wroughtn_harv
Super Member
<font color=blue>What do you find strange about a guy who can't walk, buying a lake? Sounds pretty reasonable to me.</font color=blue>
I see little difference from that than a guy buying a place in the country and had always lived in a condo or an apartment.
I believe it was in eighty eight when a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing showed up at my home with a three wheeled go cart. They wanted to know if I could modify it for a boy who was born with birth defects. He had no legs but he wanted a go kart.
It was nothing but a thing.
When it was done we took it over to meet the new operator. He was fifteen and looked like a linebacker that someone had removed everything below his waist. He was a toot and a half.
I'd put a fiberglas rod with a flag on it from a bicycle I believe on it so he would have some visibility. Folks don't always understand that the kids have to be seen. As I was showing him how to operate it I was trying to impress upon him the seriousness of riding his machine and the dangers of the highway if he ever, gawd forbid, ventured onto it.
There were six or so adults and this kid and me at the orientation. The adults all did a big "oh my gawd!" inhale when I looked Matt in the eye and said, "Matt I don't want you on the street on this. If some lady did hit you and you crawled out from under her car in your condition it'd kill her."
Matt and me being kids howled. I guess when something's so bad that all you can do is laugh about it the only thing better is laughing at someone else's reaction to it.
A couple of years later Matt's mom contacted me to find out if I could help them out one more time. Someone had donated a Yamaha golf cart to them and they needed to have it modified so Matt could use it.
I didn't have all the tools I have now. But I was able to make a pipe bender that did the job. I bent rails so he had hand holds for entering and exiting. I was able to convert the feet controls to hand. It was interesting arranging the seat belts to hold in someone with out anything below the rib cage.
Another thing that was fun was setting it up where a normal person could also operate it without compromising Matt's needs. He was real proud that regular folks had to enter from the passenger side and slide over and all he had to do was a quick transfer from his chair, slide in, lift the chair in behind him and hit the go button.
Back in the early eighties I got an introduction into the world of paras and quads. Every now and then you get to have a memorable moment when one of the truths of life hit you dead between the eyes.
One of those was lighting a cigarette for a quad in a VA hospital. He was paralized from the neck down from a gun shot. He was the most chipper and up person within a couple of square mile area, maybe three. There in the midst of all that misery and pain he found reasons for happiness. The human spirit is amazing.
Another one of those moments was listening to my friend, a recent super quad, complain about the pain in his legs to a para. I saw in the para's eyes total envy that someone with a spinal injury could actually feel his legs, even if it was just the pain.
The local police department found some para access controls in a van in some wrecking yard. They brought me this bundle of rods and levers. My friend the superquad had a Lincoln Mark something or another. I remember they'd picked it up because it had big doors. It was challenging to figure out how to hook up the hand controls from some unknown van but we did it so that the Mark became and either or. Either a para or superquad could operate it or a regular person too. I do recall that you pushed the lever down to apply the brakes and rotated it clockwise to operate the gas. That was twenty years ago. I'm not sure if it rained then or if we got our moisture from a morning dew.
I see little difference from that than a guy buying a place in the country and had always lived in a condo or an apartment.
I believe it was in eighty eight when a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing showed up at my home with a three wheeled go cart. They wanted to know if I could modify it for a boy who was born with birth defects. He had no legs but he wanted a go kart.
It was nothing but a thing.
When it was done we took it over to meet the new operator. He was fifteen and looked like a linebacker that someone had removed everything below his waist. He was a toot and a half.
I'd put a fiberglas rod with a flag on it from a bicycle I believe on it so he would have some visibility. Folks don't always understand that the kids have to be seen. As I was showing him how to operate it I was trying to impress upon him the seriousness of riding his machine and the dangers of the highway if he ever, gawd forbid, ventured onto it.
There were six or so adults and this kid and me at the orientation. The adults all did a big "oh my gawd!" inhale when I looked Matt in the eye and said, "Matt I don't want you on the street on this. If some lady did hit you and you crawled out from under her car in your condition it'd kill her."
Matt and me being kids howled. I guess when something's so bad that all you can do is laugh about it the only thing better is laughing at someone else's reaction to it.
A couple of years later Matt's mom contacted me to find out if I could help them out one more time. Someone had donated a Yamaha golf cart to them and they needed to have it modified so Matt could use it.
I didn't have all the tools I have now. But I was able to make a pipe bender that did the job. I bent rails so he had hand holds for entering and exiting. I was able to convert the feet controls to hand. It was interesting arranging the seat belts to hold in someone with out anything below the rib cage.
Another thing that was fun was setting it up where a normal person could also operate it without compromising Matt's needs. He was real proud that regular folks had to enter from the passenger side and slide over and all he had to do was a quick transfer from his chair, slide in, lift the chair in behind him and hit the go button.
Back in the early eighties I got an introduction into the world of paras and quads. Every now and then you get to have a memorable moment when one of the truths of life hit you dead between the eyes.
One of those was lighting a cigarette for a quad in a VA hospital. He was paralized from the neck down from a gun shot. He was the most chipper and up person within a couple of square mile area, maybe three. There in the midst of all that misery and pain he found reasons for happiness. The human spirit is amazing.
Another one of those moments was listening to my friend, a recent super quad, complain about the pain in his legs to a para. I saw in the para's eyes total envy that someone with a spinal injury could actually feel his legs, even if it was just the pain.
The local police department found some para access controls in a van in some wrecking yard. They brought me this bundle of rods and levers. My friend the superquad had a Lincoln Mark something or another. I remember they'd picked it up because it had big doors. It was challenging to figure out how to hook up the hand controls from some unknown van but we did it so that the Mark became and either or. Either a para or superquad could operate it or a regular person too. I do recall that you pushed the lever down to apply the brakes and rotated it clockwise to operate the gas. That was twenty years ago. I'm not sure if it rained then or if we got our moisture from a morning dew.
