Catalyst Bikes’ Adaptive Cycling Program Is Empowering Athletes in Atlanta
In Mableton, Georgia, right beside the Silver Comet Trail, stands a 40-foot shipping container with a mural painted by local high school students. It shows runners, walkers and an adaptive cyclist traversing the trail as a Silver Comet passenger locomotive rolls by. The hashtag #AccessThe Comet is emblazoned in the sky above the scene.
For Charlie Monroe, Cobb County’s natural resource manager, this container and its contents represent the purpose of the Silver Comet Trail, access to natural resources for all. The container, called the Bike Barn, houses a world-class set of adaptive cycles owned by Catalyst Sports, an Atlanta nonprofit that connects people with physical disabilities to gear and programming that helps them pursue their athletic goals. Monroe still remembers the debut of the adaptive cycling program, run by Desiree Stanley.
“She had several individuals that came to tears because it was their first time ever being able to ride a bicycle,” he recalled. He regularly sees people using adaptive equipment on this section of the Comet, a scene he continues to find encouraging. “It’s just a wonderful opportunity for people to feel independent,” he said.
The adaptive bike program, Stanley said, thrives thanks to the Silver Comet Trail. Hosting rides on the trail offers Catalyst’s athletes a mostly flat, protected starting or restarting point for becoming cyclists. There, she said, they gain confidence and build community. “And then if they want to start building their endurance more, we could just go further and start hitting the climbs.”
When I met Stanley at Catalyst’s recently opened bike shop, she noted that there’s a BeltLine connection in the works, and that she’s looking forward to leading rides from there in the future (see Rails to Trails’ Winter 2026 cover story, “Southern Trailblazers”).
A Catalyst for Outdoor Activity
Catalyst Sports works with athletes and families referred from many of the region’s world-class medical centers, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Shepherd Center—a research and rehab center for people who have experienced spinal cord or brain injuries—and the VA Medical Center.
“Allowing Catalyst to have their Bike Barn nearby has been an absolute godsend for us,” wrote Faye Yost, parent of a Catalyst athlete. “Seven years ago, my then-18-year-old son suffered a stroke due to a rare congenital brain disease. Being able to ride an adaptive bike with Catalyst on the Silver Comet has truly been life-changing for him. The trail’s smooth, wide and safe surface allows him to ride for as long as he’s able, providing both physical and emotional therapy.”
Bea Stansky, a resident of Dallas, Georgia, moved there specifically to live along the trail. “For me, the Silver Comet is more than a paved path; it is a vital bridge back to the natural world,” she wrote. “Mobility issues had taken away the ability to hike, leaving a quiet void. Now, gliding beneath the trees, I am back in that forest path I missed so deeply.
This trail fuels and calms me in equal measure, providing the restorative energy and peace that only true immersion in nature can offer. [The trail] is the reason I moved here, and it is the quiet heartbeat of my new life.”
After borrowing her first adapted trike from Catalyst Sports in early 2025, Amanda Korb earned a Challenged Athletes Foundation grant to purchase her own. Like many Catalyst athletes in Atlanta and across the southeast, her bike was assembled by Desiree’s husband, Charles Stanley, an Army veteran and adaptive cyclist as well.
“That’s what saved him is cycling,” Desiree Stanley said. “And he just wants to help others.”
Pathway to Empowerment
For Korb, riding the entire Silver Comet Trail in sections became a goal after a progressive muscle disorder ended her pursuit of hiking the Appalachian Trail. She had 19 miles left to go when she wrote [to Rails to Trails], having already taken in some of the trail’s highlights like the Pumpkinvine Trestle and the Brushy Mountain Tunnel. “For a few hours while I ride, I feel the freedom of movement so much it’s almost as if my muscle disorder goes away for a little bit,” she wrote.
Katie Baker, a recreational therapist with the Shepherd Center’s SHARE Military Initiative program, expressed that one of her favorite moments in the profession happened on the Silver Comet. “A client who had been struggling with depression and chronic pain was hesitant to get on a bike, but once he did, he couldn’t stop laughing and smiling,” she wrote. “Later, he told me it was the first time in a long while that he felt like himself again … that riding gave him a sense of freedom, play, and permission to enjoy the moment.”
The Silver Comet, Baker wrote, isn’t just a place for her clients to ride. “It’s a place of healing.”
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