Our Ride

Jodie and I can get around without using out scooters. Jodie uses forearm crutches. I can free walk.

As a kid I rarely ever used a wheelchair. Sometimes when my family would go to a zoo or a theme park they would rent a wheelchair for me because I didn't have the endurance or speed that the rest of my family had.

Jodie use to free walk around the house when we first got married.

Age does something to all of us. I had back surgery for a herniated disk back in 2001. I used a walker in my coming back after the surgery. Jodie and I have both lost the endurance on our feet that we once had.

With our son, Jodie and I decided that we wanted to keep up with all our son's activities. It was time for us to get scooters.

Our doctor wrote a prescription for me to get a scooter. In order for insurance to help us in getting a scooter, we had to prove that I could use the scooter in our house. It seemed funny to us that they were not interested in helping us become more mobile outside the home.

So it was after we got the scooter and it came time to get my scooter in our Chrysler Voyager minivan, insurance had no interest in helping us accessorize our minivan so that we could transport my scooter.

We tried a metal ramp. It was very heavy for me to handle. I fought with it and was able to get my scooter in the back of out minivan a couple times.

A day came when I was running the scooter up the ramp into our minivan at home. The front tire of the scooter went over the side of the ramp. I had to call Uncle Randy to rescue me.

We started looking for a lift for our minivan. We found a used Braun lift for about $1100. It looks something like this.

When we got Jodie's scooter awhile later, we had to get a second lift. With out son, we had to hang onto a back seat. I don't know if both scooters would fit in the back with no seats...but regardless, we had to have a seat.

The only other option was to get a second lift for the back of the car, outside. We found a Silver Star Lift for $1600.

I will try to get pictures of out current van to post in the next couple days.

This setup has gotten us by for the last five years or so. We don't always haul both scooters together. We do haul them both on the weekends when we do stuff as a family. Our vehicle seems to handle the weight, but I think it has been hard on the transmission (it has been in the shop for that a few times), and the breaks have had excessive wear.

With Jodie's scooter riding outside the van, and all the wonderful rain that we get here in the Northwest, we have had to carry a towel with us when it rains. I know, we should have invested in a cover for her scooter. I never knew how we would secure the cover, and, well, we never really looked into getting one.

See, our outside lift swings away from the hitch so that we can open the back hatch of the van. A metal bar extends about six inches from the hitch; it supports the lift swings closed. When I load my scooter in and out of our minivan, my scooter hits the hitch that holds our outside lift.

We have been looking off and on for the last year for a rig that we could get both scooters inside. We found a full-size van with a side lift. The salesman said we could get both scooters inside. I rode my scooter up and into the van. There was no room to get both scooters in there and for Jodie and I to maneuver around them to get to the front seat.

After doing a lot of googling, I became very interested in the Dodge Sprinters, and I found a place in Edmunds, Washington that sells them accessorized for the disabled -- Access Mobility Systems. Jodie, E and I made the 200 mile drive up there a week ago.

The Sprinter was very nice, and it had plenty of room for both scooters. We were interested in the 2006 Sprinter that they had. We filled out a credit application...and...well...