Biker's dream trip is now a reality

May 10 2009 by Phil Doherty, Sunday Sun

A WHEELCHAIR user has set off on a motorcycle challenge on a specially designed bike, more than two decades after he fractured five vertebrae in a horrific crash.

David Burdus snapped his spine after crashing his bike just two weeks before he was about to embark on a dream trip to France 25 years ago.

Now, thanks to a super-trike especially adapted for wheelchair users, David is finally making his dream come true after being invited to accompany a gang of bikers on a charity run to Germany.

David, 47, of Corbridge, Northumberland, said: “I’d been planning to go to France two weeks before I had my accident. So, being able to ride a bike again and to be going abroad to Germany means this is a trip of a lifetime for me.

“I never thought I would get on a bike again because there never was one in the past that was suitable. But this is a proper motorbike with a 1200cc engine in it.”

David broke his back when he lost control of his powerful Honda CX500 on a roundabout at Spennymoor, County Durham, just a few days before his 21st birthday.

He had been planning to go to France on his bike before the accident left him paralysed from the waist down. Now he is going to be accompanying six other riders to Berlin, Germany, while they go on to tour the world to raise cash for the Capability Scotland charity.

David, who lives with fiancee Janet Pallister, 52, will be riding a specially modified trike called a Martin Conquest.