Considering all he has accomplished, considering the unrelentingly positive attitude he lives by, the last way you want to start telling Steve “Wheels” Bucaro’s story is by talking about the crash. But you have to get it out of the way. So here’s how it goes.

April 15, 1998, Bucaro is approaching a multi-lane intersection on his 1992 Kawasaki Ninja^® ZX™-7 at about 20 mph when the light turns from red to green. As he enters the intersection, a 95-year-old driver runs the red light and turns left in front of him. Given the speeds involved, it could have been a minor crash. But it wasn’t. Bucaro was in a coma for two weeks and barely survived. Spinal damage left him paralyzed below the middle of his chest. Just a few weeks after he finally got out of the hospital (nine months later), his house caught fire. Some people, even strong people, have been ruined by such cruel misfortune. Wheels Bucaro decided not to be one of them.

That brings us to the real story of Wheels Bucaro.

Inspired by what he saw at some custom truck shows, he customized a Dodge truck and set up a side business called Check Me Out Customs. Some of his creations showed up on magazine covers and in a Mountain Dew television commercial. He became a fixture on the car and truck show circuit, “always the only one there in a wheelchair.” But despite the recognition and the outlet for his creativity that he found in the custom work, something was missing. That something was riding.

“It was always in my blood. It always was,” Bucaro says. “The dumbest thing I ever did was sell my bike after the accident. I should have known I could have rebuilt it. It took me another 10 years to get another one.”

When he did finally decide to apply his customizing skills to the goal of getting back on two wheels, Bucaro knew he wanted to start right where he left off: with a 1992 ZX-7, a bike he loved and, on a more practical level, a bike he knew well. So he found a basket-case for sale and, with a lot of help, began the task of modifying it for his own personal use. Of course it had to look good, so Eye Candy Cycle Designs not only helped put the bike together, but also gave it a unique but classy paint job. Then came the essential modifications that would allow the bike to be ridden by a rider who cannot use his legs. For that, he got some expert help from Lee Beaver, of Bullhead City, Arizona, another experienced motorcyclist who doesn’t let his need for a wheelchair stop him from riding.

Beaver designed a system for Bucaro’s ZX-7 that was like the one he uses on his own motorcycle. Basically, two arms with rollerblade wheels on the ends are attached to the subframe and are deployed by an electric motor. When Bucaro comes to a stop, he presses a switch on the handlebar and the arms (Bucaro calls them his “landing gear”) come down and hold the bike upright, until he gets moving again. A Pingel electric shifter allows him to shift gears and Works Performance provided a racing shock to upgrade the aged ZX’s suspension. But it was some issues with basic tuning that were Wheels’ undoing on one of his first test rides.

Not all the carburetion issues were sorted out on the rebuilt motorcycle when Bucaro took a short test ride. He was less than two miles from home when the bike sputtered and stalled. He lost forward momentum and tipped over, harmlessly, before he could deploy his “landing gear.” Horrified onlookers saw him lying helplessly on the ground and assumed the worst. “Don’t move!” some of them urged him, worried he might suffer a back injury.

“They couldn’t understand why I was laughing so hard,” Bucaro remembers. “I just said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m already paralyzed!’”

That attitude, a tendency to laugh at setbacks and see the bright side of everything, has kept Bucaro going.

“You have to have a positive attitude,” he says. “Hey, I get to sit down all day. I don’t complain that my feet hurt at the end of the day.” Apparently, he can find the positive in anything.

And to say he has come a long way from the first rides on his modified ZX is an understatement. He has since taken the bike to several track days and has already set lap times that would earn him his racing license with the Willow Springs Motorcycle Club. Not bad for a guy whose lean angles are limited by the fact that he can’t hang off or shift his lower body weight.

That’s the next stage that Bucaro is currently planning: to build a newer motorcycle and go racing. Once again, he’ll no doubt be the only guy in the group (this time, the group of road racers) who’s using a wheelchair. But by now, nothing that Wheels Bucaro does should be a surprise to us any more.

By Lance Oliver

Lance Oliver's book of motorcycling stories, The Ride So Far, is now available from Whitehorse Press. In addition to being a contributing editor for Accelerate, he has written for several other motorcycle magazines, as well as non-motorcycle publications.

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