13th July 2026
Simon was born in Nanning, China, without part of his arm below-the-elbow, and adopted at age two into a family of five kids at the time, now seven. He grew up in Estes Park, Colorado, and never saw his arm as something that needed fixing. This June, Simon turned 22 and graduated from Colorado School of Mines with a degree in mechanical engineering. He and two friends, none of whom had ever done a bikepacking trip before, booked themselves a graduation present: a once in a lifetime cycling trip across Japan. Four days before they left, Simon was fitted with Hero FLEX and a biker attachment. We sat down with him to talk about the trip and how the gear held up.
I didn’t have any limitations growing up. My parents never pushed to get a prosthetic in the first place, it was never a big problem to solve. I did try a Shriners prosthetic for a bit when I was seven or eight, but it was never truly useful. I only used it for a short period before it was clear I was better off without it, and it spent the rest of its time in a closet. Outside of that I just figured things out on my own. Tying my shoes was probably the biggest hurdle, but once I worked that out, that was it.
Simon wearing his Hero FLEX with biker attachment.
Through my dad, actually. He saw it in an email. I didn’t really go out and research other options first, it just came to me at the right time. Elise, who fitted me in Colorado, was great. Super easy, no nonsense. Honestly the whole thing felt more like getting a product than going through a clinical procedure, which I appreciated. I was fitted just four days before I left for Japan, and I’m glad the fit was right so I could get on the road and use it.
We started in Kagoshima and ended up at Lake Toya in Hokkaido, so we covered a lot of ground, roughly 800 to 850 miles of actual biking over 45 days. We did take a few trains along the way, partly for rest days and partly to skip biking through some of the bigger urban areas. Some days I was on the bike for three hours, other days closer to six. None of us had ever done a bike touring trip before, and we hardly trained for it. I survived, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone.
This was the first time I could really push my biking to its full limits.
Honestly, it held up the whole way, 45 days and 850 miles. Before this, I’d never ridden with anything supporting that side, so I was either off balance or riding slower just to compensate. The attachment kept my arm ventilated the entire trip, and on the bike specifically there was no rubbing, and I didn’t need to make any adjustments along the way. Being able to go at faster speeds actually helped a lot too, it gave me counterbalance, helped with braking, and assisted with the push and pull motion on the bars. It genuinely helped balance things out.
The conditions were hot, humid, and rainy a lot of the time. My arm did get wet on occasion, and I’d need to dry things out, but the ventilation was genuinely good, an acceptable level for what I was putting it through.
Simon with his Hero FLEX, photographed after returning home from Japan.
The socket, hands down. That was the biggest selling point for me.
I just graduated from Colorado School of Mines in May with a degree in mechanical engineering. In about a week and a half, I start my first job as a manufacturing engineer at Blue Origin in Cape Canaveral, Florida, helping build the New Glenn rockets. Hero FLEX is coming with me. It’s my main prosthesis for riding now, and I’m planning to test it out on some other sports I’ve been meaning to try.
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