Ian’s Ride: A Long-distance Journey to Joy by Karen Polinsky
On a beautiful, early summer Santa Cruz evening, Ian Mackay was poised on his bike at the top of the Great Meadow bike path, looking down at shimmering Monterey Bay. Tonight was the night, he decided, that he would break his record, rocketing down the hill in excess of 42 mph.
A moment of stillness, and then Mackay let off the brake, enjoying the feeling of ultimate freedom as he sailed down the path, picking up speed. On the final curve, too late, he noticed some sand on the path and the next thing he knew, he was off the bike, flying head-first through the air, headed straight for a California juniper tree. It was the moment that changed his life forever.
Mackay, a gregarious, fun-loving biology undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, suffered a severe spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the shoulders down. “Ian’s Ride: A Long-Distance Journey to Joy” is the story of his hospitalization and long road to recovery.
Five days after entering the trauma center, Mackay’s doctor informed him that the damage to his spinal column was unrecoverable and that he was now a C2 quadriplegic. Of that day, Mackay remembers only being devastated: “I had no idea of how I was supposed to live with this now-useless body.”
The years that followed were a roller coaster of despair and hope, harrowing setbacks and incremental progress, with Mackay’s mother, Teena; father, Zeke; a host of caregivers and Ian’s quirky friend group providing 24/7 support.
Recovery and understanding his new reality were a long, slow process that Mackay compares to time-lapse photographs of seedlings as they unfurl from the soil. Even when it appears nothing is happening, such time-lapse photos show all living things engaged in continual transformation.
For Mackay, some of those transformations bordered on miracles; for example, doctors thought that Ian would always need to use a ventilator tube to breathe. But Mackay hated how the tube limited his ability to speak, and one day convinced Zeke to disconnect it to see if he could breathe on his own.
Miraculously, he could, starting with a few minutes at a time and gradually working his way up to hours of breathing without assistance. Eventually, Mackay freed himself from the ventilator completely. As Teena describes it, getting off the ventilator was “the single development that changed everything.”
Off the ventilator, Mackay could now access the Olympic Discovery Trail, which passed near the family home outside Port Angeles, with his breath-controlled “sip and puff” wheelchair making it possible for him to enjoy once again being in nature on his own terms.
With more stable overall health, greater opportunities for autonomy and an easier time speaking, friends and family began seeing more of the “old Ian” — smart, funny, competitive and driven when he set a goal. He began mentoring others with recent spinal cord injuries, helping them to find hope and understand possibilities. He helped to found The Here and Now Project, a support network that connects and empowers the spinal cord injury and mobility disability community in the Pacific Northwest.
And Mackay returned to the athleticism and love of physical challenge that started him on this journey, founding Ian’s Ride, an organization that promotes outdoor accessibility for those with mobility impairment.
In 2022, Mackay broke the previous Guinness World Record of 173.98 miles for the greatest distance traveled in 24 hours in a motorized wheelchair controlled by mouth. He has also embarked on numerous long-distance bike tours in his motorized chair, saying, “I don’t think that your limitations should define who you are, what you pursue or how you chase that vision.”
Mackay’s story is a remarkable one, exploring how one person overcame adversity and responded to a life-changing loss. Author Karen Polinsky captures Mackay’s spirit as well as the stories of dedication and love shared by his family and friends in this inspirational true story.
Lisa Gresham is the collection services manager for the Whatcom County Library System, wcls.org.
(Originally published in Cascadia Daily News, Sunday, November 16, 2025.)