Scott Swanson
It’s 6:30 in the morning and the summer sun has yet to rise over Foster Lake.
Below the Shea Point rest area, where the old Highway 20 blacktop dips into the water, a lone man performs tai chi as the sky to the east grows pink. The lake’s surface ripples. There’s a little chop.
From the direction of Foster Dam, to the west, a series of soft splashes become audible, interspersed with an occasional heavy breath. Soon, a pair of dark forms materialize, the one in front particularly visible due to the bright yellow floatie trailing behind him. The two swim toward shore at the submerged highway.
Ken Bronson, pulling the floatie, emerges from the water, clad in a dark wetsuit. “Yeah!” he exclaims as he turns to look back at his swimming buddy.
Geritt Schaffer takes longer to reach the shore. Actually, he’s swimming toward a partially submerged wheelchair, parked about knee-deep on the asphalt in the lake. He slides into the chair in his wetsuit and slowly wheels toward shore, at one point getting a little push from Bronson.
Just another morning swim for a pair of local triathletes, training for the Best in the West Triathlon, which will be held this weekend, across the lake at Lewis Creek Park.
Bronson, 65, is a veteran. He’s been involved in running since his early 20s and triathlons for 10 years. He’s completed more than 60.
Schaffer, 44, isn’t. In fact, triathlons were the furthest thing from his mind for the first four decades of his life until, three years ago, a friend talked him into going to watch Best in the West.
Schaffer had always been a motocross guy. His dad, Dan Schaffer, started racing as a teenager and Geritt Schaffer was on a bike by the time he was 4, riding his little Indian 50. The 606 tattoo on Schaf-fer’s left arm is his dad’s original racing number, from the 1960s.
“I was just born into it,” Schaffer said.
When he was 10, he rode the China Hat ISDE 100, on the high desert outside Bend, for the first time.
That year the family moved to Sweet Home. He continued riding, racing on tracks and doing the long-distance and motocross stuff, like his dad.
Three years ago, Schaffer decided to ride China Hat again.
“I was always kind of fond of that race,” he said.
An electrician in a local mill, he worked four-day shifts, so he could go over to central Oregon and ride for a few days with his dad.
Two weeks before the race, they headed for their old stomping grounds, La Pine, where they’d planned to ride. But when they arrived, they found the area still snowed in, with windfalls and other debris.
“We unloaded the bikes, but it wasn’t happening,” Schaffer said. A friend in the area invited them to stop by for a barbecue, but he wasn’t getting off work for a couple of hours, so they decided to stop and practice at a sand pit where Schaffer had often ridden as a little kid.
“There are some really big jumps there and I was just launching these jumps. People were watching me.”
He came to one that launched off a wooden ramp and looked up to make sure his line was right.
“I wanted to make sure, and a big whoop-de-doo caught my front wheel.”
Schaffer torpedoed over the handlebars and slammed head-first into the ground.
“I fractured my T-11 vertebrae.”
He was paralyzed, a paraplegic, basically from the belly button down. It was life-changing.
“The first time they set me up, I fell straight over, backwards,” Schaffer said.
He started researching – his condition, what kinds of treatments and technology were available, what other paraplegics were doing.
In that process, he came across an Australian named John McLean, the first paraplegic to swim the English Channel and finish the Ironman World Championships, who, after regaining some use of his legs through therapy, actually had begun to walk again, and completed a triathlon that he’d once done as a paraplegic.
Schaffer went to Panama for treatment that lasted a month.
“They pulled bone marrow out of my back and took stem cells out of it and they grew a culture. They would shoot stem cells once a week into my arm and spinal cord, for a month.”
Back in Sweet Home, he started swimming.
“I was going to the pool, just to get exercise,” Schaffer said.
Initially, it was just therapy sessions with his then-wife. But not for long. Soon, he said, he started trying to do laps.
“I needed a cardio workout.”
It was rough.
“Most of my help came from the lifeguards,” Schaffer said. “I’ve got video of me swimming for the first time. It was like, ‘Is that guy drowning?’ I was like a fish out of water. I’ve come a long way.”
During those pool swims he noticed something: When triathlon season arrived, the place got crowded.
“People came cycling in to go swimming,” he said.
A friend, Keith Sautel, invited him to check out Best in the West.
So, two years ago, he drove out to Sunnyside Park, where triathletes and spectators park, and rode the shuttle bus to Lewis Creek.
“I watched the triathlon and I was, like, ‘Is this possibly something I could do?'”
At the event, he ran into “some guy in a Best in the West shirt.” It was Ken Bronson, whose son Blair, as an Oregon State University student, had come up with the original idea for the triathlon series and has put on the event every year since 2011.
“I said, ‘Is it possible for someone in a wheelchair to do this?’
“He said, ‘You know what, we will do whatever is necessary to make sure you can do this.’ That was two years ago. Crazy. Now I swim with him on regular basis.”
Bronson said he sensed that Schaffer had what it would take to be successful.
“I could see in him the drive. He was going to figure this out.”
Schaffer decided to go for it.
He started with a recumbent mountain bike he had gotten, in part through a $500 grant from the Kelly Brush Foundation, founded by skier Kelly Brush and her family after she was injured in 2006 in an NCAA alpine ski race.
“They don’t want to give (money) to people who won’t use it,” Schaffer said. “I took that as a challenge.”
Since he didn’t have a racing wheelchair to use for the running leg, he just did a duathlon of the swim and bike legs at last summer’s Best in the West, he did a duathlon of a swim and a bike, using the mountain bike on the route that runs from Lewis Creek Park to the corner of Northside and North River Roads, then back to the park.
“When I finished the bike last year, I was really bummed that I couldn’t continue with the run,” he said.
Schaffer said he took it “kind of easy” last summer, getting ready for the biathlon, but this year has been different.
The Challenge Athletes Foundation, which focuses on helping disabled individuals get equipment they need to be physically active, helped him get a road bike, and local businesses Sherry Gregory Home Team, Radiator Supply House and Steelhead Gym teamed with local residents, led by Ken May, to provide funding to help him get the racing wheelchair that he will use for the run.
“It was pretty cool, friends pitching in and helping out,” Schaffer said.
Plus, he’s gotten plenty of coaching and support from Ken Bronson and Rebecca Wolthuis, both regular Best in the West competitors, and from Blair Bronson.
“Ken had been offering to take me out to the lake and get this figured out. The first few times I swam about a quarter mile. Now I’m swimming half a mile a day.
“It was a huge shock to go from swimming in the pool to swimming in open water, with the fish looking at you and the seaweed and stuff.”
Ken Bronson said it took some tweaking to get Schaffer to the point where he could swim long distance.
One problem was that Schaffer’s lower body didn’t offer much flotation, so they had to figure out how to get his legs up in the water.
“Without that, dragging your legs is like pulling a boat anchor,” Bronson said.
They came up with a solution: a pool float, which swimmers place between their legs in the pool to work their upper bodies. They tried it in various positions before finally figuring out that it worked best situated just above Schaffer’s knees.
“It gives him stability, flotation, right where he needs it,” Bronson said. “He has control now. He’s been working with skills, learning to relax in the water. Fighting (the water) is not going to work.”
Since his accident, Schaffer has been on disability and has been attending Linn-Benton Community College, pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. Since he’s been off school this summer, training has kept him busy.
“I took my calculus final on June 20. I’d kind of been swimming before that, but it’s hard, keeping up with the homework.”
As soon as that test was over, he got busy, he said.
He’d logged 130 miles over the previous two weeks on the road – biking and in the racing wheelchair, 10 days prior to this weekend’s event.
“The biggest help I’ve had through all this has been Rebecca Wolthuis,” Schaffer said. “She crushes it. She outswims the guys. Her regimen is ‘I’m eating this at this time.’ She’s figured it all out. She’s gone above and beyond, like putting my chain back on my bike.”
He did his first full triathlon on July 27, the Rolf Prima Tri in Cottage Grove. He finished in 2:34:19, 12th in his age division, in the race, which included a 750-meter (nearly half a mile) swim, a 13-mile bike ride and a 5K (3.1-mile) run.
“I think the turning point was when we got him into the water this summer, getting that swim stroke down,” Bronson said. “Just in the last six weeks, seeing him improve. He’s doing it. I’m excited for him. I’m proud of him. He’s not letting his difficulties get in his way.”
It’s been a 180 all the way around.
“I used to be normal,” Schaffer said. “To be honest, I drank too much. I was overweight, miserable. I didn’t know how miserable I was.
“Today I feel like I’m really living. I have a different set of eyes. I’m grateful for every breath I get. I feel like I’m getting the most out of life instead of just waiting to die.”
He appreciates the assistance he’s gotten, from all sides – and the fact that one of the best triathlons in the West is right down the road, and this year it includes the Paralympic Triathlon Regional Championship, which will bring in some of the top disabled athletes in the region.
“It’s been a little over three years now,” Schaffer observed. “It’s just crazy. I have a whole garage full of triathlon equipment. Here in my backyard, they’re having the regional championship.
“I’ve come a long way. I want to get a lot better. I’ve put a ton of effort into this.
“It’s been a long, crazy road.”