Andrew “Drew” Shelley, a self professed weekend warrior, is like so many of us—he enjoys his job but he’s restless. He dreams of traveling the world and discovering new things. But Shelley and the rest of us part ways there, because he’s actually living out his dreams. And he’s doing that with the help of a 260-pound power chair specially equipped for off-road use.
When walking became difficult for him, Shelley, who has Muscular Dystrophy, adopted an X5 Frontier power chair that allowed him to continue living the adventurous lifestyle he’d grown to enjoy. While Shelley doesn't go so far as to describe himself as a macho guy, he does admit that he thrives to test his own limits.
That’s why, from November 2007-January 2008, this systems engineer by day set out to re-create himself, to start his life over in the hopes of ending up an even better person. He challenged himself and his chair by heading out to places like the jungles of Indonesia and the Australian outback.
With a small duffel bag tied onto the back of his chair Shelley rolled into LAX, leaving behind work, friends, comfort, and certainty in exchange for the terrifying unknown of a solo adventure around the world. What remains of his endeavor is documented in Beyond the Chair.
In the 90-minute documentary, viewers can live vicariously through Shelley as he takes on adventures in some of the most remote and almost completely unreachable corners of the globe. Shelley and his X5 Frontier crawled over steep granite cliffs, trekked deep into the mountains past any known hiking trails, and trod through the sloppy floors of mud caves. Sure, each stage of his trek presented unique (and sometimes unexpected) challenges, but Shelley used his sheer will, engineering background, and his extreme power chair to overcome each of them while his senses of humor and adventure remained in tact.
One of Shelley’s blog entries, titled “Cambodia, Part I,” tells of such adventure: “By now I'm pretty used to navigating the traffic madness in my chair. There are sidewalks but they are impassable because they are cluttered with mopeds and cars and shop vendors,” Shelley writes. “So my only choice is to wheel on the streets with all the mopeds and cars. Good news is that traffic doesn't flow that fast, so for the most part I can keep up. Again going through intersections I just weave through along with all the mopeds.”
The entry continues, “Of course the first thing that happens when I got here was a flat tire. Nail. I had some slime in my bag so got a guy at a motorbike shop to put it in. Didn't help, so he told me he would take my tire on his moped to his shop across town and get it fixed. And he'd do it for free. There was no way I was going to let him take my tire away because my chair would be useless without it. I didn't know if he would ever come back so he told me where some other tire shops were near me. So found the tire shop and they jacked up my chair, took the wheel off and pulled out the tube. The guy had a creative method for fixing punctures: fire. Not sure what he did because I couldn't see from my chair but it involved fire and melting the rubber. Got it fixed and I was on my way. Next day put my chair in a tuk tuk and went out to the killing fields. Gotta go. Cheers,” the blog entry concludes.
Shelley admits that what he likes about the outdoor lifestyle is that it gives him the ability to go off the beaten path. The lack of control and the adrenaline rush that accompanies it appeal to him. And Shelley’s approach to life makes sense when he explains it—to him, challenge is a part of life. But when you meet it head on and do things that are difficult and yet you succeed, well, everything after that is simple according to Shelley.
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