New Year of Accessible Travel, Wheelchair Basketball and New Orleans
Reflections on a year of accessible travel, plus a thrilling adaptive sports tournament and a preview of major changes on the horizon.
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hello and Happy New Year!
Each year, I look forward to the holiday season as an opportunity to take a break and look back on the year — 2024 was a marvelous one that saw me travel more than 100,000 miles (4 trips around the Earth) across 100+ flights, visit 13 countries (including two new ones — Monaco and Liechtenstein!), and survive a robbery in New York, the first such experience in all my years of accessible travel.
I was also blessed to lead multiple group trips with Wheelchair Travel readers, including my first group tour in Spain, which was one of the best yet! I hope you will join me on a future group tour — you can be the first to know about group trips by upgrading to a paid newsletter subscription.
My 2024 travels took me to many places around the world, where I advocated for increased accessibility and opportunities for disabled travelers. To read more about my past year of travel, check out my new article, 2024 Accessible Travel Year in Review: Top 10 Trips to Remember. I hope you will find inspiration there for your travels in 2025 and beyond!
Opening 2025 at a Wheelchair Basketball Tournament
I did not waste time in tipping-off the new year of accessible travel — I took flight on January 2 (okay, maybe I wasted one day), traveling to Knoxville, Tennessee, followed by a road trip to Georgia for the 2025 Big Peach Slam Jam, the country’s second largest wheelchair basketball tournament behind the NWBA’s National Championship Series in Richmond, Virginia.
Young people from across the country (I saw a license plate from Washington state!) gathered to compete in a friendly tournament that presented countless exciting moments and opportunities for players to shine. It was the first time I had seen so many wheelchair users (hundreds!) gather to compete in sport, and I loved every minute of it. Congratulations to the organizers for hosting an exceptional event.
The attack in New Orleans reminded me of something I wrote in 2016
In the news recently were the terrible stories of two U.S. military veterans who carried out terrorist attacks on New Year’s Day — one in New Orleans, which claimed 14 innocent lives, and a car bombing in Las Vegas which fortunately claimed none.
Events such as these rightly give us pause, but these two attacks caused me to pause for just a moment longer — I have been to the places where they occurred, wheeled on the same street where the New Orleans attacker drove into people, and sat in my wheelchair outside the hotel lobby where the Las Vegas bomber set off explosives in a Cybertruck. The familiarity of place naturally causes one to think, “I could have been one of those victims.”
That feeling reminded me of something I had written following a series of terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium in 2016. I went back to reread the article entitled After Brussels, Lessons for the Wheelchair Traveler, and found that I still feel exactly the same way. In these times, as terrorism and natural disasters seem to be reaching ever closer to our homes, I think that article is worth a read. I am curious to hear from you how events like these impact your outlook on travel and tourism. I plan to keep traveling in spite of it all — do you?
Last chance — Final openings on the Wheelchair Travel Group Trips to Greece
If you missed out on the 2025 Wheelchair Travel Group Trips to Greece, you have another chance! One traveler had a medical emergency, and two others failed to submit their deposits, which means that I now have one accessible room available on each of the previously announced group trips to Greece that will take place in May, June, and September/October 2025.
If you would like to join one of these tours, please send an email to grouptrips@wheelchairtravel.org. Please be sure to include a telephone number where I can reach you — the spaces will be filled on a first come, first serve basis.
Big changes coming in 2025 at WheelchairTravel.org
From a very young age, I was never satisfied with the status quo. On an almost weekly basis, I would rearrange the furniture in my bedroom in the hopes of finding the “perfect” arrangement. When I started building websites in fourth grade, I routinely redesigned them — in part, to better reflect my growing skillset, but also because I was not satisfied with anything less than the best.
In early 2023, I moved the Wheelchair Travel Newsletter to Substack for reasons that I did not share until a year later. This platform has been a wonderful home for my newsletter, but there is a major shortcoming — Substack does not integrate with my website, WheelchairTravel.org (where the majority of my accessible travel content resides), and it’s time to end the separation.
All that to say, in 2025, I am planning to rearrange the furniture around here. The website and newsletter will be combined (finally!), content will be more easily accessible, and the integration will allow me to bring new features to readers (including an ad-free reading experience for paid subscribers).
This project is a major, likely monthslong undertaking — the Wheelchair Travel website and newsletter are both the largest accessible travel publications on the web and on Substack, respectively, and the integration will be technically tricky. Readers and subscribers will receive advance notice of the switchover, and I look forward to a seamless transition. In the meantime, the best way that you can support my work is by upgrading to a paid newsletter subscription or making a gift through PayPal.
Stay tuned for updates and, in the next newsletter, I’ll preview some of my plans for the New Year — including the places I will be visiting and the accessibility causes that I hope to champion.
Take care and have a great weekend,
— John