Ken Foraker has biked more of Sedona with one leg than many people he knows have with two.

“Just to do an easy ride with one leg, it’s harder than the hardest ride those guys ever do,” said Foraker, who lost his left leg as well as riding coach Chip Wessberg to a drunk driver 27 years ago near his hometown of Santa Barbara, Calif. “Their 100 percent is my 60 percent, so I’m riding at 130 percent to ride with able-bodied guys.”

The driver who killed Wessberg had a blood-alcohol level of 0.25 percent when he hit Foraker at 10:15 a.m., severing his leg.

The impact also drove him and a female biker into the Pacific Coast Highway, inflicting massive internal injuries on Foraker and giving the other rider road rash “from her ankle to her ear,” he said. “Her clothes were just torn off. Someone that drunk, that early — ridiculous.”

Although he recovered from the internal injuries enough to graduate from college, the 1989 vehicular manslaughter “destroyed” Foraker’s credit, his bike repair career and left him living off $1,000 a month in disability payments, he said.

“Everything got messed up,” Foraker said. “Before, I’d just ride my bike to people’s houses and did [the job] all out of my fanny pack. Plus, I grew a lot of food on a big, organic farm. I rented this greenhouse from a Chinese family for $75 a month. I made good money every three weeks, then pay my rent off for six months.”

The twice-married 51-year-old has spent the nearly three decades since in many different locales, professional pursuits and relationships.

“He just follows the weather, follows friends,” said local bike shop owner Jim Monahan, Foraker’s friend of seven years. “He’s got a big old BMW that’s solar-powered, and that’s where he pretty much spends his time.”

Foraker lived in Flagstaff for four years before taking up part-time residence in West Sedona in 2015.

“Last summer, it was disorienting, sleeping in my car, just being alone,” he said. “I was in Oregon, I was in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, in December I was in San Diego with some friends — I was all over.”

Fifteen years before that, Foraker had been a ski instructor in Alaska.

“Now I ski mostly Flagstaff and Colorado,” he said. “A month ago, I was bouncing around there for almost a week after I met my dad, Hal, in Billings, Mont., coming up from Texas on a bike ride. He’s 80.”

But the biking has remained constant, keeping at bay the pain which, until 10 years ago, was just as constant, he said.

“Until I was 37, it hurt to get out of bed,” he said. “Cycling is the most painful sport to power through.”

Not only are bicycles better than ever, though, so is Foraker, who looks to race his first Sedona Bike and Brew at the Hilton Sedona Golf Course beginning Friday, Aug. 26.

“Three days out of the hospital, I rode with a broken pelvis,” Foraker said. “I knew I could ride, so then I took six months off just to let the skin grafts heal.”

Then he was back on the road training for the Disabled World Championships in France, where nine months later he would place ninth.

Two weeks after Bike and Brew, Foraker will travel Thursday, Sept. 15, to the Legends of the Kamikaze in Mammoth Lakes, Calif.

“It’s just like a high-speed run,” Foraker said. “I’ve been invited to race against a bunch of these able-bodied old guys who are fast because, trust me: The old guys beat the new guys.”

Besides Hangover, Hog Heaven and the back side of the Hiline Trail, Foraker has ridden all of the local trails with one leg, he said.

“People here think this place is super extreme? They don’t even know what steep is here,” he said. “Compared to Canada, where 9.7 miles is, like, 1,800 feet of climbing, this place is like a city park.”

For 12 hours and six days every week, Foraker, with no help for his missing left leg save a pedal clip, bikes as much as 20 miles a day locally.

“There’s an inherent risk, where his missing-leg side is,” Monahan said. “He’s got to be sure he gets off to the inside, or he just tips over or probably doesn’t do it.”

So Monahan is concerned about Foraker’s exposure on the tougher, double-diamond-rated trails like Slim Shady, where he nearly slipped and fell 50 feet off a cliff last winter.

“That was because of trail sabotage,” Foraker said. “People had piled all these, like, marble rocks in the place where you’d put your foot down if you didn’t make it.

“I sprained my ankle pretty bad and hit my head, [but] I was really lucky. I would’ve ended up going another 30 feet down in this ravine. They would’ve smelled the body eventually, but no one would’ve ever even found me.”

Foraker feels he is still fast enough to finish among the top 10 mountain bikers in the world, but he won’t be involved with the U.S. Paralympic Team and its many sponsors.

Like he discovered during his training for his first disabled bike race, Foraker couldn’t fit in with his
teammates while training for the 2012 Olympics in San Diego, he said.

“Those people are so into their disabilities, they hate me,” Foraker said. “They totally discriminate against me.

“I’m not identifying with being disabled. I don’t feel like I only ride with or race against disabled people, because that’s not the truth. I’m a disabled person that rides bikes with able-bodied people.”