GIANT COSMIC CRAP WHEELCHAIR VAN

FROM THE EARTHBOUND TOMBOY FILES...


By Heidi Johnson-Wright

I think it was the day I drove through a tropical thunderstorm with my window down that I knew. I didn’t want buckets of rain soaking me to the skin as I crossed the McArthur Causeway, but I had to see in order to drive. This required sticking my head out the window because my windshield wipers had failed. And they picked a mighty inconvenient time to go on the fritz. 

Something in my gut told me that my $60,000+ customized wheelchair-accessible was a lemon. But it wasn’t always like that. The first couple years were magical.

 I remember my joy on the day I picked it up. Finally, the two and half years I’d spent convincing the state vocational rehab folks I needed the van paid off. They agreed that -- as a power wheelchair user -- I needed the van to stay employed. They agreed to pay for the customized lift, wheelchair lock-down system and driver’s seat if my husband and I bought the Dodge Grand Caravan. In addition, the state got to select the van conversion provider.

This left me with little choice in the process, but that was fine with me. I simply couldn’t go on driving a Chevy Cavalier that could not accommodate my power chair. I had to leave the wheelchair at my office, which meant I had no chair to use otherwise. Any place I needed to go outside the office left me no choice but to hobble around on crutches. I could only walk short distances and couldn’t carry anything with me. It was an arrangement that had become unworkable.

Those first couple years with the van, I felt like a 16-year old who’d just gotten her license. Gone were the days when I sweated going to off-site meetings and trainings for work. Now that I could transport my chair in the van, a whole new world had opened up for me.  On my off time, I went to movies, poetry readings, malls and restaurants – things impossible for me in the past. I could grocery shop, pick up dry cleaning and run to the drugstore by myself, tasks I desperately wanted to contribute to ease my husband’s caregiver burden.

 

All was smooth sailing until we moved from Ohio to Miami. Then it was as if some evil cosmic force awoke and took a humongous crap on me and my van.  A huge, stinky crap that coated the outside and inside, smeared all over the Dodge factory parts along with the after-market conversion parts. Let me count the ways:

• The customized and very pricey automatic door that opened to deploy the ramp broke like 800 times, often trapping me in the van. (Okay, maybe it was only 80 times.)

• An improper sealing job at the factory allowed water inside resulting in a stinky mildew bloom in the upholstery.

• The ramp motor died twice.

• Both the driver’s and passenger’s windows dropped down into the doors without warning.

• The left turn signal came and went as it pleased.

• The fuel pump died.

• The relay switch that powered the sliding door’s remote control worked some days but not others.

• The van frequently overheated, overflowing the radiator.

• The customized electronics that allowed me to switch gears at the touch of a button got so out of whack that I had to take the bus to work while my van was in the shop – for six weeks.

• The custom driver’s seat broke a gear and wouldn’t move.

• The radio died on my birthday in 2001: Sept. 11.

• The fuel line went into vapor lock numerous times, utterly disabling the van. Sometimes it mysteriously fixed itself after the van burst forth with a giant farting backfire.

• A young man on a 10-speed heading to his South Beach waitering job slammed into the van’s passenger side, knocking off a protective underside panel.

• Two different drivers backed into me.  

• Did I mention Dodge issued two recalls requiring significant repairs?

Now that I’m on my second van, I think back on that big, purple hunk of junk. There were times I wanted to put a concrete block on the accelerator and let that van fly into Biscayne Bay. I still hold it responsible for most of my gray hairs.

Yet it gave me freedom in life that I could never take for granted. I’m forever grateful, gray hairs and all.

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2015/08/giant-cosmic-crap-wheelchair-van.html