elizilla

Geo Pier is a super cool construction thing, and we have a front row seat. It is a method of stabilizing soft ground by drilling wells and then vibrating tons of limestone chips into them. Every couple feet, another hole is drilled. It is unbelievable how many truckloads of limestone chips go into the ground.

They are building a new fire station, half a block away from our house, next to the creek. They spent a couple weeks putting in Geo Piers, in early spring. Then the equipment was hauled away. It is massive stuff. They load it onto oversized load tractor trailer rigs, the kind that have a trailer with a low platform in the middle, and it comes apart in the middle to load the thing on. Then they put it back together. And the truck got stuck, the driven wheels spun and sank. They hooked two bulldozers to the trailer, one on each side, and still couldn’t budge it. They filled the bulldozer scoops with gravel to make them heavier, and finally got it moving. What a show!

It was only a couple weeks before the Geo Pier crew came back. Now they are on the other side of the creek, on a completely unrelated project, building condos. I guess the condo developer has a big overtime budget, because they work late, they work Saturdays. Tonight they worked until after dark. It’s June 11 so they were still out there past 10pm.

I don’t mind the development the way some people here do. People gotta have a place to live, and I prefer to see 18 condos in town to seeing another farm carved up outside of town.

But I am tired of the late night Geo Pier thing. It is way too loud to run this late.

They are building a new fire station on the corner of our street. The street out front of it is closed, has been for several weeks. It was supposed to only be fully closed for three weeks, then one lane for another three weeks. But as usual for roadworks, it is behind schedule. It was fenced for two weeks before they even started digging. This is week four and they had dug up one lane. Then on Tuesday afternoon they hit a water main. We were there looking at the activity when it happened. Huge geyser of water, hitting the eves of a two story building across the street with enough force I could see the shingles starting to lift!

The public works guys were there within minutes and were able to turn the water off, and fix it super fast. But they had to put dirt back in the hole to support the pipe, before turning it back on. The fallout seems to have been minimal. The pub is normally closed Mondays but this week they had their closed day on Tuesday, due to the holiday. And the diner had just closed, since they only serve breakfast and lunch. So the water shutoff wasn’t as big an inconvenience as it could have been.

But they were out there until nightfall, dealing with the aftermath. And continuing to deal with it since. My heart was in my throat watching the equipment move around on the pavement next to the hole, and seeing the dirt failing away from under the pavement. I am so glad I didn’t see an excavator fall in!

One of the workers told us that the big hole is for the sewer hookup. But the city records of where that pipe is, were wrong, so they kept digging deeper and wider to find it. All the other buried utilities (water, gas, phones) are higher than the sewer, so they had to dig around them. There is also a forest of overhead wires there. It’s the oldest part of town so it’s thickly crisscrossed and poorly documented. When they eventually found the sewer pipe it was way farther down than expected, and encased in undocumented ancient concrete. They couldn’t send guys with jackhammers into the hole because of safety, the sides of the hole keep caving in. They put in a lot of steel plates to try to hold back the dirt but didn’t get it stabilized until this morning.

They had multiple trucks pumping the sand and water slurry out, and trucks bringing more and more steel structure stuff to wall the sides of the hole. It is a cramped site and there was a lot of traffic disruption. Every time they needed a piece of equipment on the other side of the hole, it had to go around the block, past our house. And there were so many pickup trucks crammed in around the fence, with surveyors and engineers and utility workers and whatnot.

Meanwhile on the rest of the site, work continued. They set up forms and poured truckloads of concrete.

And in the completely unrelated construction site on the other side of the creek, the geo pier work started. Many truckloads of limestone chips were being delivered and the drilling rigs were going up. They are going to build 18 condos in two 3.5 story buildings, over there.

And our neighbor who lives right outside the construction site is moving out. This has its own story, but it added to the press of activity and trucks. With all this going on, I didn’t even see the delivery trucks that cram into that part of our street on a normal day. Maybe they parked farther away and made longer trips with their dollies.

Someone asked me if it’s nice and quiet with the street closed to through traffic. It was, until this week. But today sure wasn’t quiet!

Scotty has been improving by the hour, today. He is still walking funny but he is no longer running like a possum in the headlights. He is eating. He is purring and face bumping. A few minutes ago he was playing with a toy mouse.

I think we are out of the woods.

Last summer we installed a mini split heat pump in the casita. These Senville units are available on Amazon for a bargain price. They come in many sizes. Some run on 110v but most require 220v. Ours is a 110v unit and cost only $800. The product docs recommend against DIY, but the install is well within the capabilities of a competent home mechanic. Steve installed it without too much trouble.

It was great as an air conditioner, last summer. But it has also been great as a heater. It is quiet and costs less than half as much to run, as our resistance heat. Even in the polar vortex over the last week, it kept pushing warm air into the casita. But it finally reached its limits. When the outside temps dropped below zero, the inside temps dropped into the mid 60s. It wasn’t that it stopped working, it just couldn’t do enough to overcome the heat loss when my dad was staying in there and periodically opening the door.

So we turned on the resistance heat for a few days, but it didn’t run very much.

I am still very impressed. We are talking about getting a second one. With one in the living room and one in the bedroom, it should keep up just fine in the next polar vortex.

These things are so good, and the prices are so low, I would recommend them to anyone who can DIY.

I had to sell my last sidecar rig in 2019. I couldn’t operate the clutch anymore. Plus it was just too big and heavy. I struggled to climb on and get my leg over, and with no reverse I had to climb off to push when backing up. It just got too hard.

But I am still sad.

So I keep looking at what’s out there. And this year I found something. It’s an electric scooter with a sidecar. Legally classified as a moped, it only goes 30mph. The range is pretty short. But my body’s range is also short, and sidecars are more tiring at higher speed. I live in a speed trap town, surrounded by 25mph streets. So I think I can live with these limitations, ride it on the road, close to home. The step through is easier to climb aboard, and it has reverse. And I love EVs.

Anyways, I have ordered it! It will take a while to get here, but hopefully it will come before spring.

When I used to do motorcycle track schools, they were constantly talking about the late apex. This is the line you take through turns. And I am discovering, it is also the line to take through turns in a six wheeled chair, if you want to get around a tight corner without hitting something behind you. And this motorcycling “late apex” visualization is much easier to remember and do on the fly, than trying to calculate where those rear casters are going to swing.

Also, note to friends who visit people with wheelchairs. Be very very careful about sitting in someone else’s wheelchair. I know that it seems like an obvious place to sit, especially in a small room without a lot of other seats. And if you are one of those people who doesn’t grok personal distance, the wheelchair is the closest chair to whatever other seat your friend is sitting in, so it’s the obvious spot for looming uncomfortably close. But wheelchairs are not just chairs, they are complicated.

For example: I was sitting in my recliner when a visitor came in. The wheelchair was sitting empty and facing me, because that’s where I parked it to transfer between chairs. My friend sat in the wheelchair. On her way into the chair she rested her hand on the power button, turning it on, then bumped the joystick, and grabbed harder at the joystick to save herself as the chair moved. Thank god the pod didn’t break, and the chair didn’t slam into anything. I turned the chair off for her. A few minutes later she was leaning all her weight on the control pod, to reach for the cat. Several times I asked her not to lean on the controls but she kept doing it, totally oblivious. I could see the pod flexing wildly under her weight. Finally I had to ask her to move to another chair. She instantly did so, once again resting her weight on the control pod, turning on the chair, and starting it moving again while she was steadying herself on it. Fortunately Steve jumped to her rescue and turned it off, because she had no idea she was doing this.

Look, it took four months to fight the medical bureaucracy for that chair. I don’t want the control pod buggered one week after I got it. I don’t want a 200 pound chair slamming into my gas fireplace which is right behind it, or running over my feet which are right in front of it. And I don’t want my visitors falling and hurting themselves, whether they fall on me or not.

So if you want to sit in a wheelchair, please, take a careful look before plopping down, keep your hands off the switches, and remember that wheelchairs have wheels and wheels roll. Better still, if there are other seats, pick one of them, they are safer, more comfortable, and less personal. If someone is going to invade someone else’s personal space while sitting in a power wheelchair, it should be the person with experience driving a power wheelchair. Jesus.

I didn’t get around to tackling this wheelchair situation again until Monday, I just didn’t have the spoons. Over the weekend I made a plan. I decided that before I called Wheelchair Seating again, I would call my insurance company and see what if any coverage is available for the consumer grade chairs. Well, insurance said they do cover them, and their provider is National Seating and Mobility.

National Seating and Mobility has a worse reputation than Wheelchair Seating, but I called them anyway. Their phone triage recording led to voice mail that sounded like a cell phone that isn’t set up yet.

As I was making those calls, I got a text message from Wheelchair Seating that my equipment was in, and to call them.

So I called them. It was the same as ever. Yes, the computer says my chair is in. What do I do next? Wait, and Brian will call to schedule delivery. When can I expect Brian to call? They don’t know. How far out is Brian scheduling? They don’t know. Do they have a phone number for Brian? No. What is Brian’s last name? They don’t know. I said I was considering canceling, due to their terrible service, and who would I have to talk to about this? They don’t know.

It did not sound promising, but neither did National Seating and Mobility. I decided to wait a few days before escalating to Patient Relations again.

Well, on Tuesday, BRIAN CALLED! He actually called! I was stunned!

I was even more stunned when Brian asked if I was free in about an hour, for him to come.

So at 3pm Tuesday, my chair was delivered! It is here!

Remember when the internet was useful?

Remember when you could do a search on how to fix something, and find huge nerds taking deep dives into fixing that thing? Now all you find is people selling the thing, people selling similar things, and videos of the basic operation of similar things.

And the social stuff exploded then attenuated. I love me some cat pics, but I miss the communities we had. So many people piled in that the online world became more like an airport or an arena concert, and the creepy scary people grabbed all the attention.

The internet is pretty darn good for shopping. But everything else is a shadow of what it was 20 years ago.

Back in November of 2021, I posted about turning down a $24k custom wheelchair that the medical people prescribed, and buying $1500 consumer-grade power chair instead. This year I decided I needed to do better. So I shopped, and I have written about how that went. And I also reopened discussions with the medical people. My neurologist referred me to the Wheelchair Seating office at UofM. It takes many months to get in, and I finally had my appointment on August 9.

Having spent a couple years with the cheap chair, and tried those two other chairs this spring, I am a much more sophisticated wheelchair consumer than I was in 2021. I came to the appointment knowing what features I want, what is possible, and what is overkill. And I feel like I got good advice there.

First of all, easy portability is the hardest thing to get, and you will sacrifice every other feature in trying to get it. The portable chair will have terrible handling, terrible ergonomics, terrible range, terrible durability, etc. You really need two chairs but insurance will only buy one. Best to let insurance buy the chair with the features. So we focused on the non portable chair. I will keep shopping on my own for a portable.

With portability off the list, I told them I want a more comfortable/supportive seat, a swing away joystick, and an elevating seat. I don’t need power reclining but I would like some adjustability.

They decided that my seat discomfort is due to the seat being too short, front to back. They had some seats for me to test sit, and I believe they were correct. So my new chair will be the same width but several inches deeper. They agreed on the elevating seat and the swing away controls. It will allow me to reach the sink!

My diagnosis makes me eligible for a full custom Class 3 chair, but they agreed that everything I am looking for can be found in a less expensive Class 2 chair, so that’s what we would request.

This all seemed great and I came away impressed by the Wheelchair Seating office. Unfortunately what is not great, is the admin side of things. The admin has been a fricking nightmare. I don’t know if I will ever actually get the chair. Just asking for status is nigh impossible. When I call them, it takes ten or eleven calls before someone answers the phone without hanging up. The people who do answer are like “Oh, you have to talk to Jessica. She isn’t here. Call back later. Goodbye! ” It is astoundingly unprofessional.

Anyways, two weeks ago I started complaining to UofM Patient Relations. This seems to have broken something loose. Today I got an email from my insurance company that they received the pre approval request yesterday and approved it today. You know it’s bad when the insurance company has better customer service than the doctors office.

Of course that means the ball is back in Wheelchair Seating’s court. How long will it take them to order it? How long till it gets to their office? And according to the tech people I saw back in August, the wheelchair has to be delivered to my home by someone who will confirm it is safe to use a wheelchair here. I wonder how many months it will take to get THAT appointment? I hope I still have the same insurance when it finally comes.

In the meantime I continue shopping for a portable chair on my own. I was going to wait until I get the prescription chair and know what my share of the cost is. But that could be a long wait.