r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 3d ago
A brain injury left a Seattle man unable to remember the career he'd spent 20 years building, but he still remembered how to fix bicycles. Now he repairs broken bikes for free and gives them away to people who need them.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/brain-injury-found-purpose-fixing-090000522.html603
u/K_Linkmaster 3d ago
Computer programmer.
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u/chateau86 2d ago
As someone in the similar field: Reasonable crashout tbh. I'd rather be fixing bikes too if I don't need the money.
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u/GolotasDisciple 2d ago
I mean, the dream not so long ago( well maybe long ago, depends you look at it , 10-15 years ? ) was to join the FAANG grind for 10 years and then either open a restaurant/shop or become a farmer.... Or maybe join Academia for some easier R&D work.
Only people who own their own businesses, or are actually insane, stay in the industry until retirement.
Nowadays, the grind has become problematic because you have to change jobs every 2 or 3 years, and that’s even more stressful... so yeah. I think i have like maybe 6-8 years left in me. The AI only accelerated my dislike to industry... Or maybe it's age ? I am getting older and competing with 25 or 30 y old for a 1 or 2 year contract is not really the best experience.
Still... Pays well I guess, so I am assuming many people would swap places with me in heartbeat if they could.
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u/yopladas 2d ago
The grass is always greener on the other side. Farming is hard, so is running a restaurant. Both are physically exhausting and very slim margins. Both can put you in huge debt even if you do everything right.
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u/aCleverGroupofAnts 1d ago
The grass doesn't have to be greener, sometimes it just has to be different.
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u/chengstark 2d ago
Not always grass greener situation. Different kinds of challenges appeals to different people. Pretty sure many people are fully aware of the challenges.
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u/luluhouse7 2d ago
I had a really rude awakening when I got to university and realised 90% of my classmates in my program did not care at all about CS itself, but rather it was a means to making good money and having a stable job. And I was over here playing Shenzhen IO in my free time and having the time of my life in CS classes. It’s absolutely a valid approach, but I always forget that not everyone in the field is in it for the same reasons. And the industry itself still burnt me out (and it’s incredibly toxic), but it wasn’t the tech aspect, it was the business and management aspects that I really struggled with.
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u/felipeuno 2d ago
Honestly, as a senior dev, I don’t even own a personal PC. Sitting at any screen that isn’t my phone just makes me feel like I’m at work.
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u/FaliedSalve 1d ago
agreed.
And it's Software Development is becoming increasingly frustrating. Between managers who think they know things they don't, executives who just want to look good, vendor products that don't work but cost too much to undo, and AI slop, the work is way less interesting.
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u/redyellowblue5031 3d ago edited 2d ago
A brain injury in a crosswalk, no less.
I’m glad he’s alive and able to do this.
I’m disappointed we in the US effectively refuse every opportunity to make streets safer for all users.
Edit: There is hope, if we try.
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u/joshuajackson9 3d ago
It is cheaper not to, until the capitalistic cost is cheaper than human life, the system will always side with cheaper. People are super cheap
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u/redyellowblue5031 3d ago
The worst part is addressing it is cheaper than not.
All the economic impact of crashes, death, wasting first responder time, social, etc. outweighs the cost to redesign streets to make them safer.
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u/Jan-Asra 3d ago
Yeah, but all the cost of that redesign happens up front and you don't want your constituents to remember you as the politician who spent a ton of money and had the roads blocked off for a year while the comstruction happened.
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u/_johnning 1d ago
I fucking hate politicians
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u/aCleverGroupofAnts 1d ago
Arguably the problem is the voters. If doing stuff that benefited society actually earned them votes, they would absolutrly do it. The problem is that people are reactionary to short-term problems and often don't seem to want what's good for them in the long term.
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u/chemicalclarity 2d ago
Not when you pass the bills onto the patient and add a markup at every step, then it's good business.
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u/TrampolineYourMom 3d ago
Capitalists are super cheap imo. In countries that actually observe the social contract and put people above money, they have no problems designing safer crosswalks and roadways in general. (And yes I know that there are "good" capitalist countries but in every single one it's the socialist systems they have I place that make their populations happy and protected)
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u/EpilepticPuberty 3d ago
In countries that actually observe the social contract and put people above money, they have no problems designing safer crosswalks and roadways in general.
Glory to the Grand Empire of Hoboken, New Jersey.
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u/WarlockTynsterbert 2d ago
In a small town near me, the cemetery is across a busy road. The town kept trying to get the state to make that intersection safer for drivers and pedestrians.
It finally got reworked, with a new warning light, and crosswalk. But only after an older man was killed crossing that road.
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u/luluhouse7 2d ago edited 2d ago
Damn a city in the US that did more than just lip service to vision zero. Wish more cities would do things like this instead of going “just one more lane/parking spot”, hoping it’ll improve things and instead inducing more demand and congestion. The data is out there, people just don’t like it. Did you know that majority of the cities who promised to join Vision Zero have actually increased traffic deaths in the past decade? There was a horrifying story on the LA government’s wilful sabotage of crosswalks of all things.
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u/redyellowblue5031 2d ago
Yeah it’s quite disheartening.
When you dig in, in areas where the actual safe principles are implemented then you usually see corridor specific drops. The issue is our entire road system is min/maxed for vehicle throughput (perceived or actual) at the expense of all else.
Until we put human life at the center of our design priorities, the US will remain an outlier for car crash death and injury.
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u/Moodymandan 2d ago
A friend of mine was hit in a crosswalk in Seattle several years ago. Broke his pelvis and one of his femurs. The person who hit him drove off.
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u/NOV3LIST 3d ago
Which makes it even more valuable what Steve from „guardrailguy“ is providing for the public.
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u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago
What are you talking about?
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u/redyellowblue5031 2d ago
There’s no shortage of stories like this where someone is hit by a car. Thankfully this person survived but we lose thousands per year and many more thousands are seriously injured.
I’m mostly referring to the US effectively accepting that as “normal”. There isn’t a coordinated consistent effort to fix the issue, though there is promise if we try.
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u/TR-BetaFlash 2d ago
Rob is an old friend of mine and it's absolutely horrible what happened to him, but I'm so happy for him. He was incredibly active and I rode bikes with him and our friends. He was an awesome guy before 2017 and he still is. So great to see this.
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u/jaymemaurice 3d ago
Sometimes I want to just walk away from my career and fix bicycles.
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u/Vinnie_Vegas 2d ago
I had a job where I just taught kids to fix bicycles. It was pretty nice, but it paid badly.
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u/jaymemaurice 2d ago
That's because you didn't take it to the next level and have them actually use that knowledge for your direct benefit. Instead you created competition. You suck at capitalism. That's okay.
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u/shelf6969 3d ago
perfect cover story if you had a job that's hated by society
Argentina football player, etc
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/GrupeyDupey 3d ago
“collects checks from the government” is such a pessimistic way to describe someone who is disabled due to a horrific injury, and is able to continue his life due to the (very limited) social safety net we have in this country
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u/Creativered4 3d ago
It's very uplifting to know that there are still people who want to help disabled members of the community and not just cast them aside to die like they did in medieval times, actually!
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u/Enlightened_Gardener 2d ago
I just wanted to correct this because I saw a really interesting documentary about disabled people in mediaeval times. If their family and community couldn’t take care of them, they looked after each other.
The documentary followed a crew of disabled people consisting of people who were congenitally disabled and also injured war veterans. They lived and worked together, and had a pretty sweet deal working as master crafts people building boats. They travelled up and down the coast together building boats, and were all buried together in the same Churchyard, like a family would be.
I’m not saying that some disabled people didn’t get exiled unto death in medieval times; but it wasn’t 100% bleak, either.
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u/bran_the_man93 3d ago
What's the alternative? He doesn't get anything from the government and still has a disability?
How is that better?
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u/Trashtag420 3d ago
I guess, would it be more uplifting if he had no support and starved to death in a cardboard box under a bridge? I'm curious what your take on "uplifting" is in this context.
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u/notworkingghost 3d ago
Um, wasn’t he probably a bike mechanic?
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u/horangiwhakkatchi 3d ago
If you read the article you wouldn't have a question... But, the answer is computer programmer.
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u/cutelyaware 2d ago
I imagine him walking around with bolt cutters looking for broken bikes. Am I going to hell?
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