Oklahoma City man pedaling back to life

No way, his friend said, betting two cheeseburgers that Jeff Jones couldn’t barefoot water ski all the way from that bridge over Lake Eufaula to the marina several miles away.

Jones ate well that night.

Still in his 30s, the soccer player and former wrestler was at his peak. Jones was lifting weights and training to compete in long-distance barefoot skiing, a specialized subset of extreme water sports that takes strength, guts and a dash of crazy.

"He was kind of the talk of the lake, really,” said his wife, Nancy.

Then the back pains began. Tests showed he had four crumbling spinal disks, too many for surgery. Jones took another blow. Experts diagnosed a weakness he had begun noticing in his left leg as Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, a hereditary progressive nerve disorder that can cause loss of muscle and sensation, and "claw foot.”

"From my knees down, my legs lost all their size,” he said. "It’s just mainly bone down there now.”

The Oklahoma City man sold his "Barefoot Nautique” ski boat. He gave up working out and running his own small construction company. He hit bottom.

"I was pretty much done and down on life and everything,” he recalls.

Remembers Nancy, a registered nurse: "He was kind of really depressed.”

Jeff searched for a solution to the frequent and debilitating pain. Chiropractor Dan Norris recommended back exercises, which reduced the pain. But muscle loss in his legs made it hard for Jeff to walk any distance without an ankle rolling, causing him to fall.

One day as Jeff was driving to his home near Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, he noticed guys riding into the nearby woods on bicycles. "I thought, ‘Shoot, that looks like fun.’”

Desperate for any physical activity, he talked Nancy into dusting off their old Schwinns and giving it a try.

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