From TBI Survivor to Cross-Country Cyclist

By Claudia Stahl

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

The words are Nelson Mandela's, but they are manna for Martin Krieg, a 44-year-old TBI survivor from Santa Cruz, CA. Believing in the power of the human spirit enabled him to bicycle across the United States twice within a seven-year period. More profoundly, it enabled him to overcome fear of himself.

Krieg became a public figure 11 years ago when he made his second transcontinental cycling journey, that time as an ambassador for the National Head Injury Foundation (NHIF). His feat, which captured the attention of the media, was a symbolic victory for head injury survivors everywhere.

August 20 will mark two decades since the former accountant and sports enthusiast, once known by friends as "Party Marty," set out for a whitewater rafting trip with his older brother, Chris. During the 14-hour drive to the Salmon River in Idaho, Chris missed a stop sign and collided with a truck. Marty Krieg, who at one point was pronounced clinically dead, awoke from a coma two months later with a punctured lung, right-side paralysis, atrophied muscles, no bowel control, and the skills of a 2-year-old.

"Brushing my teeth was a major chore--I always cut my lips and gums with the brush. I would stab my tongue with my fork," he recalls in Awake Again, an account of his emergence from the throes of TBI (WRS Publishing, Waco, TX, 1994). "Tying my shoes, shaving, putting my watch on, fastening buttons--nothing requiring basic motor skills came easy."

The physical rehabilitation process was a slow, painful one, but achieving "normalcy" in social situations would prove Krieg's greatest challenge. His outer shell, which looked "normal," masked a churning sea of scrambled signals that triggered him to laugh at inappropriate times, interrupt conversations, tremble and drool.

He became well acquainted with looks of surprise, disgust and embarrassment when he tried to communicate with strangers. Even the friends who visited Krieg faithfully in the hospital gradually faded away.

The free spirit who in the past drove a motorcycle and a sports car, now relied on others for rides to the grocery store and fretted over details like the availability of bathrooms, curb heights, and the distance from parking spots to the door.

As the days began drifting one into the next, Krieg decided to check into the Anther Sports Injury Clinic in Santa Maria, CA, where owner Don Chu, RPT, "imparted..that (the healing process) was up to me," Krieg told ADVANCE. "It was through him that I realized there wasn't a second chance."

Inspired by the world class athletes in Chu's clinic, Krieg treated rehabilitation as a "do or die" option. He learned to walk without a cane and began riding a bicycle to rebuild the atrophied muscles in his calves and quadriceps.

In tandem with his physical healing, Krieg began reading motivational books that challenged him to think bigger, aim higher, and to embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth. The physical and spiritual regimens merged when Krieg, browsing in the travel section of a book store, resolved to bike across the United States.

He overpowered the voices of self doubt--How would he do it? Could he do it?--with affirmations that he taped to walls, mirrors and the refrigerator: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Do what you're afraid of and the fear will be overcome; Do it now.

Finally, in the spring of 1979, Krieg boarded a train bound for Oregon, where he launched his maiden bicycle voyage across the continent. He left behind the skepticism and fears of his family members. He left behind the spectator that he had been, and became an explorer on an expedition to a new self.

Krieg strengthened his body by pedaling over hills and across deserts, and practiced his social skills by stopping to talk with the people he met along the way. Generous families in the heartland, who invited him into their homes for meals and lodging, revealed to him a softer, more accepting side of humanity he had forgotten.

And Trailridge, a 12,000-foot-high pass in The Rocky Mountains that Krieg scaled by bike, "had shown me that my physical rehabilitation was complete. For the first time I was on even footing with people whom I had once viewed as superior just because they could walk. It was the best I'd felt since my early rehabilitation triumphs," Krieg recalled. (Awake Again).

More than 4,000 miles later, Krieg brought his journey to a close in Washington, DC, then boarded a plane back to California where the next adventure would begin. He kept forging the new "person" he'd discovered on Trailridge by meditating, keeping a journal, and writing Awake Again.

"I kept going with the good and weeding out the bad," Krieg said. "Now I've gotten to the point where I know that.. I'm a spiritual being having a human experience, and my purpose is to be the best person I can be."

Fulfilling another goal, Krieg began sharing his experiences publicly to inspire other head injury survivors and increase awareness of head injury.

"I'm doing this to prove that head injured people are capable of a productive life. That is what drives me, what fires me up," he said.

Krieg took his second trans America bike ride in 1986 to focus the eyes of the nation on the capabilities of people with head injuries. Governor Michael Dukakis, his wife, Kitty, and Marilyn Spivack, founder of the NHIF, greeted him at the finish from the steps of the capitol building in Boston.

What's next? Creating the National Bicycle Green way, an uninterrupted, transcontinental bicycle trail Krieg hopes to initiate with a cross-country cycling tour. He says the experience of head injury and disability differs for everyone, but wants all people to realize their inner power to achieve and overcome obstacles.

The first step, he said, is love. "Bombard people with love, and make everything you do come from love. The rest will follow."

This story originally appeared in Advance for Occupational Therapy Practitioners, June 9, 1997.