San Francisco wheelchair repair program

If you’re out on the street and your wheelchair breaks down, you need immediate help. (You can’t always rely on Love and Magic!)

And similarly, if you’re stuck in your house because of a flat tire, wobbly wheel, bad battery, blown fuse, or whatever mystery problem your wheelchair has, what happens? In the East Bay in the Bay Area we have the great non-profit Easy Does It, which will come pick you up and fix your chair for free. (Shout out to long time repair expert John Benson, who is an amazing person and who supported their program for many years with his Secret Wheelchair Parts Warehouse!)

Now, finally, in San Francisco we have the Independent Living Center SF Wheelchair Repair program that does something similar! I went last week to the ILRCSF launch of the program and hung out with Vince Lopez, who is an experienced repair tech and all around great guy. Lana Nieves who heads up the organization welcomed around 40 of us to the spacious conference room, Vince talked about his experience as a tech, we toured Marisol’s assistive tech lending library, and also heard from Michael from Pride Mobility who was there to offer whatever resources and connections he can provide.

a row of masked people in a conference room posing for a group pic

This new wheelchair repair center is funded by San Francisco Disability and Aging Services and is available to San Francisco residents, for emergencies and repair visits within the SF city boundaries. The repair program has limited hours (I think working daytime hours) and you can request either emergency help, or schedule an appointment, by calling their number at 415-609-2555 or emailing info@ilrcsf.org. Vince will come to you if that’s needed with a bag of tools. He can also provide rides to a safe location where you can transfer, in a wheelchair accessible van ride (provided free by Waymo) and even a loaner chair, powerchair, walker, or scooter if he has one available.

a man posing next to a row of loaner rollators, manual wheelchairs, and powerchairs

The program is also supported by many wheelchair manufacturers and by MK Battery. (You can get your batteries replaced! Free!!! At least for particular lead-acid scooter and wheelchair batteries they have stocked.)

shelves with new wheelchair batteries in stock

One last nifty service, you can get your wheelchair washed down completely in their portable washing station. I noted it looks like something that is not too hard to build, made from super-sturdy plastic tarp/map base, PVC pipe, shower curtains, a hose, and a pump to drain the water out. (This kind of setup can be used in a kitchen or even a yard for people to wash in if their own bathroom lacks access.)

people in a conference room looking at a wheelchair sized portable wash station

Murderbot’s spa day!!

After the event I got some help from Vince back in the shop. My Whill Ci front fenders break often, I’ve gotten them replaced several times, then lived with the brokenness and loud rattling for probably over a year now, sometimes temporarily fixing it with duct tape and Sugru.

Vince called Whill support, got them to email him the service manual (which I’ve asked for for YEARS and haven’t gotten!) and we got down on the floor to pop the wheels off and figure out what was wrong. While I was on the floor scooting around on my butt, I took the opportunity to wet-wipe the dust off the entire front of my chair.

a powerchair frame up on a jack with its wheel off

Some foam tape, new screws, blue loc-tite, and some cleaning, vastly improved my broken fender and wheel situation. More calls, a quick trip to the nearby hardware store, and a lot of fiddling around fixed my chair! (I got to try a loaner powerchair while all this happened!) And Vince is continuing to investigate if he can wrangle a replacement joystick controller out of the company — another thing I have asked them for but he is apparently the wheelchair support tech whisperer, because he got actual help incredibly fast!

(While I get told to buy a new Model C2; sure, like I just am going to drop 3500 bucks when I could fix my current chair?!) Fortunately now we have California’s new Right to Repair law to support our efforts to maintain our incredibly critical assistive tech! So when I do get a new powerchair eventually, the manufacturer will have to keep its parts available for at least 7 years.

My chair’s fenders no longer rattle, which is great, so I can perfect my technique of me + Murderbot sneaking up on people on the sidewalk!

What makes access amazing for you?

I was thinking about event accessibility today and events I’ve been to as a wheelchair user. There are bare minimums of accessibility that mean I can get in the door, and usually that’s what people mean when they tell me their space, or event, is wheelchair accessible. A level entrance, a lift or elevator, maybe some specially marked off seating area. But what makes it not just possible, but a good experience? A great, or amazing experience?

I can list some of those things that kick it up a notch!

Good information. Tell me about all the access needs you have considered, whether they come out accessible for me or not, or you were able to mitigate them or not! Just say it as part of the event announcement. It’s a great jumping off point for me to ask deeper questions.

Level entrance that doesn’t depend on a lift. This is about my feeling of security and confidence. Am I going to encounter one of those hellish, clanky lifts that is locked and no one knows where the key is? Is it going to be broken? Is it going to break while I’m in it and a restaurant full of people are staring at me?!

Spaciousness. There is room to move. I can go into a room, and then freely, without fuss or disruption, get out again! I can sit with my friends, whether they are wheelchair users or not. Tables are far apart. Aisles are wide and not blocked by audio visual equipment or people’s backpacks. More than one or two wheelchair users can be in this space and move around and feel FREE.

Bathroom access. This should be obvious but sadly isn’t. Can I get to a level entrance bathroom? Can I do it without going two buildings over and 9 floors up with a freight elevator in between? If not then I don’t even want to be at your event. Is the path to the bathroom clear or will I have to bulldoze my way down a twisting narrow hallway full of mop buckets?!

Community education and participation. The event organizers or hosts mention things like keeping aisles clear and the community understands the reasons for it!

Reachable food and drinks. It is a downer when there’s a gorgeous buffet for your event but it’s up on a weird little dais that has stairs, or it’s so high up I can’t see it from my wheelchair. Yes, people will help me and get my food but it just feels good to be able to independently browse and decide, at my own pace. I can deal with a bar counter height drink ordering experience, and that’s fine, but it’s always nice if there is a low area too and this becomes more important if you are inviting multiple wheelchair users to your event! Decrease the awkwardness by having some low height counter space.

Some seating for other people. It’s a good idea to have this anyway for walking people who get fatigued, but if you make sure there are at least some chairs, that are moveable, then it also means I can get into a space where I can talk to walkies without craning my neck for hours to look up at them.

Accessible presenter setup. Is there a stage? Am I a presenter? Might I be winning an award ? (I like to think so!) Then please make there be an accessible spot for a presenter, a podium or chair, a microphone, place for me to put a laptop and control slides, in a way that isn’t horrible or annoying. I have crawled on stages, I have been lifted onto stages, and I’ll do it but it’s not a great experience. Conference hotel wants to charge you 10K for ramp onto a stage? Maybe get creative with it and at least make there be a level, alternative presentation setup that doesn’t suck.

There’s probably more, but those are the top ones that come to mind!

Building up strength

I am able to walk much further these days, mostly managing OK in the house and able to go out every day with some interludes of using my manual chair in the house (and powerchair for most outings). My new foot and ankle PT exercises are much harder and I’m venturing out of the house on foot (to visit next door or 2 houses down- a very steep hill) Today I figured I’d try to get to the bottom of the hill and back. I have a new cane with 3 legs that unfolds to become a seat so I used that on one side and my normal cane on the other. Down was OK, I sat for a bit on Mission and listened to the music coming out of the club on the corner, thought about whether I could make it across the street to Walgreens and buy something and not suffer too much from it now or tomorrow. On reflection I was somewhat weepy feeling from the intensity (physical and emotional both) of my half block journey so maybe better to take this more slowly.

Uphill was way harder and I stopped to rest twice (the cane with the fold out seat was a good idea.)

I’ll try icing my ankles and doing gentle stretches now – maybe an Advil and a tylenol – I hate the feeling of the entire arch of both feet spasming – so many separate weird little muscles. It also gets just a little bit of the “snake squeeze” feeling that is so scary (because it can get really bad)

Maybe going down just 3 houses, stopping, and coming back and doing that for the next week. It would be neat to have a small challenge like that, daily.

I need to install my pull up / toe stand bar somewhere under the deck – it doesn’t fit in any door frame upstairs but i’d like to start the combination toe-stands and pull ups again.

And maybe learn to do a push-up properly now that I have stronger toes! Ambition!

What will it be like if I can walk more? It was very strange seeing Mission as a vertical person. I felt so tall and unshelled.

I have been trying to imagine as I ride the bus, whether I could get to the bus stop, and then take the bus somewhere, and then I’d need to get across a street and probably a block or at least half a block the other direction to catch the bus home. Then another half block + up the hill again and then half a flight of stairs. Fucking yikes! I’m not there yet.

Keeping firmly in mind that I was in more or less this state in 2011 and then was felled for an entire year by bilateral achilles problems which have lasted a DECADE and which i’ve only just improved in the last 2 years to the point where I can walk flat footed and stand on my toes for a few seconds. So. Must not fuck this up ! NO MOON BOOTS!!

If you see me walking around, please know I’m struggling and having my own kind of private journey over here and just keep your comments and assumptions to yourself!!!!

An overwhelming time

Reaching out to people for help today as Danny is in the hospital again but coming home tomorrow and I just had more to do than I could handle. Thursday I was scared enough to kind of lose my cool (I took most of the day off work, lack of sleep, and just like, upset) but Friday & today he is much improved. Tomorrow they assess him again to see if he can come home!

I also got the cheap but new wheelchair delivered for Bob who lives a few blocks away and brought it to him since his old one was falling apart and he also got hit by a car and the front casters were bent and it lost an entire (hard) tire so he was wheeling on the rims on that side. Needless to say like that he could not get far so was only managing to get to bathroom and food like once a day (though people often bring him food it’s not predictable).

So I balanced it in front of me pushing it with one foot and one hand while driving my powerchair, but Bob wasn’t there, maybe had gone across the street. I shoved the chair a block and a half away to Naomi’s house figuring I could leave it with her and check back later. We had a lovely chat with her standing on her stoop and me on the sidewalk. I miss people’s in person faces and voices and all their embodiments. We chatted so long that I figured I’d check before heading home. And Bob was there, so I went back to Naomi’s, got the chair, passed it to Bob, and we had a further chat about the messed up situation and times. He is a veteran (I have not asked of what service) and was also a CNA for 20 years. He told me about getting MRSA in his injured knee and being in long term hospital and having six surgeries on it and then being sort of yeeted out onto the sidewalk unable to walk. He is nice to talk with and loves to read history and thrillers. I took the broken wheelchair (which the nuns from St James gave him a while back, amazingly, having painted it over with white latex house paint?!) and put it across the street by the Pizza Hut figuring someone will either pick it up for metal or the city services will get it.

On the way back from that I saw, at the bus stop 1 block from my house, a guy passed out with his legs in the street and a bus bearing down hard. I was trying to get there fast enough and nearly was but was basically waving my hands wildly and pointing. The bus driver saw. He was so nice & got all his passengers to get off, and stayed there blocking the spot so that no one would pull in and run over the dude. I had imprudently gone out without my phone but stopped some nice young punks to stay with us and call 911 since the passed out guy wasn’t responsive at all and none of us wanted to pull him back onto the sidewalk tho, one guy going by on a bike did offer… Two firetrucks and a paramedic unit came out and got him up. So, OK. I am still a little bit rattled and it is just so sad and scary.

Back to my safe and cosy and clean home. I asked for help and got it today, I am going to cook a little tomorrow for Danny as he has limited things he can eat and restaurant food tends to make him sick, but, I asked my sister and brother in law to make him some pressure cooker bone broth and our friend Jamey is making some kind of chicken stew, so I hope that will keep him going and give more variety since I can’t possibly cook every day while working and doing other stuff.

Meanwhile I played more Animal Crossing, and I worked on a translation of Carmen’s poem about Covid-19.

Cotopaxi Cabalgazo

On Friday I learned the word “cabalgazo” which means a trail ride on horseback. I had looked at a few websites for “day trips” from Quito and contacted a few of them to see if they were open to transporting me and my wheelchair. Bus tours: no. Private tours with a driver: yes! I went with one from Rebecca’s Adventure Tours because the information on the site seemed very clear and there was an agent to chat with via the website so I could ask wheelchair related questions. Turns out there was no problem, their driver was cool with packing my disassembled powerchair into the back of his SUV.

So, for around 200 bucks I got picked up from my hotel by a lovely tour guide (Thank you Eduardo!). We went on a 2 hour drive south of Quito to Cotopaxi, a national park around the Cotopaxi Volcano (20,000 feet!). We saw Chimborazo in the distance which was pretty exciting if you’ve read about it all your life and then see it for the first time in person.

Then, past the visitors’ center down a long gravel road to a small ranch and lodge within the park which I think climbers use for acclimatization, Tambopaxi. We stopped along the way for coffee and a bite to eat, then had another cafecito at the lodge while waiting for our vaquero guide, Edison. The view from the lodge was great – we sat there having our coffee with a view of wild horses and the Cotopaxi volcano itself lightly wreathed in mist. While I think I could have gotten into the lodge with my wheelchair (a somewhat rugged path, but ramped ) I opted to walk in because it was very close to the parking lot and I wouldn’t have to walk around very much. Note, also, the bathroom in the restaurant was very accessible!

Eduardo drove me down to the corral where I was fitted out with chaps, a helmet, and a poncho and Edison helped me get up on my horse Francés.

Before the ride (admire my amazing chaps!!!)

liz and horse

Francés the horse could tell I had no idea what I was doing but he seemed like the perfect sort of wise trail riding horse for beginners. I would describe him as phlegmatic, even as a philosopher, wisely following the other horses on the way outwards from the ranch, then eager to trot and get ahead on the way back towards his lunch. While he didn’t take any directions from me in the first part of the ride, by the second hour we had reached an understanding where I could get him to walk, trot, and go where I wanted, within reason, though to canter required some extra effort (whacking him on the ass)!!

Edison on the other hand was mounted on a more spirited and responsive horse clearly used to working with cattle, prancing around, turned on a dime, a super great horse. Eduardo was on a nice black horse; he is a much better rider than me but maybe not very fond of trotting. I am not used to riding “Western” or Spanish style very much as when I was a teenager I had riding lessons english style, with short stirrups, a different kind of saddle, and notably, the posting trot… which you can’t really do in a saddle with a giant pommel and your legs dangling in low stirrups. But, the saddle was very comfortable!

So, that’s the company and the horses — I’ll talk a bit about the ride! We started out across a very bare plain, an alpine meadow or páramo, scattered with pumice and clearly made of volcanic ash, not very many plants but a few wildflowers, mostly asters (yellow and other colors) and some purple flowers whose name was something like gentian (as in gentian violet). We saw tons of Andean Lapwings and some Plumbeous Tyrants (Eduardo had a bird book and binoculars and knows a lot about birding, geology, and history, really a pleasure to talk with!) and so many wild horses. Apparently the wild horses of Cotopaxi are famous for being an isolated population that are largely descended from horses of the original Spanish invaders. They would watch us carefully but didn’t seem spooked by our approach.

panorama of a plain with a rider ahead

The landscape was incredibly beautiful and peaceful. I imagined being a traveler in past times walking or riding over these meadows.

As we went over and around some rolling hills the land got greener, the vegetation more various, more like chaparral. We saw a bull standing by a low hill, and Edison galloped at it waving his hat and shouting to chase it off. Whew! I wish I had a video of this, but I was too focused on being ready to stay on my horse Francés in case the bull came at us and he took off running, so I didn’t even think of my cameraphone!

I asked Edison for help lengthening my stirrups because my knees were killing me. This was a helpful tip from my mom who is an experienced rider and owns a horse! It did help.

After that we got into some stony meadows with little streams flowing through (which we forded) and then came to a deep canyon. Our trail went right along the edge of the canyon so my very tame trail ride had some moments of tension (for me anyway!) looking down and thinking how Danny told me to please not die while on my trail ride. I was glad of my chaps because we went through some prickly, tall plants. The canyon was beautiful, you could see the river rushing at the bottom, and layers of volcanic ash, pumice, and what I think you might call “ejecta”, boulders that came flying out of the stratovolcano like bombs! To the north, Rumiñahui, a smaller volcano, to the west, this river canyon, and to the south, Cotopaxi towering above us topped with snow.

cotopaxi volcano with snow on top

Crossing some of the streams was also a little exciting as Francés, with a mind of his own, would give a little hop to get out of the stream when he could have easily just walked over it – but no. Then later when Edison and Eduardo on their horses did a little dramatic jump over a narrow gully, Francés refused it, I brought him around again hoping my leaning slightly forward would encourage him to jump, and then he deflated my ego completely by stepping calmly over the 1.5 foot gully at a walk. I felt like a dumbass — it was hilarious.

view of meadow from horseback

Coming back around in a wide circle through this beautiful valley, the path was more rocky and rugged in places, but by this time I was more confident at sticking on the back of my horse as he scrambled up hillside trails and did his weird little top of the hill hop, as if he wanted to get the hard parts over with as fast as possible. We passed a big hill and cliff face that looked like granite. Eduardo and I competed lightly to show off our enjoyably dilettantish geologic knowledge. Luckily for me when you say geology related words like “magma” or “stratovolcano” or “basalt” in a spanish accent it mostly works.

By this time I was so sore! Wow! it was OK but I was aware of the difficulties of going at a trot. I ventured a joke…. “Que gran aventura…. Ay que gran aventura, PARA MIS NALGAS” which finally got a laugh from my companions.

We cantered a bit and it was really fun! But also exhausting! I was feeling the altitude, not like a headache or anything but just, my heart was pounding and I felt very tired after just a little trot or canter.

Humorously, when I got back to the hotel, I realized my Fitbit thought I had walked and run up 98 flights of stairs over the 2 hours of our trail ride! I got a lot of little congratulatory notifications and virtual awards for climbing, which by rights should belong to Francés.

Dismounting, I definitely needed help, because my legs just wouldn’t move! They felt like cooked noodles! Who cares, right, I can barely walk anyway! After a few minutes hugging MOTHER EARTH ***** OMG HURRAH I AM NO LONGER ON A HORSE ***** ¡¡¡¡¡AY, GRACIAS PACHAMAMA!!!!! GRACIAS AL DIOS Y AL VIRGEN DEL APOCA-FUCKING-LIPSIS!! I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!

liz smiling hugely

OK so finally I manage to get up, take off the chaps (I wish I had those amazing chaps – so comfortable, and with a pocket big enough to hold my coffee mug) and get into Eduardo’s SUV and then back to the lodge for delicious potato soup (Locro de Papa) and some more coffee. Eduardo and I showed each other pictures of our families and looked at his bird book and then drove back to Quito. Oh he also nicely got out my chair and helped me assemble it for a stop at the Visitor Center on the way home, so I could buy some alpaca scarves and a sweater and poncho for gifts for my family, which I appreciated – while I am getting around Quito just fine, I can’t go into most of the shops so I really wanted help with souvenir buying in a place with an accessible entrance! (I can’t even buy postcards – I’m waiting for Danny to help with that!)

Well, that was my adventure. Parts of me are STILL FEELING THE ADVENTURE, let me tell you. MOSTLY MY BUTT.

A gold church and a quiet library

My adventures today were very mild, as I am going out to dinner later and didn’t want to exhaust myself. So, I stuck to the Old Town area near the Plaza Grande.

Hot chocolate and a plate of tiny cheese empanadas on the Plaza – I had planned to write but instead ended up sitting with some tourists from Paris who didn’t want me to eat my breakfast alone. They were spending 5 weeks in Ecuador, must be nice! Then, I went to check out the tour of the Presidential Palace but found that I have to make a reservation (giving my passport number!) a day beforehand. This was easy to do over email and now I’m planning my visit to be tomorrow morning. It seems that the tour is accessible (more or less) and at one point if you are a wheelchair user you get ushered into the President’s private elevator. If I bump into President Moreno in his private elevator, I will tell him about Whirlwind Wheelchair International, an org that teams up to help create sustainable local wheelchair factories and maintenance (with disabled people at the helm).

Everywhere I go in Quito I get stopped by people politely asking me for information about my powerchair! My ability to discuss the chair in Spanish is slowly improving. The guards outside the Astronomical Observatory finally reaped the benefits of my practice as they told me about their family members who could really use a powerchair. I don’t think there are even powerchairs sold anywhere in Ecuador. I described the light weight cheap ones that can fold ( se puede plegar!) but the prices upset them (the cheapest I know about is around $1000). I wish it were not so hard – putting a motor on a wheelchair! It doesn’t have to be hellishly expensive!

Right next to the Plaza I found an accessible entrance to the Centro Cultural Metropolitano. The ground floor didn’t have a lot going on, and I couldn’t get into the library or its reading room, or the bathrooms, but there was an elevator to the 1st floor. Some great art exhibits there (and you can get the staff to unlock the actually accessible bathrooms which are for employees only, in theory). The building is pretty & there are historical plaques everywhere about the history of independence & a bit more about the French geodectic survey expedition.

My favorite art exhibit was called De vuelta centro del mundo by Antonio Bermúdez, with a lot of postcards of Chimborazo which he bought online exhibited next to the eBay order forms, packaging, and mail envelopes. I love that sort of thing!!! Of course, as a tourist myself I felt right at home in the display of 100 year old postcard kitsch and the strange diaspora of the Chimborazo postcards going all over the world and then getting bought & mailed around the world right back to Ecuador. Excuse me while I put a stamp on myself and jump into a mailbox! But seriously I thought of the long poem “Carta de viaje” by Elvira Hernández (that I translated, with footnotes longer than the poem almost) and felt very happy looking at the exhibit.

I could also get into some of the smaller sections of the library (though not the bigger, juicier looking main reading room + stacks) so I camped out in the social sciences, looking through an armload of books on the history of the petroleum industry in Ecuador. “ecuatoriano, defiende tu PETROLEO!” had the best title but “En la lucha por el crudo” had the best cover design. I then found some folklore books, which were great, and I’d like to go back another day to sit & read them. This also looks like a good place for me to sit and write and work on some things, since Quito doesn’t have much of a laptop using cafe sitting culture and I don’t want to be a complete boor.

Just one building down from the Centro Cultural, there is a side gate which guards will open for you and your wheels, into the giant golden baroque cathedral, or church, whatever it is, called Compañía de Jesus. Holy shit, it’s beautiful! It is covered in gold! Scary!!!!!! There is also a sort of… coffin monument thing with a statue of Quito’s first saint.

Lunch by myself in a super fancy restaurant, well, outside in its sidewalk seating anyway (I picked it for this feature since EVERY restaurant has steps — maybe the President will let me know the best places for lunch… hahahhaah… Surely he must know?!) It is called Purísima & the food was great, for the price of a sandwich and a coffee in San Francisco I had 3 courses and a fancy soda (seltzer + blackberry syrup, if mora = blackberry, anyway, it was good) I like the herb that was in this, it wasn’t celantro I don’t think but had a more funky flavor. The waiter said it was called something like aniyuyu though I cannot figure out what it really is. My soup had tiny potatoes, crunchy fried corn bits, quinoa, at least 3 kinds of lumps of tasty cheese of different textures, and a quail egg. Also served on super amazing china (from an enormous china soup tureen with gilt handles) and the tortillas were wrapped in silk. It was a little OVER THE TOP for my seat on the sidewalk! Wow!!

Wandered home again – Old men seem particularly amused when I grimly face a steep curb and then surmount it, bumping slowly like a tiny, purple haired tank. They get a twisted grin of disbelief on their faces and occasionally laugh outright if I go “beep beep.” (I have also been beeped at by them.) Young men on the other hand just rush to try to push me up the curb (which doesn’t work – i have to come at it a certain way – and then they observe the resulting tank action and we exchange polite compliments and thanks.)

I have skipped the ice cream today since lunch was AMAZING.

Day 2 in Quito

Today I wandered north through some parks, and then to some kind of marketplace for crafts which felt like 200 booths all selling the same exact stuff. I bought some tiny pouches and a stuffed guinea pig made of alpaca wool (for the cat). I ended up at a water park (where I had some delicious street food) and then the Jardín Botánico which was great but almost completely empty of people. I spent a while in the orchid house then at the bonsai exhibit, and then took the C1 Trolebus back to the Plaza Teatro near our hotel. That may not sound like a lot but for me it was a fairly intense experience since I have to pay a ridiculous amount of attention to the pavement. (An opportunity to feel smug triumph at every single street crossing.)

I ended up going down Guayaquil again around 4pm – past the gauntlet of young women offering ice cream and the stream of every single person walking by holding an ice cream cone. I had just bought a pastry as big as my face at random from a street vendor and it turned out to be full of pineapple which is my favorite so I was spared the pressure to have ice cream too. Everyone holding the ice cream or one of the huge pastries would give a little nod of shared satisfaction with the afternoon. I had wondered yesterday if the “stroll around the plaza eating pastries” custom was just on Sundays but no it seems to be every day. It’s great.

Past the Plaza Grande going down Venezuela, I noticed a huge long ramp winding down to La Ronda which is supposed to be a cool street to visit. So, I took the ramp but it ended in a plaza with no way to get out except from a bunch of stairs. Back up the ramp! And then I was in such luck because coming out of Plaza Grande was a fabulous parade.

Marching bands, dancers in costumes, women holding candles in what was probably a religious way, little kids in fancy dresses, etc. A good parade! I especially liked the grotesque comedy dancing police.

I am scoping out cafes and restaurants and shops where I can get in (not many!!) Found a level entrance grocery (Tía of Central Quito) and a pharmacy (for cold meds and kleenex for Danny). Most shops have a steep step up or down to get in and I cannot leave my powerchair in the street so, no go. My best bet for cafes is anywhere that has outdoor seating on a plaza. The restaurants near Teatro Bolivar look pretty good so I might head there today. I have seen nowhere with people doing laptop things in a public place San Francisco cafe style (sadly, since that’s what I feel like doing right now)

I have to tell the story of using the Trolebus. Google Maps is not super helpful though it does show the stops. Maybe there is a local app for the trolleys (Trolebus, Ecovia, and Metro lines though each of those has sub-routes I don’t understand yet.) These are just regular large buses, the long kind with flexible sections in between cars, but you board from a glassed in platform, paying up front at a little booth. It’s like, 15 or 25 cents or something, very cheap. Some platforms have an exit side and an entrance side, and the exit side has those revolving iron things that won’t let a wheelchair through so you have to exit out the entrance (potentially assisted by a guard). The entrance is a turnstile but you can fold one of the turnstile prongs down to get your wheelchair past it. The bus itself at least on this first ride did not pull up very close to the platform so I had a huge gap to go over. Fortunately I have huge tires and i thought it looked JUST possible so I gunned it and jumped the gap. People around me conferred and one guy offered to help which i accepted and so by the time I was positioned to make my death defying LEAP about 4 people’s hands were on the chair just in case. (Very kind actually!) The bus was crowded but no worse than San Francisco at rush hour (nicer, really). And the same young studenty-looking man and his girlfriend made sure to let me know the right stop to get off at and helped clear the decks for my dramatic backwards exit. Was any of this wise? MAYBE NOT. Tune in maybe tomorrow when I will attempt to ride the bus again to some random destination!

On the way back to my hotel around 5:30 I stopped to get the last bit of sun in San Blas Plaza and maybe catch a pokemon (I am sending Ecuador Pokégifts to everyone!) A little kid maybe 5 or 6 years old was riding his bike around the plaza & he came up to me to ask about my chair. I explained the controls to go faster or slower on one side, the battery life, and the joystick (I said “palanca” because i have no idea what the right word is, and that seems to suffice) And then he patted my lap and said “can i drive” and unceremoniously climbed up into my lap. That was unexpected and slightly weird but also a lot of fun — I like small children. I worried what his attendant grownups would think but no one swooped down on us. He drove us around and around the plaza with us both giggling until I said I had to go. “Es muy divertido!” he said as we shook hands and exchanged names. My theory is that maybe he has a relative who is a wheelchair user and, well, no boundaries because he is 5 years old and very brave and confident.

Meanwhile Danny and his colleagues are meeting up with people in support of Ola Bini who as near as I can tell was bizarrely scapegoated just for being the sort of nerd who likes crypto and uses Linux and Tor. Hello… that would be like, nearly every open source engineer I work with…. People misunderstand hacker culture so badly.

Huzzah for Krypto!

I just got a sweeeeet backup Model CI chair off ebay from a nice guy whose mom used it and as he delivered the chair to me just now we were chatting about crypto. So, I don’t usually name my chairs, but perhaps this one, which I can’t wait to hack on, will be named Krypto! Or, I could go obliquely over to Supergirl’s cat and call it Streaky. (Which just makes it sound like I’m planning to ride around naked and, that is unlikely though I could be persuaded IN THE RIGHT CONTEXT.)

First task I need to switch the right and left arm thingies since it’s set up for a left handed user. Then, must figure out where its brain is so that I can remove the excrescence that is the tilt detection (to stop it, I hope, from slowing down when I hit a bump or go downhill). Stretch goal, figure out what controls the voice of it and hack it to say amazing things on command. What if its phone app were ACTUALLY FUN?!

Krypto, except really robot-Supergirl’s giant rideable robot cat! (New headcanon.)

My main chair of course remains . . . Murderbot.

Rescued by Love and Magic

Well it finally happened — I ran out of wheelchair battery! I left the house with 21% and figured it would be fine. After getting groceries I was at 10%. A block from the top of Cortland (a huge hill that I live at the bottom of) the battery indicator suddenly dropped to 2% and then stopped me dead! I was laden with bags of groceries as I was shopping for my friend who is house-bound at the moment and doesn’t have anyone coming to help him till Tuesday. anyway, I sat there pushing the “on” button and going about 2 feet, then the battery would die again. I was probably cursing and distressed looking but I can’t even remember — I was so discombobulated.

A young couple walking by asked if I needed help. Incredibly flustered, I explained maybe i could coast from the top of the hill, or get in a cab. They said they lived just a few houses down and I could charge the battery, or they could push me!

We fiddle around to disengage the motor and I let the guy push me uphill for a block.

Y’all I was blushing. But it was so nice of them both.

At the crest of the hill the battery indicator suddenly said 4% and I was able to motor very slowly down the hill. “OMG thank you. What’s your name?” “I’m Magic.” I’ll say! “And your name?” “Um, I’m Love.”

I was literally rescued by Love and Magic today!!!!!!

Even my bad adventures have a good side sometimes! I’m a little teary eyed right now and going to lie down and experience some feelings while my powerchair battery charges up.