". . . invalid carriage with a kick start."

John Hockenberry, television newsman and former NPR foreign correspondent, is paraplegic due to a spinal cord injury when he was 19. In his remarkable book, Moving Violations, he describes flagging down a taxi in New York City (which was somewhat unusual in itself, because he said that generally when cab drivers see the wheelchair, they tend to drive right on by). He transferred from his wheelchair into the back seat of the cab. The driver just kept sitting behind the wheel. He and Hockenberry sat there and stared at each other for awhile. Finally, Hockenberry said, "Aren't you going to put my wheelchair into the trunk (boot)?" The driver said, "Hey, man, I gotta bad back!" To which Hockenberry replied, "You have a bad back!!???"   

Sometimes I suspect that thinking is becoming a lost art.

Regarding the power wheelchair controller, thanks for calling my attention to that, John.

The controllers shown in the PDF owner's manual are somewhat different from the one that came on my power chair. Figure 27 shows a much more logical layout than on mine, as do the other illustrations. I notice that in the one shown in Fig. 27, the speed control consists of a couple of "speed/profile" increase and decrease keys rather than a rheostat, and the whole shebang is positioned in front of the joy-stick where it ergonomically ought to be. And it has a couple of other features that mine doesn't have.

I got my "Jazzy" (why do they always have to give these things "cutesy" names?) about five years ago, so I guess the controller that came with mine was either a "beta" version, or maybe enough owners griped and squawked about the location and nature of the speed control that they redesigned it.

Now, I wonder if my chair can be equipped with one of the newer ones—and how much it might cost. I'm going to check it out.

Again, thanks!

On the laptop computer touchpad thing, I had a Dell Inspiron for about three years, and I was having the "Where the hell did the cursor go!??" problem all the time. But the Dell hauled off and died one day. I replaced it with a HP Pavilion zv5000z (great machine, with all kinds of neat options!). I've used the touchpad a lot, but lately I've switched over to a USB mouse and turned the touchpad off. Nice feature.

Don Firth