliff faraway draw closer. We’ve got our heads glued to the pane, staring out, music blaring in our ears. All of a sudden, in a split second, we find ourselves 1,500 metres above ground, having just passed that famous cliff. In that moment, we’re literally breathless and we’re overcome by an unmatched feeling of freedom. This feeling, we soon come to understand that we had given up on it without realising it. We truly believed we’d never get to have such intense sensations again. In that exact moment, we decide to create Wheeled World. PC: Up there, the glass-ceiling we’d unconsciously built over the past 3 years shatters in an instant. We realise that we can do anything, it’s only a matter of organisation. The first limits to wheelchair travel are the ones we impose on ourselves. From then on, we’re only after one thing: to banish the impossible. We don’t want to hear that word anymore, whether from an able-bodied or a disabled person. We want to fight both the physical and psychological limits that, one day, made us believe that we couldn’t or wouldn’t anymore. MC: To combat these limits, we decide to create the ‘adventure-for-all’ media, which has two ambitions. The first is to make travel appealing, and so, open up possibilities again. The second is to enable everyone to do it serenely, whether they are able-bodied or disabled. For this media to be useful, we have to cover a wide array of destinations. Our first project is large in scope: a 14-month round-the-world trip, crossing 4 continents and 15 countries. For this media to be useful, it has to reach a wide audience. So, we try to make it memorable: we set one major challenge per continent. First off is Machu Picchu and its hundreds of steps. Next up is New Zealand, which we’ll cross in tandem to spice up the adventure, before flying off to the Kilimanjaro, and attend the Paralympics in Tokyo in 2020. PC: But the trip is cut short due to the pandemic after 7 months instead of 14. But they were exceptionally intense months. We rediscovered life. We got a thrill again, kayaking near glaciers, horse-riding in dry deserts, and cycling through wild landscapes. We’re lucky to have had an extraordinary path to recovery, to be supported, to bounce back, fully, and make a living from our passion: travel and adventure. But that’s not the case for everyone. Faced with the unknown world of disability, living within this new framework can prove to be a real obstacle course, both physically and psychologically. Depending on your circumstances, environment, personality, and level of pain at times, you can come to lose the fight and suffer your difference on a daily basis. MC: In France, 12 million people live with a disability. 12 million, that’s almost one in five people in France. Among those 12 million, 850,000 have reduced mobility, and every year, 1,500 new spinal cord injury victims end up in this situation. People of all ages and social categories. This statistic shows us disability affects a great number of people and it does not discriminate. The question we wanted to ask today, when looking at this statistic, is: how can we make it so disability is no longer an obstacle? After all these adventures, all these trips, our main take-away is: For disability to no longer be an obstacle, we need 2 things: we need ourselves, and we need other people. PC: We need ourselves because we’re the primary ones to know how to make the most of a situation that we have not chosen. To reach our objectives, to reconnect with what really drives us and find the happiness to which we aspire, we must show determination, first and foremost. To overcome the psychological barriers that keep us from trying, under the premise that it is not possible, and too complicated. We have to dare to dive into the unknown to defy the common preconceptions that bind us. Next, we have to be creative. Place our focus on the constraints that can be changed while accepting those that are immutable, and commit to finding alternative solutions: develop a technique for climbing stairs, design equipment to cross the deserts or find a suitable mode of transport to get around on the roads. Finally, we must show resilience and humility because despite all our efforts, we’ll have to learn to accept and process our failures, even if it’s difficult, to learn and set up the right conditions that will enable us to find another way. This requires a huge amount of energy. We travelled to the ends of the world to encounter hardships, and you must know that the daily life of a person with a disability can soon become filled with small and large obstacles, just as insurmountable as any rocky peak, especially if these are not chosen but endured and recurring. When a difficulty overwhelms us, when we’re short on energy or simply tired, we do need other people MC: We need other people for an obvious reason, I think. As a group, everything becomes possible because we’ll be able, much more easily to surpass the physical obstacles that hinder us on a daily basis. For the record, in January, we were lucky enough to go to Martinique. To the east of Martinique, there is a peninsula, the Caravelle peninsula, and the viewpoint offers a panorama that is absolutely stunning and magical. But it’s a bit of a climb. So we head off on the hike. The path is relatively flat. The farther we go, the steeper and harder the slopes are for us to climb. It’s 35 degrees, it’s extremely tough, but we don’t give up, because we really want to see this world-famous viewpoint. We carry on. When we reach the summit - in theory we’ve done 90% of the work - we’re stuck among the trees. We can’t see anything at all. There is no view. To gain access to this much-vaunted view, we have to climb up to the lighthouse. And to reach the lighthouse, we have to go up 4 sets of stairs with uneven stone steps, surrounded on all sides by rocks. In short, an impossible task for us, because it is much too dangerous to go at it just the two of us. We’re obviously disappointed. Except that, as we’re contemplating these stairs, 4 strangers head towards us. We have a chat, they grab Pierre’s wheelchair and carry him up to the lighthouse. It’s tough - it’s hot, the sun is right on us. Pierre is considerably heavy. But still, they go all the way. They put in the effort required, they don’t leave us behind. You might say, these people we didn’t know helped us for 10% of the way. 10% is not a lot. But actually, they did much more than that. They offered us the opportunity to complete the adventure, to live the full experience to the end, having put in some effort ourselves beforehand and shared it with others for the rest. And that is incredible. That’s the physical support - we always need other people. But we also need others because it is their perception that will help us break down the psychological barriers that arise when we’re in a wheelchair. All of us are, in some way, influenced by our surroundings: the culture we grow up in, the beliefs of those closest to us, other people’s opinions. So, for disability to no longer be an obstacle, the first step, is for society to not make us feel like it is one. A difference is just a difference. It is neither better nor worse, no need to apply any value judgements. In fact, all of us have constraints. Some of us are tall, short, some wear glasses, some are bad at maths, that’s a common one. Some are in very good shape, some have a lot of money, others a little less. And nobody gets judged for any of these differences that make our individuality. Why should disability be any different? Our belief, is that if we try to understand other people’s constraints and integrate them into how we behave without judging them, without discriminating disability can be dispelled. We can learn to provide useful, non-intrusive help, and thereby make other people’s daily lives more accessible, whatever their constraints. In the end, when we try and understand we, in fact, liberate people who are deemed ‘different’. We liberate them by allowing them to put all their energy, both physical and mental, on other preoccupations than the practicalities of the everyday. And that is why, most of all, we need other people PC: If we need both ourselves and other people, to break down these psychological and physical barriers, our conclusion is that disability is a collective endeavour. It is by working together that we’ll make sure it is no longer an obstacle for anyone. By trying to understand the other, by showing empathy, by doing what we can at our own level, we can restore freedom to all the people who, like us, one day, had to grapple with this difference, these constraints. Where there’s mutual aid and team spirit, there’s no longer disability.
