A disability should not define a person.
And it certainly shouldn’t keep a person from experiencing the world. But too often it does, and people think of those who are disabled as home-bound, unable to explore.
But one 33-year-old has set out to change those long-held beliefs, one new place at a time.
Cory Lee was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy when he was only two-years-old. By the age of four, he was in a wheelchair. Lee said that his mother, in spite of his wheelchair, instilled a love of travel in him. She would plan summer trips to Washington D.C. and Disney World.
And while 20 years ago when he first started traveling, the world was much less accessible, time has made it much easier for those in wheelchairs to travel anywhere.
Cory Lee visiting Antarctica. Photo courtesy of Lee
Now he runs a website, Curb Free with Cory Lee, dedicated to helping others in wheelchairs learn that it is possible for them to travel.
“I started my blog, Curb Free with Cory Lee, in 2013. I’ve visited 41 countries so far. I travel about six months a year. The other half, I write and plan other trips,” he said.
Lee is upfront about the challenges he has faced.
“For my high school graduation, my mother took me to Europe. I brought a converter and an adapter for my wheelchair, and when we plugged it in at a hotel in Germany, it blew a fuse and power went out in the entire hotel for about 15 minutes,” he said.
And he doesn’t sugarcoat the problems with flying.
“First, I have to get into what’s called an aisle chair, which is a narrow wheelchair that can fit in the plane’s aisles. Then I’m lifted into the airline seat. I spent the flight worrying about my wheelchair, which had been broken on half of my trips. Once it was so damaged that I couldn’t drive it out of the airport. The airline had a repair company fix it the next day,” Lee said.
Cory Lee explores a beach. Photo courtesy of Lee
But mostly, Lee said, he has found travel to be accessible and the sky is now the limit for him.
He has attended concerts, tried adaptive paragliding in Switzerland and visits beaches all over. He refuses to let the wheelchair determine what he can do.
In 2020, right before Covid hit, Lee visited the White Continent, and he accomplished the massive goal of traveling to all seven continents, a first for a person in a powered wheelchair, he said.
“I remember the moment we arrived (in Antartica),” Lee said, “I immediately just started crying. It was such an emotional moment for me, because I had worked so long and so hard to get to that point.”
He had made his way there by cruise ship. “To finally be there and see the whales, the penguins, the seals and the icebergs was totally surreal.”
So now he focuses on helping others find that same joy in traveling.
“The word accessible means something different to every person just depending on your own individual needs. So, If you really want it to be accessible for you, then you really have to ask all the questions,” Lee said.
Lee said some places are better at being accessible than others, and those can be places you visit more often.
“Places like Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, those are some I keep going back to time and time again because they are so accessible,” Lee said. “The people are incredibly friendly, the food is good, and it’s easy to get around with a wheelchair.”
Lee’s advice for new travelers is simple – start small.
“Travel locally and domestically to figure out everything that goes into traveling with a wheelchair,” Lee advised. “Once you start building more confidence with travel, you can go much farther.”
Watch one of Lee’s tours of an accessible vacation condo, below.
