Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

This is a fol­low up to the pre­vi­ous post on home-related adap­tions and aids. Here, I shall focus on my wheel­chair attach­ments and accessories:

Wheel­chair

This wheel­chair was provided to me, via per­man­ent loan, by my local NHS Wheel­chair Ser­vice in 2009 and as this is an NHS chair, routine main­ten­ance, repairs and replace­ment parts are also provided by the NHS. I cur­rently drive the Quickie Argon Ti Manual Wheel­chair, a titanium rigid-frame wheel­chair with the fol­low­ing specification/customisations:

• Fold­ing, Angle-adjustable Back­rest Frame
• Tension-Adjustable, Ven­ted Apolstery*
• Height-adjustable push handles*
• Pad­ded Quickie-Style Armrests*
• Titanium Straight Side-guards*
• Tool bag under seat sling*
• Fixed Hangers/Front-Frame
• Plat­form Footrest (angle and depth adjustable)*
• Argon Ti Castor Forks* with Alu­minium Rim “Soft Roll” Castors*
• Cross Spoke Wheels with Solid Tyres*
• Com­pact Wheel Locks*
• Alu­minium Sil­ver Anod­ized Handrims
• Quickie-Style Anti-tip Tubes*
• Cus­tom Assym­met­ric Cush­ion with Uni­lat­eral Sculpt­ing (to com­pensate for weight distribution/posture issues)*
• Terry-Toweling Cush­ion Cover*
• Metal­lic, Two-Tone paint in “Flip-Flop”*

* Denotes non-standard feature

Wheel­chair Accessories

Free­Wheel™

The Free­Wheel™ attach­ment fixes to the foot­plate of my wheel­chair and lifts the front castors from the floor thus, turn­ing my chair into a “trike”. By doing so, I am able to nego­ti­ate rough, uneven or wet ter­rain. The Free­Wheel changes the way I am able to use my chair and gives me so much more free­dom — I’d be lost without it.

My Free­Wheel was pur­chased as the res­ult of my Free­Wheel Appeal.

Off-Road Wheels

Pur­chased from the good folks at Spokz, I now team my Free­Wheel with 22″ rear wheels with Schwalbe Land­cruiser tyres. Ideal for my escapades in the new Dis­abled extreme wheel­chair sport: Grey­hound Walks, these new “shoes” allow me to nego­ti­ate wet and muddy ter­rain with slightly more fin­esse than my usual 24″ street wheels with their solid, low-profile tyres.

Cup Holder

Fed up of tip­ping hot tea in my lap every time I wanted to carry my cup from the kit­chen to the liv­ing room, I went on the search for some form of cup holder. Dur­ing my search, I learnt a few things: cup-holding devices made spe­cific­ally for wheel­chairs are typ­ic­ally over­priced; the vast major­ity are hideous in both their design and imple­ment­a­tion; very few are designed to hold drink­ing ves­sels that pos­sess handles.

After much search­ing, I real­ised that cup hold­ers designed for prams/buggies/strollers not only did what I wanted, but were both more reas­on­ably priced and more visu­ally appeal­ing. I cur­rently sport the Leo­pard Print ver­sion of the Sip n Stroll cup holder, by Happy Mummy. It is light and fab­ric based, so it can stay attached to my wheel­chair full-time and will not get crushed or broken when my chair is folded/dismantled to fit in a car; it is also insu­lated so it is sturdy enough to hold heavy/hot drinks and will keep them warm. The holder attaches using vel­cro that wraps around the frame of my chair: I have posi­tioned it on a sec­tion of hori­zontal tubing that extends from the front of my seat (before des­cend­ing ver­tic­ally to meet my footplate).

I Am Not A Paper Cup

I use I Am Not A Paper Cup (and later, deriv­at­ive mugs based on the same prin­ciple by other man­u­fac­tur­ers) in con­junc­tion with my cup holder attach­ment. The lack of handle means that the cup fits com­fort­ably in the holder, whilst the lid ensures that the tea stays in the mug, even whilst I’m push­ing my chair. It’s also worth not­ing that the double-walled design not only keeps my tea warm for longer, but also pre­vents the cup from becom­ing too hot to touch (essen­tial, given the lack of handle).

On-Board Stor­age

The Crumpler frame hug­ger is a small bag ori­gin­ally designed to fit onto the cross­bar of a bicycle. For­tu­nately, the size of the titanium tubing that makes up the frame of my wheel­chair is com­par­ably sim­ilar to that of a con­ven­tional bike.

Most wheel­chair bags are large and designed to fit either on the back of the chair or under­neath the seat. This poses sev­eral prob­lems: they add sig­ni­fic­ant weight to the chair, they alter the chair’s centre of grav­ity and they are dif­fi­cult to com­fort­ably reach in order to get things out of them.

The “frame hug­gers” are small enough not to add any dis­cern­able weight (thereby not impact­ing my push or bal­ance) and can be fit­ted any­where on the chair, mak­ing them easier to reach. I cur­rently own two: One is attached on the front of my chair, on the oppos­ite side to my cup holder and the other is on the cross­bar behind my back.

Comments (0)