By Colleen Smith Armstrong, The Islands’ Sounder

ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. – One of Jordan Griffin’s greatest wishes is to downhill mountain-bike alongside his best friends. As a paraplegic, that requires a very specialized and expensive piece of equipment.

Driven by the desire to see his friend’s dream become a reality, Spencer Sare has built that bike, detailing the process from start to finish as his college senior project.

“When we started last September, everyone kind of laughed at us and said we couldn’t do it,” said Sare, who was joined by three other Washington State University mechanical engineering students on the endeavor.

From his design on the computer to long hours spent in the WSU machine shop, the bike took three months to complete. Sare says it is one of the most ambitious senior projects that has ever been executed at WSU.

Read all of this article by Colleen Smith Armstrong in the Feb. 24 issue of the Islands’ Sounder at http://www.islandssounder.com/news/369841861.html#.