| I need to be like this guy |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|04:29 pm] |
Man Uses Wheelchair To Shovel Out
You'd think this is an accessory that would be semi-available by now, but it isn't. Anyone want to help me turn into a snowplow? I'm only half joking... when it snows in any significant amount, I'm messed up for a week or more (along with plenty of other PWDs) because snow gets piled at curbs and bus stops, making it hard to get anywhere.
The article is old and the video link is dead, but he has the video on his website. Here someone else on YouTube also using a motorized chair as a plow. |
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| FAULT DETECTED |
[Oct. 10th, 2005|04:52 pm] |
EDIT: I now have gigantic, but functional, loaner wheelchair. Pretty lucky, really. Now, if only the biblically torrential rain would let up for a bit so I can actually use it to go somewhere...
My wheelchair said its battery was charged when I started out today. Good enough.
I turned it off at the bus stop to put on my jacket.
Once turned on, it would not move.
Was pushed home 2 blocks by a kind stranger.
That could have gone much worse.
I have had lots of chair issues this past year, but none can really be
attributed to the chair itself. They've been the fault of people
who are in charge of keeping it running, modifying it as needed,
approving things. My chair has been held hostage by bureaucracy,
more or less.
There is definitely something wrong with the chair now. And it's
not a battery problem, because it's charged just fine. Plugging a
programmer device into the chair yields the following cryptic message: FAULT DETECTED E30 CPU EEPROM
How excellent. It seems I am no longer immune to the electrical
issues that plague so many powerchairs much earlier in life. I've
gone on about what a workhorse it's been over the last year and a half, but no more. And once
electrical issues start, I hear they never really stop.
It wouldn't be as frustrating if my manual chair were not so useless to
me. It's really just an indoor chair these days, not really good or safe
outside. And yet, I have a very busy week ahead...
Argh.
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| A clicky reunion |
[Jul. 29th, 2005|11:08 pm] |
My [motorized] wheelchair came back to me today, after months of run-arounds and a
month in captivity. It now does the new thing they said it would do... but god
help me, I don't know if I like it.
Some time was spent with a joystick programmer and a bit more
reacquanting myself with the chair in narrow, industrially carpeted
hallways. I tend to drive much faster than might be expected (if you
expect such things), so I was eager to re-learn my top speed. I sped
off to work, sped around the shiny hardwood floors of my office, and
realized that there was still a shudder when I started moving, still a
squeak that sounds like a bearing that needs replacing, a right front wheel that still rattles like a broken shopping cart, and the turning
was much too... turn-y.
I decided that since I could, I would walk home from work by way of the
West Side Highway bike path.
It's a distance of perhaps three miles, but in the maze of Manhattan,
all distances become much longer thanks to crowded streets, sidewalks
(with bad curbs, of course), and stoplights. So I take flat, open
spaces over buses and local streets whenever I can (in this chair, as often as possible), and marvel at people who think it's a long way to
go, especially in a powerchair. Silly New Yorkers.
I thought we'd programmed it right, the therapist and I. But
outdoors, I just wasn't in enough control. So I ran home,
remembering that my illustrious roommate owns one of those
programmers. I ran back to the highway (with the requisite riding
in the street to get me there) and there I must have been a
sight. I know I was, with a funny-looking controller in my lap,
zooming back and forth on the same stretch of path, avoiding cyclists
as I stopped short and burst ahead and turned and weaved and slalomed
the double line for an hour.
After all that, I still have an odd tendancy to drive to the left, no matter what setting I adjust. I'm not sure why.
I do know, thanks to the programmer's odometer function, that I have
travelled 773 miles in the 15 months I have owned this chair. As
these things go, that's pretty impressive. It makes me feel
better about my decision to "go power". Those are hundreds of
miles I wouldn't have traveled on the strength of my puny arms alone.
Of course, I did put on 3 more miles this afternoon, just testing it on
the path. I think I might be a bit particular about these things.
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snow
sleepy