A journalist who was left paralysed by a motorbike accident almost 10 years ago has completed an epic hand-powered road trip to raise money for spinal injury research.
Charles Brice hand-cycled more than 300 kilometres, along with 20 other riders, from the crash site to Adelaide — the same journey as the one he took to hospital in 2010.
Brice — a reporter with ABC News — set off from South Australia's Murray Mallee on Wednesday.
He arrived at Adelaide's Victoria Park on his modified pedal-powered vehicle early this afternoon, receiving cheers from waiting family and friends.
"Today's been pretty tough, I'm probably the sorest I've been," Brice said, exhausted but satisfied.
"We've had headwinds all day every day, and they [didn't] seem to give up.
"It's pretty emotional having everyone here, everyone who supported me and got me through 300 [kilometres]."
In May 2010, Brice was thrown from a motorbike while trail-riding with friends on a rural property at Paruna, south of Loxton, in South Australia's Murray Mallee.
"I was coming around a slight bend in the road and there were successive bumps and the front wheel dug into one of those bumps and sent me flying over the handle bars," he said.
The accident left him with broken neck vertebrae and completely severed his spinal cord, and cost him the ability to walk.
Brice spent 52 days in hospital, and more than a year in rehabilitation, with doctors telling him he would be quadriplegic.
This week's road trip has taken the cyclists through Swan Reach and the Barossa Valley, and also involved Brice going back to the scene of the accident for the first time, along with his family.
"I wasn't looking forward to it but [it's] better than what I thought," his father Leon said.
The posse of riders reached the finish line at Adelaide's Victoria Park this afternoon, and the trip has so far raised more than $70,000.
Brice hopes the money can contribute to research which could help him, and others in similar situations, to walk again.
