Charge!!

I just hate not being able to trust my equipment! I motored to work in my power chair—as I usually do—I took off over lunch and found something over at the downtown mall Taco Time which was OK but not as good. Fast food is never as good as you think it’s going to be but I got back to the office plugged in and started charging my chair for the roll home.

I have found that what the charge level says on my controller is not necessarily what charge the batteries are feeling which is a real drag. Anyway, I took off from work with my batteries indicating I had a 90% charge which I thought was more then enough juice to get home from my trainstop. I was doing ok as I came off the train at Murray Central but I knew I was “dragging” as I stated climbing the overpass to my home. I was sensing a significant reduction speed as I challenged the over-pass. But I made the summit and got up to acceptable speed on the down side and all was good until I reached the foot of the over pass. I was making OK time but o the usual time and I was burning through my energy indicator exceptionally quick. By the time I had almost reach the intersection where I turn to access my street my power levels were slow that my chair was stopping for lack of power when just trying to negotiate a curb cut.

I was fortunate enough to be infront of a house with shaded drive way I was able to pull into and call Dianne and have to ask for a ride. I was close to the intersection where I would have to cross at least four set of tracks and I know from experience that when my charge is as low as it last night the who chair cold very well have its forward motion stop trying to get over the tracks and that is a scary place to be.—I have played this scenario in my head before having my chair quit infront of an oncoming Trax vehicle: what would I do? I think if this were to happen I thing I could dive out of my chair and roll to some sort of safety—but why risk that fantasy coming true.?

I called Dianne and ofcourse I got Anakah who was riding ‘shotgun’ in the van heading home. I had called home first and got the answering machine \ so next I called Dianne’s new cell phone and that is when I got Anakah. Dianne assured me that she was dropping off then would come over and save me. Which she did. This was a first for me in actually being stranded out on the tarmac. I have had the batteries showing low charges before but not stopping the chair completely—I really thought showing 90% I would be safe and good to go but now. So now, I am patiently sitting at my desk—tethered to the charger and again hoping I’ll have enough juice to make the home bound journey. One I option I may choose is to jump one of the North bound buses at my stop and will drop me off just a couple blocks from my house, which I know I can make he homerun from there. I just have to wait from the bus to wait out its time frame, plus having the driver tie me down and reverse the process when I get to my stop then I wind my way through the neighborhood to the house. I would just as soon motor straight from the station over the over pass and home but that’s not going to happen now because I can trust my chair or my batteries—life should be this