Ever since I trashed my original wheelchair losing control of it on a backward incline, I’ve been served faithfully by “Captain Pike* 2.0.” Think of it as the J.J. Abrams version, replacing the original Jeffrey Hunter version from the original pilot.
Who am I kidding? This chair had issues! The first red flag should have been the chair's tendency to move when the joystick was not engaged, but instead of correcting this flaw, the engineers just put a note in the manual telling me what to do when it happened. (To make things worse, the manual was in “Chinglish,” if you know what I mean.) It kept grabbing my feet, too.
So, I decided to replace it…
Introducing Captain Pike 3.0. Consider this the sexy Anson Mount version with the perfect hair. It hasn’t arrived yet, so all I have is the picture from Amazon, but a few things about this chair really sold me. For one thing, it has twice the power of the old wheelchair: 500 watts will get me up that hill to the parking lot
easy peasy, and its 25-mile range would probably get me downtown and back. (Though I would have to find a non-freeway route; its maximum speed is a screaming six miles per hour.)
It also has a different pedal design that won’t snag the heels of my shoes every time I change direction. That in and of itself was a plus.
The chair was supposed to arrive yesterday, but it’s now been pushed back to this Saturday. I’m really looking forward to unpacking it and taking it for a spin.
But watch… the manual is going to be in Chinglish.
* For those of you who aren’t Star Trek nerds like me, Captain (Christopher) Pike was the Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise before Kirk. He famously ends up in a wheelchair, only able to communicate by beeping once for yes or twice for no.
