Stroke victim takes on the world
Alberta motorcyclist circling the globe to raise money for Heart and Stroke Foundation
In late September 2009, Nevil Stow, a 45-year-old property manager in Canmore, Alta., was on his hands and knees sanding scratches out of a wooden floor when he felt a lightning bolt shoot through his arm.
His left hand went numb, and he assumed he had pinched a nerve in his back. He phoned the site safety officer to report the incident before walking to the office to fill out the injury paperwork.
Along the way, Stow felt as if he had a small pebble under his foot. He stopped several times to remove his shoe and sock, but never found the stone.
What he didn’t know then, and what he wouldn’t realize until 24 hours later, was that he had experienced a minor stroke.
The next morning, the entire left side of Stow’s body was numb. At the hospital, doctors tried to check his blood pressure, but the numbers were so high that they shut down two machines on error codes.
“Are you a smoker?” the doctors asked.
“Well, yes,” said Stow. “But I guess I’m not anymore.”
He threw his remaining cigarettes into the trash outside of the hospital and hasn’t smoked since. “I think the stroke was a kind of blessing in a certain way, because I think it affected the receptors as well. I never got a craving,” he says.
Today, Stow manages his blood pressure with medication. Fortunately, the stroke hasn’t slowed him down. It’s March 2013, and powdery snow has drifted up against the door of Stow’s garage in Canmore. He sits on the other side of that door, holding a socket wrench in one hand and a margarita in the other, as he tinkers with Twiggy, a 2004 Suzuki DR 650 motorcycle.
This is the machine he will ride around the world, beginning this May. “In 2005, I would have never done this trip,” he says. “I was more concerned about a comfortable retirement and saving up as much as possible. But then the housing boom collapsed and I had my stroke. It really humbled me, and I thought — cliché though it is — life is not a dress rehearsal. I have to do this trip now.” Stow owns two motorcycles: Twiggy, the Suzuki, and Princess, a 2008 BMW GS Adventurer. Although that machine is more like the bike people imagine when they think of adventure travel, Stow explains, “I’m not a big guy. It’s just too heavy for me. If I drop it in the mud 15 times a day, I’m on my way to another stroke, I think.” Instead, he’ll opt for the more nimble machine, although the Suzuki technically belongs to his wife. “If I’m stuck on the Road of Bones (in Russia) and I’m axle deep in mud, I can strip all the baggage off it and I’ve now got a nice light bike that I can get from point A to point B. Twiggy has 77,000 kilometres on the odometer and it will have at least another 30,000 by the time Stow completes his global circuit. Yet, he is confident in the machine. With help from his friends, he has stripped it down and completely rebuilt it. “The only thing that resembles a DR 650 is the engine,” he says. “Everything else has been customized.” The bike is fitted with a Happy Trail luggage system and a longrange fuel tank from Safari Tanks. These and other companies have donated their products because they like the idea of Stow’s trip. He’s a stroke survivor, and his roundthe-world adventure will raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. “I was going to do the trip anyway,” he says. “But as long as you’re going, you may as well do some good.”
Stow points out that he is paying for the trip in its entirety with money pulled from his RRSPs. He admits the budget is tight, but he hopes to complete the journey for under $15,000.
“If anyone chooses to donate to this cause, 100 per cent of the money goes to the Heart and Stroke Foundation,” he says. “But, if you’re in a far-flung country and you see me coming through, please look after me, because I’ll be living like a pauper.”
The five-month, 36,000-km trip will travel eastward from Land’s End in the U.K. to Cape Spear, N.L. Along the way, Stow and his corider, Ulf Müeller, will cross Europe, the Balkans, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, Alaska and Canada. For updates on their progress, go to RTW2013.com. To donate to the Heart and Stroke Foundation on Stow’s behalf, go to tinyURL.com/NevilsRTW. Jeremy Kroeker is the author
of Motorcycle Therapy.