Tag Archives: wheelchair van

Weekend in Review

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” —Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

This weekend, I forgot I had ALS. Not the whole time, of course, but for entire delicious hours. I don’t know exactly how it happened, and I don’t plan to analyze it too closely.

Friday night was our 6th wedding anniversary. To some, that’s the “iron” anniversary, but Rob and I know it as the “one where you celebrate with your brother-in-law, who scored Beck tickets and invited you because his own wife was out of town.” The three of us went out to dinner and to see the show at a new SF venue, The Masonic. Brand new places are awesome, because they all conform to accessibility laws and basic common sense. Our general admission tickets led us to a raised platform with good views, and, most importantly, safety from the sweaty, excitable guy below who kept high-fiving a thin-lipped usher, even though she clearly just wanted to be at home with her cats.

It was an older crowd at the show, suggesting to us that Beck is perhaps not as cool as he once was. Which is fine, because I am totally, totally uncool. And I’m not just saying that so that someone tells me that I am, in fact, cool. I’m not and it’s fine. I think most of the trouble I’ve gotten into in my life stems from trying to be cooler than I am. Perhaps we’ll explore this in a future post. Read More>

Adjusting…eventually

This weekend, Rob, Scarlett and I went car shopping. Well, to be more specific, we went wheelchair van shopping. Little less sexy, right? There are a few places in the Bay Area that specialize in vans, and we went to one in Burlingame called Mobility Works. On the weekends, they are only open by appointment, which meant we had the whole place to ourselves with a knowledgeable sales guy named Mike.

Mike showed us new and used vans from Toyota, Honda, and Dodge. It works like this: you add a 25K conversion fee to the MSRP of one of these vans. Any add-ons (leather seats, sunroof, navigation, anxiety medication) cost extra. It gets expensive. Used vans can be a good option, provided you can find one that has all of your requirements. For us, the top three are: Read More>