Looking For An Adventure in an Electric Wheelchair. Part 4

Another quick update.

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Hello Cabbage Heads

How is the world with my fellow chronics? For the new people I have ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) often know as CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) a mane I disagree with and dislike greatly as it doesn’t encompass in any way all that ME is. I include it purely as that’s what a lot of people know. I’ve been living with this disease for 15+ years and I’ve tried an awful lot of things, to help, 99% of which haven’t.

Up on Ilkley Moor where I want to go for a ‘walk’ again, haven’t been for over a year.

After having tried a couple of electric bike I decided I liked the eTrike. it was good as well because if you can find a second hand manual version you can buy a kit to convert it to electric assist. on the website they start it is just an assist but … when we spoke to people on the ground whilst testing them out they didn’t see a problem with using it 99% of the time, and the range is 8 miles, so we decided to go for that version. I had found a contact with a manual one for sale and we decided to go look at it.

It is in very good condition for its age, having been barely used over the last 4 years by its previous owner. The colour is more a bronze than the high gold look here. We will be adding a few extras, the electric assist obviously, tyre inserts to stop a puncture, and side wings to stop mud splattering up me. We did look at various other extras too but felt we could add them later if needed - a push bar to the back for R to push me with it needed, I’d still have to steer though; arm rests, could only be used when he was pushing me and would need removing at other times; a higher seat back; would involve new structural work on the chair, thought we’d see how it goes. All of these can be bought at a later date and easily added if needed.

The electric assist replaces the back wheel assembly and is coloured. They no longer have the colour of the chair available and I was asked to choose another. I chose a contrasting colour of deep metallic red. This stumped the sales people a bit, apparently no one does this, they either match or choose black. Go me for being original.

So all the parts are ordered, deposit has been paid, and now we wait the 10-12 weeks (and extra wait time for Xmas etc) for the parts to come in. A full service will ensue and hopefully by February I will be mobile in the world again, when I will update you further.

Oh yes, we are also having a secure shed installed as we have these ridiculous steps to negotiate to get from the house to the car, and that’s not viable carrying 25kg of wheelchair up and down on a regular basis. So my ‘go to’ garden and landscaping guys are going to install a thief proof system for it.

Till next time.

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