West Gate Chains

Remember my blog a few weeks ago a company with an image of my favorite, “secret” side gate to Redwood Road from my gated community, the apartment complex? You remember those shiny silver chains that totally secured the gate from opening. These are heavy-duty chains to some mood have to have a major wire cutter as well as major strength to challenge and defeat these chains and padlocks. Well guess what? The change are still on the fence and I haven't used the gate in over two weeks. But you know what? I'm adapting. I kind of hate to say that but it's true. Now, I just built the extra time and minimal distance involved in going around the corner and out the gate on the south side of the building. There is one drawback however, the Southgate is also closed at about 9 PM which means the only way out of the complex is out the front door and kind it through the park or completely around the block which I don't want to do in the summer and for sure not in the winter. In full disclosure I must also confess that Jennifer, this building's manager, and great broad, gave me a actuator which actually opened the sliding gate on the south entrance. This of course primarily used for individuals who own vehicles to enter and exit independently. Thankfully I can say I have not had to use said actuator but I do have it and hopefully I can use it when I need to. And hopefully I will not need to use the Southgate. This is a bit of a lengthy intro but but it works. I of course in my belief of the sticky wheel gets the squirt have been in Jennifer's office to her three times wondering what's going on. The front office finally came around and let me know the reason the gate has not been repaired is because they can't get the equipment i.e. electrical components needed to get the gate operational. Guess what? Just where the parts come from? You got it China. Boy did we shoot ourselves in the foot this time? This is really one of the first semi-political, Covid, pandemic/depression or whatever that is truly affected me. Like I said I'm okay, I'm adapting otherwise there's a little inconvenience but overall I'm doing okay.

The chained up Westgate has got me thinking however what other areas do a need to really start thinking about as far as things aren't like they used to be? There's the computer of course and all of the peripheral electronics I use. My cell phone in my tablets are all Chinese-based one way or the other. I'm sure there's a host of components to my desktop as well which I suppose conceivably could crash and without replacement parts I could be up a creek. Thankfully, I'm an American, which means I have way more than I need are even deserve I could limp by until relations thaw. The big thing that scares me the most is how many parts does not power chair use?! This is the same question for my motorized bed. If I were to lose key electronics for the bad I could have a major problem! The power chair I'm kind of worried about but not too much after I do have a backup chair which I could cannibalize should the need arise. And for the time being this places like Utah Assistive Technology Program which has a lot of spare parts… Right now. I suppose in a major electronic famine some of those things could change very quickly.

So right now I've got a lot of things to worry about, a lot of “what if S? Sometimes it's easy to focus on one thing and for me it's sort of how my going to use, effectively a pair of wire cutters on the back gate…?