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Name: Minna Mettinen-Kekalainen
Age: 41
Location: Northern Ontario
Disability/Injury type: Brain Injury
I had a motor cross accident and acquired a brain injury (coma for 3 weeks).
My functioning level is that of incomplete C5-6.
I'm a single parent of two teens, neither of whom enjoy 'extreme sports'. My son did skateboard and snowboard for a while.
Things I like to do:
When I am not laying it down in the skateboarding park, flying around with my kite or skydiving I am on the lake kayaking or rowing. I also have raced a few half marathons in my racing chair and play wheelchair basketball and sledge hockey.
My interests in 'extreme sports' came to me naturally.
I started to 'jump' when I was 8 or 9. 1st one was off a 30M practice ski jumping ramp... (bad landing!-fratured skull)
2nd try, tried a back flip with my motorcross bike... (another bad landing-in front of a truck).
NOW that I'm in a wheelchair I do not have to listen to those who kept repeating "IF you don't stop it, your going to end up in a wheelchair!".
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I started sky diving last summer (2007) because I finally figured out the air can't hurt me, and the ground is just as unforgiving to me as it is to anyone else... I can deal with that.
Why do I continue?
Because it is in my blood to do this... since i was little i believed that when I grow up I will be able to fly... and now I DO!
SO I continue because I finally feel at ease, in my "element", in the zone i want/need to be in order to feel ALIVE!
Sky diving saved my life! without sky diving I'd still be trying to jump off 50f cliffs with a 55sq foot kite.
(My kitewing is 55sq. feet.)
I do play in the skate boarding parks, and have dropped into a few vert. ramps but we do not have a vert ramp in our town so I need to stick to the skate park or get up in the sky.
Just a few weeks ago our local newspaper caught me flying by in town over our lake
There is a new flying toy I am going to have very soon.
Couple of days ago I bought a 12M Takoon Wook because the price was SO cheap.
Now, I can "touch the sky and fly so high"
even when it's too windy at skydiving dropzone to sky dive.
I plan to become one of the only few paralyzed sky divers in the world.
