LONDON -- Angela Madsen's journey to the London 2012 Paralympics is nothing short of extraordinary.

Complications following a back injury she sustained while serving in Marine Corps at the age of 20 led to her becoming a paraplegic when she was in her 30s.

Bound to a wheelchair, she fell into a deep depression. She lost her job. Her marriage dissolved.

"I lost my house ... I ended up homeless, kept my things in a locker at Disneyland. Happiest place on earth, right?" she told NBC News at the USA track-and-field training camp at RAF Lakenheath, near Cambridge, England, last week.

But the native Californian missed surfing, so she set out to find a way back to the water, determined to turn her life around.

"I started taking responsibility … and started making the changes and decisions to move positively forward in my life,” she said.

Now, her definition of a disabled person is "somebody who doesn't believe they can and doesn't try.”

'Meet the Superhumans': Paralympians burst onto world stage

She competed in the 2006 world surfing championships and then fell in love with rowing.

She turned this hobby into history by rowing across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

"I didn't row across my first ocean until I was 47,” she said with a laugh.

"I have six Guinness World Records for rowing oceans. I've circumnavigated Great Britain ... I've been places on this planet that no human being has ever been before. A thousand miles from land in any direction ... it's been a pretty amazing life."

Read Angela Madsen's profile at the Paralympic Games' website

Next year, she plans to row solo across the Pacific Ocean.

Madsen rowed for Team USA in the Beijing Paralympic Games, narrowly missing the podium. "I missed the medal rounds by 7-hundredths of a second.”

In the London 2012 Paralympic Games, the 52-year-old is trying her hand at track and field events, competing in the women's shot put and javelin.

"I don’t have any regrets about anything. If I could go back and change anything I wouldn't, except for the amount of pain I have with the rods in my back,” Madsen said. “That could definitely go. But I can’t foresee change in anything. I'm very, very satisfied with the life that I have now."

More world stories from NBC News:

• 'Superhuman' athletes burst onto world stage
• Red Cross halts most Pakistan aid in wake of beheading
• Unexploded WWII bomb disrupts Amsterdam airport
• Pakistani Christians live in fear after girl's blasphemy arrest
• 'A less polar pole': Arctic sea ice at record low
• Botched restoration turns Spanish church into tourist attraction

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

The Scottish village of Dull is hoping to persuade Boring, Oregon, to become “sister” communities, according to reports.

Boring’s Community Planning Organization is due to vote on the idea at a meeting Tuesday, The Gresham Outlook reported.

Meanwhile, excitement is building in rural Perthshire.

Dull community councillor Marjorie Keddie told BBC News that, "everyone has been smiling at the prospect of the very eye-catching road sign this will inevitably require."

The BBC said Elizabeth Leighton, from Perthshire, came up with the idea after a cycling vacation in Oregon when she visited Boring.

Boring - population more than 12,000 - was named after William H. Boring, who fought on the Union side in the American civil war.

Dull, numbering less than 90, is thought to have got its name from the Gaelic words for a meadow or possibly a snare, the BBC said.

There is, inevitably, already a Dull & Boring Facebook page.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Fugitive Canadian porn actor wanted for murder found in Berlin
• US drone strikes in Pakistan kill 27 people in 3 days
• GI's letters provide a glimpse at fog of war
• New Vatican documents leaked after arrest of pope's butler

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world