You know how some people dream of their teeth falling out or realizing they have an exam they haven’t studied for and aren’t wearing any pants? My recurring nightmare is usually that I am traveling or at a conference or on a big campus somewhere, alone and a bit lost and my wheelchair either breaks or I realize it has just disappeared.
In these dreams, I am sitting on a sidewalk trying to figure out my next steps. I can walk a little, but only so far at one time and it is quite painful (like, maybe a block on a good day.) On my dream sidewalk I prepare to try and explain to strangers, in a language that I don’t speak, how I got there, that my wheelchair has gone AWOL, and what I need. Mercifully I also am one of those people who realize they’re dreaming, take control of it, and “lucid dream” or simply force myself to wake up.
Let me set the scene for you! It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday in San Francisco. I was on my way to do some errands yesterday and meet my son for lunch, looking forward to my little cruise around Noe Valley which has some cute shops and a Whole Foods. The bus stopped at my corner and the ramp was lowering. Beep beep beeeeeep beep, you know the drill! Then the heart stopping moment where my powerchair would not turn on. It threw an error. Yikes!!! I called out to the bus driver to ask him to wait. Restarted. Same error and then it shut off. More explanations as I beg the bus driver to wait for me to figure things out.
I tried taking my battery out, which is pretty easy for me to do but which was complicated my backpack and a big shopping bag hanging off the back of my chair. That didn’t help. A lady next to me who had her kid in a stroller offered help. I ended up putting the chair into neutral, and asked her for a push down the bus ramp. (Actually she started pushing me while I was still taking off the 2nd rear wheel lever which spun me around and kind of pinched my hand, but good intentions…) Victory, I was on the sidewalk and the bus was able to pull away.
At leisure now, I could consider my options.
A) Call my partner or friends for help. My chair (a Whill Ci from 2018) is fairly easy to break down into three pieces plus the under-seat basket. They could load me and the chair into a cab.
B) The same, but I try to do it myself, maybe with the help of a random kind stranger or a hopefully willing Lyft driver. This is more difficult. Drivers likely to refuse.
C) Call a wheelchair van via Waymo, Fog City, or Uber. The Waymo and Fog City ones are cheaper. I would put the chair back into neutral and ask for a push up the ramp into the van and then get help once I was home. Complication, requires cooperation from driver.
D) Wait for my son, do our bank errand by him pushing me half a block to the bank, then try to get home via A or C with his help though he was busy with some important errands of his own.
None of those sounded great to me.
E) Text or call ILRCSF’s mobile rescue
F) Try and fix it myself
I went for those options, texting Vince that I don’t YET need rescue but I might within the hour.
Onward to beautiful, GOAT-like, Option F! Take all the million bags and backpack off the chair. Disassemble the chair. I am now sitting in a heap of bags, my walking cane, and wheelchair parts, and my TRUSTY GOAT FIX IT KIT toolbag!!!
And I’m googling “error code 00, whill ci”! Ok, check the electrical contacts, maybe it is the battery, I take out the battery and spit shine the metal a bit with the rag from my Fix It Kit. The battery housing also has two things that look kind of like spark plugs which can go out of whack, so I wiggled them around to teach them a lesson. Taking off the joystick controller on the chair arm sucks so I just wiggled it firmly hoping that would suffice if something inside was loose.
The problem turned out to be the point where the chair I sit in mounts on the seat pole. That has to be easy to take apart, but also, it’s where the electrical contact between the joystick and motor controller, and the battery and motor, lives! That thing is very oddly designed, kind of floating around not anchored to anything. I remembered suddenly that years ago it had problems which I fixed with some foam mounting tape. I unscrewed the housing of it with my HANDY GOAT FIX IT KIT SCREW DRIVER and stuffed a bunch of gaffer tape from YOU KNOW WHERE underneath the electrical contact. Then put everything together again.
Miraculously this worked and I was able to go about my day and also got to text Vince that I fixed it myself.
Interdependence is great, but sometimes I am so happy not to have to invoke it.
Brunch with my son was lovely. I had banana mascarpone pancakes with marshmallow fluff and bacon on the side.
Donate to GOAT today! $20 can fund a really good wheelchair toolkit that we will give to other wheelchair users for free, at our workshops and on the street to people we meet in our outreach rolls!