New Mobility Magazine July-Aug 2022

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a special thanks to those who support

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For more information on how you can support United Spinal and become a corporate member, please contact Megan Chintalla at mchintalla@unitedspinal.org or 718/803-3782, ext. 7253. Acknowledgements on our website, in New Mobility, in United Spinal e-news or any other United Spinal publication should not be considered as endorsements of any product or service.

16

THE LOWDOWN ON LOLO

With high profile acting and modeling gigs, Lauren “Lolo” Spencer is sitting pretty. TEAL SHERER has the profile.

THE MANY FEATHERS OF ADAPTIVE BIRDING ELLIOTT LAPIN looks into adaptive birding and the movement that is removing barriers for people of all abilities.

ADAPTING

YOUR CLOTHING

There are more adaptive clothing options in stores than ever before, but some wheelchair users are finding the best solutions start at home. JENNY SMITH reports. 44

FINDING A HEALTHY WEIGHT

Losing weight or trying to gid rid of a quad belly can seem like an insurmountable challenge when you are sitting all day. THE ROLLING RNs help you figure out the best path to success.

FLOATING

LIKE AN ASTRONAUT

TIM GILMER checks in with some of the disabled pioneers who are making space flight inclusive.

THE HOME

WORKOUT MACHINE WE DESERVE?

Senior editor SETH MCBRIDE wasn’t sure what to expect when he unboxed his MAXPRO cable fitness machine, but after putting it through months of workouts, he’s found a keeper.

BULLY PULPIT

By Ian Ruder

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New Mobility(ISSN 1086-4741) is published bimonthly by United Spinal Association, 120-34 Queens Blvd., Ste.320, Kew Gardens, NY 11415. Periodicals postage paid at Flushing, NY and additional mailing offices.

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DESPERATELY SEEKING CAREGIVERS

What do you call a sexually voracious middle-aged healer, a closeted anti-vaxxer who claims to work in COVID-19 vaccine development, and a self-described “modern Buddhist/artist/neuroscientist”?

If you guessed “three of the top candidates from over three months of frantic searching for a live-in caregiver,” you win the prize. I wish I had a funny punchline here, but the sad fact is there is nothing funny about the current caregiver shortage in America.

If you rely on caregivers, you are probably all too aware of this. For the last few years, the chorus of frustration from people seeking help has gotten louder. I’ve heard from readers worried they won’t be able to stay at home, friends unable to get together because they can’t cover a shift, and too many people forced to press their friends and family into unwanted responsibilities.

Thanks mainly to luck and good fortune, my caregiving team remained stable through most of the first two years of the pandemic. I managed to find an ideal hire the one time I had an opening, but there were underlying signs of the trouble to come. The ads and postings that typically returned a bounty of good candidates only elicited a few responses. Outside of the woman I hired, there wasn’t a single person I was excited about.

Still, those signs didn’t prepare me for the response I received during my most recent caregiver search. I would have happily settled for one good candidate as I repeatedly clicked the refresh button on my email, hoping more people had responded to my ads.

Despite doing more personal outreach and posting ads in more places than at any point in my 24 years of hiring, all I had to show for my efforts was an undersized pool of would-be caregivers that was, ironically,

overwhelming. I didn’t particularly want anything to do with any of them, but when you need a caregiver, you need a caregiver.

That’s how I ended up interviewing the aforementioned “healer” and closeted anti-vaxxer. The former wasted her opportunity when she started flirting with one of my current caregivers during our interview. The latter recused himself by telling me he’d “decided not to get any more shots” after briefly considering getting vaccinated when I told him the requirement was non-negotiable.

The individual anecdotes are funny, but collectively they paint a picture of the desperate and depressing reality confronting so many of us. Do we settle for mediocre or sub-par care or stay home, often in bed, and suffer?

Without good caregivers, we tend to disappear. If we’re lucky, maybe we just miss a night out with friends because we don’t have a caregiver to drive. If we’re unlucky, a negligent caregiver’s mistake lands us in the hospital or on extended bedrest. If we can’t find anyone, assisted living and nursing homes loom. This is what keeps me up at night when I’m down a caregiver.

Thankfully, I finally filled my opening. While my caregiving nightmare is at least temporarily over, three friends independently reached out to me in the last week for advice on procuring their own help. Aside from urging them to be creative and persistent, I’m at a loss for what to tell them.

The caregiver shortage in America is real, and it is not going away. If we want to ensure that we can all live the active lives we want, we need innovative solutions and leaders to help implement them.

We shouldn’t have to be lucky just to get mediocre care. We shouldn’t have to worry about disappearing.

BEHIND THE STORIES

With Ian Ruder

Anyone who has read any of Ashley Lyn Olson’s detailed write-ups on wheelchairtraveling.com knows not to mistake her as one of the superficial travel influencers who dominate social media today. Her southwest itinerary in this issue is emblematic of the nitty-gritty access details she has been providing on wheelchairtraveling.com since she launched the site in 2006. Those kinds of resources weren’t readily online at the time, and she has been doing the hands-on work needed to provide them ever since. “The travel world is finally changing and incorporating more diverse voices focused on accessibility,” she says. “It’s rewarding to see more people sharing their tips and tricks and doing what I set out to do.”

Lilly Longshore has traveled around the world and seen some of its most renowned and iconic destinations but says the diverse ecosystem of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state rivals them all. “It’s a special kind of beauty that is top notch,” says Longshore, an accessible travel specialist for travel-for-all.com. “It’s right up there with the best in the world.” As a Washington resident, she regularly visits the park and explores its endless nooks and crannies. She appreciates the work the park service and others have done to create experiences that go beyond token access. “They’ve done a great job building and maintaining really cool accessible trails that let you get right out into the wilderness.”

For an article about a family road trip, it only seemed fitting to have a family work together to write it. Enter the Bogdans: die-hard road trippers who have covered almost every corner of the continental U.S. in their Chrysler Town & Country. We were lucky to have father-daughter super duo Bill and Hannah Bogdan answer the call. Dad pitched the story, dad and daughter wrote the copy and daughter came through with a color-coded editing system that took the pressure off dad. “I don’t even know how to highlight text on screen,” Bill says. The end product — their first contribution to NM — brings back lots of good memories. “There was so much that happened on the trip,” says Hannah. “It was a lot of fun.”

Please send queries, manuscripts or feedback to Ian Ruder: iruder@unitedspinal.org

United Spinal’s Resource Center provides information on any aspect of living with SCI/D. Contact: 800/962-9629; unitedspinal.org/ask-us; 120-34 Queens Blvd, Suite 320, Kew Gardens, NY 11415.

COLUMNISTS

MAT BARTON • AARON BROVERMAN

SHERI DENKENSOHN-TROTT

MIKE FRANZ • REGAN LINTON

TEAL SHERER • JENNY SMITH

REVECA TORRES • KARY WRIGHT

CONTRIBUTORS

KIM ANDERSON • JOSH BASILE

LAWRENCE CARTER-LONG

RORY COOPER • DEBORAH DAVIS

JENNIFER FRENCH • ALEX GHENIS

RICHARD HOLICKY • GARY KARP

PAULA LARSON • CORY LEE LILLY LONGSHORE

KATE MATELAN • BEN MATTLIN

BROOK MCCALL • ASHLEY LYN OLSON

KENNY SALVINI • ERIC STAMPFLI

MITCH TEPPER • KIRK WILLIAMS LOREN WORTHINGTON

WEB PARTNERS

BACKBONES

CURB FREE WITH CORY LEE ROLLIN’ RNS ROOTED IN RIGHTS SPINALPEDIA SPIN THE GLOBE WHEELCHAIR TRAVELING

FEATURED WEB PARTNER:

Curb Free with Cory Lee is an awardwinning travel blog devoted to sharing the world from a wheelchair user’s perspective. Featured in National Geographic and on the Travel Channel.

Curbfreewithcorylee.com

UNITED SPINAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS: unitedspinal.org/our-story

SHARE

MAY-JUNE 2022

A Spirit Runs Through Us All

A Spirited Read: Excellent stories — timely, beautiful and full of love. Thanks. Mark Johnson Newmobility.com

Alternate States: Spirituality, Psychedelics & SCI

Reckless: As a C7 quad I find this article to be dangerous. I ate mushrooms once and had terrible spasms, continual bladder leakage and an uncontrollably hot body temperature. You make something like this seem like such a great thing and you don’t have enough of a medical warning or information. Why share this with so many people? Everyone’s injury and reaction is different.

Kelly Newmobility.com

Goodbye Bowel Program, Hello Colostomy (A Farewell to Butts)

Timely: This is our situation exactly — except as a C2 quad, it has been impossible to even get the consultations to deal with the hemorrhoids. My husband was bleeding 1-3 cups per bowel program, and the program expanded from one hour to a three-to-four-hour crime scene nightmare. We were desperate for banding or a hemorrhoidectomy. My husband is on a ventilator, and no colorectal surgeon would even do a consult. Today, with my husband hospitalized for a different reason, a colorectal surgeon visited him, discussed the hemorrhoids, and offered a colostomy. He’s on the schedule in three days. Your article

appeared in my news feed five minutes after this decision. I sent it to my husband, and he is SO GRATEFUL to hear this story. Thank you!

Maddie Newmobility.com

Easy, Poo-sy: I had hemmy issues for years. I dreaded the mornings for bowel care (every other day). I bleed a lot. I tried dozens of things. Nothing worked. I bled every time until I had surgery to remove the hemmys and started using Miralax. That helped some. Then I got sore on my bottom. My doctor said that I should get colostomy to keep from sore from getting infected.

I did get the operation. I was in the hospital for several days until I had bowel movements to make sure it worked. That was it. I wish I’d done it years ago. Instead of hours sitting on the toilet, my caregiver can just change the bag in 30 seconds. No more “poop in pants” and having to sit in it until a caregiver could come. Doctor said that I could reverse the colostomy if I wanted. No way.

Derrick Wine Newmobility.com

WEB-FIRST CONTENT

A Wheelchair User’s Guide to Dressing Well

At What Cost?: Great article regarding clothing. Like others, I didn’t realize there were that many adaptive clothing lines out there. But if you’re a quadriplegic and you have a limited income, how can you afford these clothes? $120 for a pair of shoes? $100 or more for a pair of pants?

$35 for a T-shirt? I know it is hard to find clothing to adapt to what you need in the

regular stores, but I believe most of us have to because of the price point.

D3vi Newmobility.com

Look Good, Feel Great: I have been in a wheelchair for 17 years and have spent countless hours on the internet looking and then trying out different brands. I have dealt with IZ many times. The clothing from there is a little too expensive for a lot of people, but it lasts a long, long time. I also have a very good relationship with an alterations place. When I used to talk to people with new spinal injuries, I’d tell them two major things:

1. Get back to driving as soon as you can — it gives you more freedom.

2. When you get up in the morning, put on clothes that feel good and make you look great.

Geoffrey Olsen Newmobility.com

MAXPRO Cable Fitness Machine Review

Appalling App: My machine arrived, and it’s working really well for me. Thanks for letting us know about this. My only complaint is that the free app is almost useless and spends most of its time asking you to upgrade to the deluxe app, a ridiculous $300 a year.

Alan Stanley Newmobility.com

“Excellent stories — timely, beautiful and full of love.”

REFRAMED

by Reveca Torres

WHAT IF?

Ifelt my heart start to race and my breath shortening as I watched the van flip over multiple times after swerving to avoid a passing semi-truck. It was only TV, but it was all too familiar. Tears and sobs came out of me unexpectedly.

I remember being the protagonist in this same scene but with my eyes closed, trapped in a twilight of consciousness. This time, with my eyes wide open, I was watching my dad, brothers, sister and mom — like I could finally see what was on the other side of my eyelids.

It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced a moment where I was transported back to when I became paralyzed. I can’t help but wonder what I would have been like had this not happened. Would I have kids like my mother did at my age? Who would my friends be? Would I be kind and even care about people with disabilities?

I’d like to think that one way or another my path would cross with the wonderful people I’ve met who have experienced a life-changing spinal cord injury. I would have ramps in my home, big enough bathrooms, and themed dinner parties. I would yell at people who parked in disabled parking spots. I would bring my friends to the capitol and demand change. I would want to be part of this community.

I suppose its futile to think about all of the “What Ifs,” but more and more I wonder: What if things have not turned out so differently after all?

Ice is Nice

We’ve profiled lots of cool wheelchair users, but Eureka, Montana, resident Jason Stoffer may be the coldest. Stoffer caught our eye when he posted photos of himself enjoying a plunge into the icy waters of Montana’s Dickey Lake. He asked: “Are any of you guys into cold exposure? I started a little local group in Montana … there are some great benefits involved.”

Stoffer, an L1 para, has been experimenting with cold therapy since before his 2017 injury and has become a big advocate. He says the regular plunges (3-10 minutes in 48-50 degree water) have noticeably benefitted his inflammation, anxiety, depression and general health. “I enter a state where I feel like I could hang out there forever,” he says. “You feel like you’re on top of the world.”

The post connected Stoffer with other wheelchair-using cold lovers, and he’s hoping to find even more. He encourages interested wheelers to Google “Wim Hof” and the “Wim Hof Method” to find out more — and to be safe should they decide to brave the cold themselves.

Loo-ky Here

The search for the U.K.’s most accessible toilet is finally over! OK, we didn’t even know it had begun, but according to The Blue Badge Access Awards, the best, most accessible bathroom in the UK is at the Shangri-La The Shard in London. Ceremony organizers also handed out an award for the worst, or most ludicrous, accessible toilet, with Wagamama Winchester & NoMad Hotel in London taking home the (dis)honors.

NM Senior editor Seth McBride hopes The Shard will embrace the victory with the slogan: “There’s never been a more accessible place to shart than at Shangri-La The Shard.” See the competitors at bluebadgestyle.com/ 2022/05/ludicrous-loos-at-the-blue-badgeaccess-awards.

Shangri-La The Shard

Haleigh Rosa models Skims underwear.

Like Kim

Women with all types of bodies can now dress like America’s top socialite. On May 2, Kim Kardashian’s Skims clothing line launched its Adaptive Collection, featuring four new adaptive underwear designs: an adaptive scoop bralette, thong, brief and boy short. According to the website, the bralette comes “with hook and eye front closure for added accessibility of dressing.” Each piece comes in four different colors and sizes from XXS to 4X.

To announce the new line, Skims blasted social media with photos of an array of disabled models wearing the pieces. Paralympian Scout Bassett, an American track and field athlete, said in a statement, “Unlike other adaptive lines that feature zippers that are a little bit bulky, Velcro — which sticks to everything — or even magnets, which are heavy and also create bulk, I really like that the hook-and-eye closure is very low profile. It’s flat, lightweight, and you can wear tops over it where you wouldn’t even see that it has an adaptive element. It’s easy to get to and makes it more accessible for people who have low range of motion or mobility.” Find out more at skims.com.

Adaptive Gardening Podcast Episode

Trellis Horticultural Therapy Alliance has been on the forefront of adaptive gardening since 2017. They help people with physical and cognitive impairments engage with gardening and nature at their Ability Garden at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center in Atlanta. In this pod cast/interview, Trellis co-founder Rachel Cochran and the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s community outreach manager Moe Hemmings tell WABE “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes about the orga nization’s new collaboration to bring adaptive gardening to people with spinal cord injuries. Listen at wabe.org/trellis-horticultural-therapyalliance-brings-adaptive-gardening-to-atlantabotanical-garden.

Win the Orlando Trip of a Lifetime

If you use a catheter, you could be one entry form away from the vacation of your dreams — round trip airfare for two to Orlando where you will bask in an eight-bedroom accessible villa with luxury amenities and enjoy $1,000 in spending money and tickets to Disney or Universal Studios. US Med Express is spon soring the sweepstakes, and you can read the fine print and enter on their site at usmedexpress.net/ sweepstakes. Also, see their ad on page 65.

Wheelz + Hot Wheels = RC Nirvana

In 2018, Hot Wheels introduced its first-ever wheelchair, a slickly-packaged, matchbox-sized WCMX chair. Now, Hot Wheels is releasing a remote-controlled wheelchair toy modeled on WCMX icon Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham.

The R/C Aaron Wheelz Wheelie Chair can do wheelies while traveling up to 6 miles per hour and comes with a ramp, allowing users to replicate Fotheringham’s high-flying jumps.

As much fun as he has had driving the remote-controlled Wheelz, Fotheringham is most excited about the toy’s potential impact for expanding and changing the way people think about disability. “It’s been cool to be able to bring a different light to wheelchair use and to disabilities in general,” he says. “People play with the toy and then something clicks in their head and changes their perspective.”

Representation aside, any RC toy intended to emulate Fotheringham had to be able to go fast, jump high and take a

MARK FUGLEVAND STARTED ABILITEASE TO CHANNEL HIS 20+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE LIVING WITH SCI INTO USEFUL PRODUCTS AND RESOURCES TO HELP OTHER WHEELCHAIR USERS. THE ABILITEASE INSTAGRAM HAS QUICKLY BECOME ONE OF THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA REPOSITORIES FOR INNOVATIVE ADAPTIVE SOLUTIONS, ALONG WITH FUGLEVAND’S 3D-PRINTED TOOLS. FIND HIM AT INSTAGRAM.COM/ABILITEASE.

United Spinal Helps Members Rebuild After Disaster Strikes

United Spinal Association’s Ready to Roll emergency and disaster relief program distributed $500,000 to over 50 families and individuals with SCI affected by natural disasters in 2021. The funding was made possible by a generous grant from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation.

Terrell Patterson, 28, was one of the millions of Americans whose lives were upended by a natural disaster in 2021. The Louisiana home he shares with his girlfriend and daughter was severely damaged by Hurricane Ida. As he struggled to find accessible temporary housing, he looked for ways to cover the extensive repair costs. One of his therapists suggested he apply for funding from United Spinal.

Webinar to Watch

United Spinal “gave me the hope that I needed,” says Terrell Patterson.

“At first I didn’t call because I didn’t believe they were going to be able to help with as much damage as I had,” he says. “When I gave them the estimate, it was a lot, and I didn’t think they were going to do that much. When she called me back and told me they were going to take care of the whole renovation, I was like, ‘Seriously?!’’’

“If it wasn’t for United Spinal I’d probably still be trying to be do the repairs,” he says. “They gave me the hope that I needed.”

Learn more about Ready to Roll, and watch videos from grant recipients at unitedspinal.org/ready-to-roll.

UNITED SPINAL BY THE NUMBERS

NUMBER OF UNITED SPINAL MEMBERS: 59,503

NUMBER OF UNITED SPINAL PEER MENTORS: 535

NUMBER OF UNITED SPINAL CHAPTERS: 48

NUMBER OF PEOPLE WITH SCI: 296,000

NUMBER OF WHEELCHAIR USERS: 3.3 MILLION

As part of United Spinal Association’s ongoing efforts to raise awareness around mental health and disability, the organization hosted a May 12 webinar featuring two mental health professionals living with mobility disabilities. In “A Candid Conversation from Both Sides of the Chair,” Stephanie Birmingham and Michaela Devins shared how their mental health affects their personal and professional lives as disabled women. Birmingham is a mental health therapist who owns her own practice and Devins is a mental health counselor.

Both women spoke about what led them to pursuing their careers in mental health care and their successes and struggles along the way. Birmingham candidly discussed her first experiences in finding mental health care as a teenager. “Certainly, disability was something I would talk about in a therapy space, but a lot of times it was just natural things that were about growing up,” she said.

Shangri-La The Shard

This webinar is available on United Spinal Association’s Facebook and Instagram. Both pages also post helpful tips and resources every week for Mental Health Mondays.

Birmingham

Meet New United Spinal Member Bentz C. Braud

Age 51 from Franklin, Louisiana SCI, T4-T8 Incomplete Veteran, former Mechanic Field Foreman, Eagle Scout

Why did you join United Spinal?

To gain more knowledge for myself as well as to help newer SCI individuals. United Spinal provides lots of very useful info for all SCI survivors to have at their fingertips. What is the one disability-related product you couldn’t live without?

My MyoCycle FES Bike. It helps tremendously with feet and ankle swelling and prevents muscle atrophy. It also helps me contract my hamstrings, glutes and thigh muscles.

If you could change one thing in the world to improve quality of life for wheelchair users, what would it be? I’d make essential products affordable or even free. Most people with SCI cannot afford everything needed to maintain quality of life. Getting Medicare to pay for essential products is difficult and time-consuming. It would make a great difference if we all had what we need when we need it.

TechTalks Spur Collaboration

United Spinal Association Tech Access Initiative members work closely with big companies like Meta to build accessibility into new products as they’re being developed. The Initiative hosts monthly TechTalks the second Monday of each month at 5 p.m. ET.

“TechTalks gives space for people to share about different types of technology, low-tech and high-tech, the pain points of the inaccessibility, different ways to locate the accessibility features, and how assistive technology has helped foster independence,” says Erin Taylor, the Tech Access Initiative program director. “All these discussions are important, but what is special is watching community build. That is what TechTalks is all about.”

Taylor has captured some of this fledgling community’s discussions on two fact sheets: Smart Home Essentials and Accessible Gaming Guide. Visit unitedspinal.org/tech-accessinitiative to sign up and view the fact sheets.

New Advocacy Resource

“Advocacy In Action: A Toolkit for the Rolling Revolution” contains everything you need to become an effective change agent for the disability community. Its sections include important legislation, effective personal storytelling, the legislative process and more. Bookmark unitedspinal.org/advocacytoolkit or download it as a PDF to keep handy on all your devices.

Director of Community Support

United Spinal Association Welcomes New

Please join United Spinal Association in welcoming Matt Castelluccio as the new director of community support. He fills the role formerly held by Bill Fertig, who recently retired from his role as resource center director. Castelluccio, a C6 quadriplegic, comes to United Spinal with a strong background in both rehab and independent living, as well as experience as a chapter leader.

“The journey of recov ery can be challenging but does not need to be traveled alone. United Spinal Association is a community of people with lived disability experience that can support you along the way,” he says. “With the help of the team at United Spinal Association, many questions can be answered, and concerns can be addressed about living with a disability.”

The name change from “resource center” to “community support” is meant to highlight the personal nature of United Spinal’s mission to serve people with spinal cord injuries and related mobility disabilities. Look for a renewed dedication to membership and a reboot of how the organization presents its resources in the fall.

“We are combing through our Knowledge Books and our recently-acquired AbleThrive resources to curate the content that best serves people with SCI/D and their families,” says Josie Byzek, director of digital experience and content for United Spinal. She recently transitioned from executive editor of New Mobility to this newly-created role. “I’m especially excited to find new ways to share the life-changing work of my peers at United Spinal. Our programs collectively connect wheelchair users and their families to community services, provide peer support, assist in employment searches, ensure strong laws and policies, and even advise Big Tech on how to make the future accessible.” Castelluccio and Byzek’s new roles are part of significant changes in United Spinal that promise to serve the broad community of people with SCI and related disabilities better than ever. Be the first to know about future changes by joining United Spinal at unitedspinal.org

Castelluccio

MASTER CARPENTER

The Rolling Renovator

Growing up in Michigan, Joseph Ouellette dreamt of three future careers: Olympic wrestler, horse-mounted park ranger or master carpenter. When a backyard wrestling move resulted in a C4-5 incomplete quadriplegia during high school, the master carpenter route seemed more realistic than the others.

Ouellette had worked alongside his stepfather as a carpenter’s apprentice when he was younger and had a good sense of what was involved in the job. Initially, he envisioned a supervisory role where he could direct subcontractors and laborers, instilling his expertise and vision and working within his physical abilities.

As time passed, Ouellette recovered more function than he had expected. He also realized he wasn’t someone who could just tell others what to do; he needed to be in the middle of things. After high school, he went into business as a contractor, handling small renovations and acting as a handyman for nondisabled clients. It wasn’t long before he adapted the process to do the work himself.

FAVORITE TECH DEVICE: My Google home assistant is magic on a shelf. It makes my life much easier from a disability perspective.

“I have certain tools that are modified for me. On my wheelchair, I have tool pouches and utility pouches,” says Ouellette. “Another example is I’ve adapted my table saw so I can cut wood on my own. The legs are chopped down on the table itself to be at my height level, and I can manipulate my hands to push the wood through the saw blade using tenodesis.”

While Ouellette proved able to do much of the work himself, it took a toll. The physical nature of his labor contributed to 57 spinal strokes between 2002 and 2010. That, combined with work opportunities drying up, brought Ouellette to a crossroads.

“I thought I’d have to retire,” says Ouellette. “However, in that time, I also figured out that it was still OK for me to do contracting work, but if I could set things up differently this time around — where the work would be more consistent and reliable — I could adapt the work to fit my injury better.”

Ouellette decided to pursue a builder’s license, which allowed

CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:

My van. That thing has had more tools and materials in it than you can imagine, and I’d be nowhere without transportation.

Joseph Ouellette became an apprentice carpenter at 12 and continued on that career path after a spinal cord injury at 15.

Joseph Ouellette

Ouellette combines adaptive tools and tenodesis grasp to use a table saw.

him to work as a contractor on any residential or commercial building in Michigan. Once licensed, a friend hired him to renovate his home. The work led to more referrals and a new focus.

“That was an open door where I actually thought it would work out this time, so I started focusing more on a niche market of those who just wanted to modify homes and offices for individuals with mobility challenges, including the senior community,” says Ouellette.

Today Ouellette runs Quad Carpentry, a Michigan-based contracting company specializing in accessible renovations. He does all the estimating, materials ordering, measuring and planning himself, while his subcontractors do most of the physical labor. He embraces a “work smarter, not harder” approach but still manages to drill a hole or hammer a nail or two on occasion.

“I really think it’s important for my clients to see me being directly involved. Also, when someone without my direct [disability] experience is involved, clients can often be sold something they don’t actually need.” he says. “I take seriously my level of specific quality control that only I can offer as a person with a disability.”

EVER INVENT A PIECE OF ADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY?

I patented The Fork Tongue Trigger Assist which helps me shoot guns at a paralympic level.

Racking ’em Up

Although he doesn’t wrestle anymore, Ouellette is interested in becoming a paralympic shooter one day and is also on the verge of being ranked in competitive wheelchair pool.

“Before my injury, I used to play pool with my dad at a local hall. I did pick up on it pretty quickly because of my aptitude in carpentry, where you have to have a good eye to see straight lines and angles. I use that same visual acumen playing pool where you have to line up your shot and use different aspects of physics.

After my injury, I’d only play occasionally when I’d be out at a bar, and a friend would be like, ‘Hey want to shoot some pool?’ But I do a lot of peer mentoring for United Spinal Association, and one of the other mentors sent out an email saying The American Pool Players Association was looking for wheelchair players. I play with a team of eight people. We’re called The Smooth Strokers, and there are about 10 teams in the league. I do generate a pretty strong reaction from everybody since I was the only wheelchair player that signed up.

“WHY DID YOU JOIN UNITED SPINAL?

It was important for me to bring a new perspective to helping the newly injured and providing the resources that I learned about through the organization.

GEAR HACKS

By Seth McBride

THE SCHOOL BUS HACK

This past winter, I bought a bus. A 31-foot, flat-nosed school bus that I purchased from an outfit in Las Vegas. My editor thinks less of me now that I have a bus. I’ve gone from somewhat interesting to very basic. “Everybody has a bus!” he exclaimed when I told him. “Who doesn’t have a bus these days?”

I protested that he was exaggerating. But only a little. I can’t scroll Instagram or drive down the road for more than five minutes without seeing someone’s tricked out #Skoolie or converted Sprinter van. He was even more skeptical when I pitched writing about my bus for this column. “How is it going to be any different from every other bus story we’ve done?” he asked.

“Well, everybody else converts their bus, makes it all nice and accessible,” I said. “We’re not really doing anything to ours.”

“That’s your Gear Hack?”

It is. Sometimes the best hack is the one that requires the least effort.

Option C

In truth, I never really wanted a bus. I wanted a portable, weather-tight place to keep my family’s camping gear so we didn’t have to spend two days packing to get out into the wilderness for a night or two. But a place to sleep would be nice too. Setting up camp as a wheelchair user takes a while — even longer when you have two young children.

My first idea was to buy a cargo trailer and put gear shelves on one side and bunk beds on the other. My wife,

Kelly, thought that sounded like a mobile sauna/hellhole. So, we started looking at truck bed campers. I had visions of wandering around the country like Steinbeck in Travels with Charley. But Steinbeck was unencumbered except for a standard poodle — and truck campers are expensive. Twenty grand for two beds and a camp kitchen, plus I have to play paralyzed twister to get in every night? I think not. An RV was out of the question, too. You’re looking at $60K for something that isn’t covered in mold — twice that if you want a modicum of wheelchair access. And have you ever driven an RV on a forest service road? It feels like you’re in a dryer full of rocks. So, a school bus. On the whole, school buses have a few things going for them.

1. Compared with most other options for mobile lodging, they’re a bargain. We bought ours — a 2007 rear-engine Thomas Saf-T-Liner — for $9,600. You

can easily find a more common 40-foot school bus in the $5K to $8K range. Or less if you get adventurous and start looking on a public auction website. We paid an extra thousand dollars for a conversion package — Las Vegas Bus Sales stripped out the seats, added a mattress, a portable toilet and retitled it under our names as an RV. School buses are typically titled as passenger vehicles, and it’s illegal to drive them without a commercial driver’s license. By retitling as an RV, you can drive one with a standard driver’s license.

2. Many already have a wheelchair lift installed. Self-explanatory — but it did take some time to find a bus with a lift in the middle rather than at the back, which is often the most accessible place to put a bed.

3. They’re sturdy. School buses are predominantly metal, not plastic and fiber composites like most modern RVs and

Schoolbuses are surprisingly roomy, easily transporting several humans, a dog and camp gear.

travel trailers. They won’t rattle to pieces on rough roads, and they have higher ground clearance than RVs — both important since we want a vehicle to take into the middle of nowhere, not a KOA.

4. Gas mileage. Surprisingly, school buses get decent gas mileage for their size. Ours averaged about 13 miles a gallon on the drive from Vegas to our home in Washington. That was while pulling a Jeep. When we drove cross-country in my parents’ 30-foot RV, not towing anything, we were lucky to get 10 miles per gallon.

Happiness Is an Empty Shell

When we finally got the bus home, we were all amped up about the things we were going to do: bunk beds and built-in storage and a water system and a composting toilet. Maybe we’d put in a wood stove, and it would all be very hygge. But then Lou, our then 6-month-old daughter, kept waking up after her 45-minute nap just as we started to get to work. Momentum shot. Before we knew it, a weekend had disappeared and we’d removed 12 screws. This went on for a few months before we finally got fed up and aligned our priorities with reality.

The point of the bus was to be able to go camping more often, to spend more time outside — not to spend time

spend two years converting a bus.

We often frame accessibility as a binary — either something is accessible or it isn’t. But accessibility is relative and personal. To me, an empty shell of a school bus is a whole lot more accessible than a brand-new Winnebago Inspire AE or a DIY conversion worthy of an Instagram account. Why? Because I have a job and two children, and I don’t have $380,000 or countless hours to craft the bus of my dreams. I can transfer onto an air mattress and cook dinner on a camp stove much more easily than I can build custom bed frames and a roll-under countertop.

So, we backed off and kept our modifications minimal. Kelly’s dad installed a pair of hand controls that I purchased for $350 on eBay. We bought a generator. At $2,350 this was the most expensive item we purchased, but we spent the extra money for a Honda that is super quiet and powerful enough to back up our house when the power goes out. We bought a portable air conditioner/heat pump ($700) that vents

from roasting on hot summer nights. I installed a motocross hitch rack ($490) that will carry my Bowhead off-road bike. Kelly added some curtains — old ones we had in boxes in the attic — by screwing them into the metal above the window and adding some ribbons to tie them up when we want to let light in.

The bus still looks like an empty shell, but that shell is ready to go. We’re dubbing it Cousin Shreddie. Related: If anyone knows an artist capable of airbrushing the side with a life-size Randy Quaid in a bathrobe, hit me up. Cousin Shreddie isn’t Accessible with a capital “A,” but all in, it cost about the same ($15K) as my used Toyota Tacoma.

Shreddie is accessible enough for our lives right now. It has a wheelchair lift, two mattresses and a Pack ’n Play, boxes of camp gear, a portable toilet, and enough leftover space for three mountain bikes, a wheelchair, four humans and one Australian cattle dog. It’s accessible because it’s sitting in our driveway, ready to take us out into the woods whenever we get a free weekend.

Finding a schoolbus with a lift on the side instead of in the back was a slight challenge.

Ewan, Lou and Kelly are ready to go camping.

THE LOWDOWN ON LAUREN ‘LOLO’ SPENCER

BY TEAL SHERER

In the HBO Max series, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Jocelyn is a quick-witted, tell-it-like-it-is, sex-positive, wheelchairusing freshman at Essex College. When Lauren “Lolo” Spencer auditioned for the role, she knew it was hers. “This is me,” she recalls thinking. “I get to talk shit. I have a fake ID business. Hell yeah! This is exactly up my alley.”

Photo by Brittney Janae

Not only did Spencer book the part, but her portrayal of Jocelyn won her widespread acclaim and brightened the spotlight on her efforts to advance disability representation. “Lolo has such a contagious joy about her and is so damn funny,” says Justin Noble, who created The Sex Lives of College Girls with Mindy Kaling. “I think she makes all of us want to live down the hall from Jocelyn. “

Representation is important to Spencer, and she’s building a successful career as a disability lifestyle influencer, model, actor and content creator. “I think it’s important to share what it’s like for me, especially as a black woman with a disability. To show the world, ‘Oh. This is what it looks like.’ So they aren’t intimidated the next time they see someone else that looks like me or moves around like me. That’s my goal.”

EARLY YEARS

As a teenager growing up in Stockton, California, Spencer started having muscle weakness and was diagnosed with ALS. After using leg braces to get around during high school, her introduction to using a wheelchair came on her senior class graduation night at Disneyland. “My friends and I had so much fun,” says Spencer. “They were hopping on the back of the wheelchair. I’m doing doughnuts in the middle of the park.” The experience changed her perception of using a wheelchair. “‘This is helping me. This is creating freedom,’ I thought. Nobody is trippin’ off it. So, I don’t need to trip off it.”

When Spencer was 19, she moved to Los Angeles. “My mom was incredibly concerned because it was hours away from her,” says Spencer. “I told her if what the doctors say is true about my health, at least let me go to LA and experience life as much as I can, while I can, independently. And if for any reason my health would decline, I’d move back to Stockton.” That was 16 years ago.

Spencer went to California State University, Northridge, and got a degree in TV Production with an emphasis in video editing. “My dream was to be the biggest editor in the world — an Oscar winner,” she says. After graduating, Spencer did freelance editing work and later found a full-time job in the marketing department of a film distribution company.

Spencer had been with the company a couple of years

when her boss threatened to fire her. “I realized then that I don’t want to be in a position where someone else has control over my livelihood. I had to do something where I can employ myself,” she says. The experience sparked the idea for her YouTube Channel, Sitting Pretty. “People are always fascinated by me — so I thought, I can share my experiences, what I’ve gone through, what I’m going through, what my daily life looks like,” says Spencer.

SITTING PRETTY

Spencer uploaded her first YouTube video in 2015 – a vlog of a trip she took to South Beach, Miami, with her cousins. The video shows her rolling over the sand in a beach wheelchair and enjoying late-night dinners and dance club adventures. “A lot of people may assume that our lives as women with disabilities are super depressing, or that we can’t do shit … that we don’t live our lives. I’m here to prove that wrong,” Spencer says in the video.

Since then, Spencer has uploaded over 130 videos and gained almost 15,000 subscribers. Her Instagram account has over 57,000 followers. She shares fashion advice, dating app tips and accessibility annoyances, and she interviews disability leaders, like Judy Heumann. Spencer also chronicles her quest to find out if she really has ALS or was misdiag-

Spencer and her mom remain close.

Modeling for Zappos Adaptive comes naturally to Spencer.

nosed. After a series of tests, her doctors are unable to give her a clear answer. “I now like to say I’m undiagnosed or have muscular dystrophy — as an overall umbrella,” says Spencer.

Stephanie Thomas, a fashion stylist for people with disabilities and the founder of Cur8able, a fashion consultancy, was casting a photoshoot and came across Spencer’s videos. “There is something really special about Lolo. There is a light about her,” says Thomas. “She is so authentic.” Thomas hired Spencer for the shoot and later recommended to Spencer that she get an agent.

GIVE ME LIBERTY

A few months after finding an agency, Spencer got an audition for the independent film Give Me Liberty. The role was for Tracy Holmes — an outspoken, charismatic social worker who uses a wheelchair.

Written by Kirill Mikhanovsky and Alice Austen, Give Me Liberty is inspired by Mikhanovsky’s real-life adventures as a Russian immigrant driving a medical transport vehicle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Lolo was the first person we talked to, and we were just blown away,” says Austen. “She just has this extraordinary energy — she’s so dynamic and strong.”

Because of casting delays and financing setbacks, it took two years to make the film. During that time, Spencer and Mikhanovsky, who directed the film, worked together over Skype. “Because I studied TV production in college, that was one of the things I had learned — screenwriting and character development — so I was already really familiar with the process.”

Spencer says she never planned to be in front of the camera, even though her family has a history of showmanship. “I come from a very big family, a very musical family,” she says. “So, there was always a lot of music, a lot of going to see my grandfather perform because he was a saxophonist. He was a badass performer — he was incredible.”

Give Me Liberty was filmed in Milwaukee in less than a month. “The fact that it was Lolo’s first film is crazy because it was an insanely difficult shoot,” says Austen. The van, where most of the action takes place, broke down multiple times, and it was cold. The costumer covered Spencer in hand warmers and ThermaCare heat packs to keep her warm. “It was wonderful to witness a group of people do whatever it took to get this film made,” says Spencer. “Everyone wore multiple hats. I was like, ‘Lauren, you got to push yourself.’”

Give Me Liberty premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival in 2019. Spencer received rave reviews. RogerEbert.com wrote that Spencer “proves to be an excellent, scene-stealing straight-woman against the chaos of the other riders on the van.” NPR film critic Justin Chang said that Tracy is “played with tough-talking charisma” by Spencer, “who all but pops off the screen.”

Spencer was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and Hollywood Reporter’s film critics selected her for their 25 Best Performances of the Year. “She is so naturally gifted, and she works really hard, and she just nails it. Take after take after take. She’s incredible,” says Austen.

THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS

From the get-go, Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble wanted to have a character with a disability in their series The Sex Lives of College Girls “We want the characters on this show to feel like a realistic depiction of students on college campuses in

Indie darling Give Me Liberty gave Spencer a chance to show off her acting chops.

At her high school graduation, Spencer poses with her grandmother and grandfather, a saxaphonist and “badass performer.”

Modeling & Fashion

Spencer has modeled for brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Zappos Adap tive and Lady Footlocker. “Fashion is an extension of who I am, my personality and how I feel about myself,” says Spencer. Spencer credits her friend and stylist Stephanie Thomas, for helping her develop this outlook. “She really helped me learn how to dress myself and how to shop for myself. Fashion is another statement piece to the world to say, ‘Yo, we’re out here! We can be fly and sexy too.’ I also want to encourage other people with disabilities to not feel forced to wear only lounge wear because it seems to be the easier thing to put on. We can find other ways to make garments work for us.”

Above:

Left: “I can pull the looks, but you bring them to life!” says Stephanie Thomas about styling Spencer.

Below:

Spencer wears her new favorite shirt by Crip Riot.

Styled by Cur8able founder Stephanie Thomas in clothes from Goodwill Southern California, Tatiana Lee, Dominique Presta, Angela Rockwood and Lolo Spencer hit the runway at Beauty Con Los Angeles in 2018.

“ ”

Photo by Brittney Janae

about meet no heights lock” durable, grade and in custom commode upgraded

2022 — and there are lots of college students who use wheelchairs,” says Noble.

Spencer’s audition made casting “Jocelyn” a no-brainer for Kaling and Noble. “We saw how incredible Lolo was and promptly called off our search,” says Noble. “We knew she was Jocelyn and we had to have her!”

Spencer steals the show in the second episode when Joc-

The Safe, Practical and Convenient way to travel wherever and whenever you want.

The Safe, Practical and Convenient way to travel wherever and whenever you want.

The Safe, Practical and Convenient way to travel wherever and whenever you want.

elyn and her friends go to a naked party. Jocelyn is the first to take off her clothes, saying, “Fuck it! I’m going in!” While at the party, Jocelyn gives her friends advice on how to sneak peeks of people’s junk without getting caught. She refers to it as the “microglance.”

“The representation is so important,” says Spencer’s friend, fellow disabled actor and model Tatiana Lee. “It’s rare that you see disabled women of color of TV, and the fact that her character isn’t based around her disability and is breaking the traditional norms of what disability representation is, is just huge.”

Spencer is currently filming the second season of The Sex Lives of College Girls and is excited to be back on set. “Everyone liked Jocelyn. Everyone liked what I did. Now that I’m comfortable, I’m like OK. Let me see if I can bring Jocelyn up a notch,” she says.

“Jocelyn isn’t just a fan-favorite — she’s also a writer-favorite,” says Noble. “We absolutely love the real-talk, tell-itlike-it-is friend that she is to the other girls in our cast, and Jocelyn will continue serving up lots of fun and blunt honesty to them. And maybe we’ll catch some glimpses at her sex life,

No more worries about having accessible facilities. 

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Simple to assemble; no tools required.

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• Safe and easy to use.

Seat and footrest heights are adjustable. 

Seat and footrest heights are adjustable.

• Seat and footrest heights are adjustable.

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Casters have “total-lock” brakes.

Lightweight and durable, high-quality aircraft-grade aluminum. 

• Casters have “total-lock” brakes.

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Cushions are available in (3) colors and remove easily for cleaning.

• Cushions are available in (3) colors and remove easily for cleaning.

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Optional accessories include: wheeled custom travel bag, positioning belts, slide-out commode tray, 2-way adjustable headrest, and upgraded cushions!

Optional accessories include: wheeled custom travel bag, positioning belts, slide-out commode tray, 2-way adjustable headrest, and upgraded cushions!

• Optional accessories include: wheeled custom travel bag, positioning belts, slide-out commode tray, 2-way adjustable headrest, and upgraded cushions!

For home AND on

Spencer’s Jocelyn has become a fan favorite on HBO’s burgeoning hit, The Sex Lives of College Girls.

because if there’s one thing we know: Jocelyn pulls.”

Elsewhere, Mikhanovsky and Austen are currently developing a series inspired by Give Me Liberty. “We have every intention of having Lolo reprise her role,” says Austin. “Disability in the cast will be a centerpiece of the show.”

Spencer has made lots of progress toward her goal of never again being in a position where others control her livelihood, but she is not content to rest on her laurels. Her dream role as an actor is to star opposite Michael B. Jordan in a romantic comedy. As a content producer, she wants to grow Sitting Pretty Productions so it can produce and put funding behind disability centered stories. She has even written her first book, a short e-book called “The Solo System,” which details her eight principles to master if you want to live a life of positivity with a disability. “Oh, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she says with a laugh. “I have so much more in this brain that I’m working on.”

Find Spencer on Instagram at @itslololove and on her website, lolospencer.com.

bonjour accessibility

Spencer on the red carpet with show co-creator Mindy Kaling.

The fact that her character isn’t based around her disability is huge.

“ ”

The Many Feathers of Accessible Birding

By Elliott Lapin

Virginia Rose says birding is in her DNA. She remembers her grandmother in her green leather coat with birdwatching binoculars around her neck. When her grandmother died, she left Rose her Peterson Field Guide from the 1930s with her notes in it about what birds she saw.

“That’s probably where I got some of my passion,” Rose says, “but my mom was also into identifying birds and plants and trees. There were field guides open all over the house. My dad was a geologist, so my parents were very much into identifying things with books.”

Rose, a retired English teacher and wheelchair user, got her call to birding when she attended a 2003 presentation by the Austin, Texas, chapter of the Audubon Society. “That was really it for me,” she says. “I was so excited about identifying birds and learning about birds and going on field trips and meeting all these like-minded people.”

Today, Rose is the president of Birdability, a nonprofit she founded in 2018 with the mission of “sharing the joys of birding with people who have disabilities, and to ensure birding is accessible for everybody.”

FLYING LIKE AN EAGLE

Not everyone has birding in their blood. Steven Sanchez discovered his interest in birding by simply looking out his window. Sanchez, a machinist and wheelchair user who sustained a lowlevel spinal cord injury in 2004 when he was 17, enjoys photography as a hobby. His girlfriend, NM contributor Ashley Lyn Olson, puts lots of colorful plants and flowers on the outside of their Northern California condo, which has

the side benefit of attracting various birds. Sanchez started taking pictures of the birds right through the window.

Once he started identifying birds at the condo, he started paying more attention to birds all around him. He had grown used to seeing hawks and even a bald eagle preying on ground squirrels at a nearby park he and his friends frequent, but on one visit something much bigger caught his eye.

He had just arrived at the park, and he noticed a bird out of the side of his eye that looked a lot larger than a hawk. The bird flew around the area, and Sanchez honed it on its distinct markings — streaks of light brown feathers that appeared almost golden against its dominant, darker brown coat. “I was like, ‘Holy crap — that is a golden eagle!’” he says. With a wingspan of seven and a half feet, golden eagles are the largest hunting bird in North America.

A month or two later, Sanchez and his friends were flying their drones and remote-controlled airplanes when the same golden eagle returned and flew alongside them for a while. Sanchez was using first-person view goggles to see from the drone he was flying. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m literally flying with a golden eagle right now!’” he says. “That would definitely be one of my most awe-inspiring moments of birding.”

Bonnie Lewkowicz’s most memorable bird encounter was equally awe-inspiring but on the other end of the size spectrum. Lewkowicz, a program manager for Access Northern California, part of the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program, and a wheelchair user from the San Francisco Bay Area, went to the Santa Cruz Botanical Gar-

Steven Sanchez

Photo by Steven Sanchez

dens in search of a rare leucistic Anna’s hummingbird.

“It was a white hummingbird that I had read about. A few friends and I went in search of it thinking, ‘Yeah right, we’re going to see this teeny little bird in this huge acreage of plants,’” she recalls. “Amazingly, I spotted it, and it was this incredible moment of trying to scream as a quad — which wasn’t very loud — to get my friends’ attention to tell them that I found it. There happened to be a photographer also looking for it. He got some great photos and shared them with us.”

Lewkowicz got into birding 25 years ago as something fun to do with her husband. She emphasizes that having the right bird-watching equipment is a big deal. As a quad with no hand function, she can hold binoculars but cannot focus them while she is holding them. Sanchez is building wheelchair-mounted binoculars to help Lewkowicz and others have more control over their view. Another option is to view birds through a telephoto lens (usually 400 mm or more) but you’ll need a good mount to stabilize the camera enough for sharp photos.

Lewkowicz would recommend birding to anyone regardless of their level of mobility and skills. “It’s a great way to be out there and participate in something with friends and family, and it is a really easy activity to be integrated into,” she says. “You can join your local bird club. It’s a great way to meet people with similar interests. It’s a community that’s very wel-

coming, and it’s easy to find people that like to go out birding.”

She says that there are many ways birding can be done. Whether going out in your car or your wheelchair, putting feeders up and letting them come to you, or something called a bird sit, where you find a place and focus on the bird songs to guide your mediation — birding can be whatever you want it to be.

When Rose started, she was the only member of the Travis Audubon Society with a disability. Twenty years later she believes that’s still the case. “It was community, and it was a way to be outside again, and it was just so healthy and positive, and the fact that I was in a wheelchair just had nothing to do with it,” she says of her experiences. “For years and years and years, I just hoofed it along with all the walking people, and I just did whatever I could. Most of the time, we were not on accessible trails. Nobody was thinking about it.”

GETTING OUT THERE

Still, depending on your level of function, fitness and what type of mobility equipment you use, it’s not always feasible to get out to all the spots that other birders go. In 2019, Birdability worked with the National Audubon Society to launch a crowdsourced map and database that details the accessibility features of birding locations around the world. The map now includes hundreds of entries in the U.S. and an expanding list of foreign destinations.

In addition to the map, Birdability has other resources and information about accessible birding, including a guide to implementing an accessible birding outing, lists of inclusive organizations and adaptive birding equipment, as well as a blog with posts by different writers sharing their accessible birding experiences. Birdability also provides virtual field

Bonnie Lewkowicz has been birding for 25 years. “It’s a great way to be out there and participate in something with friends and family, and it is a really easy activity to be integrated into,” she says.

With little more than her adapted van, Rose can go birding alone whenever she wants. She loves that birding is an equal playing field. “I could be as good at it as anybody,” she says. “Nobody that I’ve met presumed that I couldn’t do it.”

•

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For anybody considering getting into birding, Rose offers some words of encouragement. “I would just tell them how lucky they are,” she says. “They’re about to embark on this fabulous passion that is going to supply them with learning and purpose and travel and community for the rest of their life.”

trips that follow disabled birders to interesting locations.

Multiple studies have shown the health benefits of getting out in nature, and Rose agrees that the time spent outside is one of her biggest draws to birding. Rose even plans trips around birding. She went to High Island off the coast of Texas to see warblers stop during their migration north. Rose says she loves all the birds she sees, but if she had to pick a favorite breed, it would be warblers, small colorful birds that she described as “like flying Easter eggs.”

“They all come over the gulf, and then they land in the parks where we are,” she says. “So you just get this glorious abundance of migratory birds that are exhausted and hungry. If the wind is not in their favor, they’ll just stop and eat right there in front of you.” She planned to go to Ohio a few weeks later to see the warblers again as they continued their northward journey.

Even as experienced birders, Rose, Sanchez, and Lewkowicz all have more places they want to go and additional birds they want to see. After watching The Big Year, a 2011 movie about birders starring John Cleese and Jack Black, Sanchez hopes to go birding in some of the jungle environments shown in the film. He also puts seeing an albatross and a condor — both known for their size, with wingspans of over 11 feet and 9 feet, respectively — at the top of his list.

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Bonnie Lewkowicz

Participants gather for a Birdability field trip.

for Wheelchair Users Clothi ng Hacks

BY JENNY SMITH

Clothes that don’t look frumpy or messy while seated are hard to find if you are a wheelchair user, and accommodating for leg bags, pouches and cathing with limited hand function can be even more demanding. Thankfully, adapting is a skill that most of us with spinal cord injuries know well, so modifying and creating the adaptive clothing of your dreams is doable. All you need is a vision and a sewing machine — plus a willingness to learn, try, fail and ultimately, craft your garments to fit your needs.

Over 20 years as a T12-L1 paraplegic, Minna Hong has learned to embrace her creative side to make her fashion work for her. “The thing that has helped me the most lately is modifying clothes to make my life easier,” she says. “I love wearing jumpsuits and overalls. But peeing is a bitch in them.”

Her solution? Placing snaps in the crotch area for easy access. Not only has the simple modification made cathing easier, it has been a game-changer in what she wears. Another hack to make cathing easier is wearing thighhigh socks or tights. “If I wear stockings or tights with a dress, I cut out the crotch because they’re hard to take on and off,” she says.

Hong’s modifications are intended to make life easier, but the fit is important, too. “I cut the sides of a T-shirt so it won’t ride up. I also cut the front of

shirts so they are short in the front and long in the back.”

Whether you’re tinkering with the fit or the function, learning to adapt your wardrobe can save you money, open up a world of possibilities and lead to dramatic improvement in your day-to-day life.

AN OT Embraces Her Passion

Emily Seibert was an aspiring physical therapist when she sustained a T8 spinal cord injury just before her 17th birthday. She ultimately decided to switch to occupational therapy, in part so she could embrace her creative vision for modifying and adapting things. Clothing was one of the first areas she focused on. “After my injury, in the mid-90s, the pants were high-waisted, and I didn’t want the jeans sitting under my boobs while I was in my chair,” she says. “So, I studied them and figured out how I wanted them to fit.”

Seibert used the few sewing skills she had learned in her high school home economics class and attempted to adapt her jeans to fit properly. She learned to work the foot pedal of the sewing machine with her hand or elbow. She used a seam ripper to remove the waistband from the front and sides of the jeans. “I figured out how much fabric to trim away and sewed

“I envisioned the onepiece dress as two pieces: a fitted top and a less poofy skirt with more taper — if we removed the extra material.”

the waistband back on, so the button, buttonhole and zipper were where I wanted them.”

Once mid-rise jeans became fashionable, the fit was better, but she still needed the length for her 5’9” frame. She learned what to look for in off-therack clothes that will make them easier to modify. “I always carry a small measuring tape in my backpack to measure the inseam of pants,” she says. “I rarely try on pants in stores, but I always measure the inseam.” Checking the pant cuff is also atop her list.“ I study the hem in pants to see if I can let them out to the length I need,” she says.

When Seibert got married, she only had three months from the day her fiancé proposed until her wedding since her soon-to-be-husband was in the military. That meant little time for alterations and more need for creative thinking.

In college, she’d discovered twopiece dresses fit her well. By thinking outside the box, she was able to find a timely solution by modifying a onepiece dress from David’s Bridal. “I envisioned the dress as two pieces,” she says, “a fitted top and a less poofy skirt with more taper — if we removed the extra material.” A local seamstress helped her turn the off-the-rack purchase into the wedding dress of her dreams.

recently put her sewing skills to work again adapting some jeggings from Old Navy. “I like the 3-inch waistband in the back, but it’s too high in front, and I find it’s harder to get the pants over my hips. I cut the elastic waistband from the hips to the bottom of the waistband in front and finished off the edge,” she says. “They fit perfectly.”

A Self-Taught Seam-ster

A perfect fit is always nice, but sometimes you simply don’t want to show the public your crack. That’s what inspired Chris Murphy, a T12 para, to go to work on his shorts. Murphy, a 1996 Paralympic bronze medalist in sailing, wanted shorts that wouldn’t show his crack while playing wheelchair basketball with the Charlotte Hurricanes. He was familiar with companies that created adaptive clothing, “But I’m cheap, and those clothes were cost-prohibitive. I had a sewing machine and decided to give it a whirl.”

Outside of a trimester of sewing in home ec during high school, Murphy is completely self-taught. He learned from others on social media, watched

YouTube videos and asked a friend for advice. He ended up buying enough spandex material for one pair of gym shorts at the low price of $10 per yard. He ended up with a pair of perfectfitting shorts; today he has six.

His adapting didn’t stop there. He has developed a simple hack to keep his off-the-rack pants up during transfers. “I add a crescent-shaped piece of material — about 2 to 3 inches — starting at each hip,” he says. “It’s enough material for the back of the pants to come up high enough in a seated position.”

His knack for adaptation is earning him a reputation with wheelchair-using friends. “There’s a guy I play basketball with and he bought a pair of overalls, but when he sat in his chair, all that extra material bunched up in the front,” says Murphy. “He came over one day and I picked apart the seam. I pulled the bib all the way down, then stitched it across the front. He really likes it.”

The Jeans of Her Dreams

Heidi McKenzie had studied fashion merchandising before sustaining a T4 SCI in 2007, but after her injury, clothing was the last thing on her mind. “I wore a lot of pajama pants that were easy to get on,” she says. “In the beginning, I didn’t care to look good, because I wasn’t going anywhere.” Her mindset changed when she met 26 other women with disabilities at the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant. “That was when I said to myself, ‘OK, I want to get back into fashion.’”

She returned to college to finish her fashion merchandising program but ended up graduating with a business degree. That led her to an online program to learn how to develop an adapted clothing line. She chose to focus on jeans because they were something she enjoyed before her accident and struggled with after. “I had a difficult time finding jeans that would cover my crack and fit comfortably on my stomach,” she says. “The length and the pockets were never right [with] offthe-rack jeans. So, I constructed a pair

Seibert

Chris Murphy

Emily Seibert

of jeans to fix all those things.”

McKenzie sketched a pair of jeans to include a higher waist in the back, a longer inseam, an opening for catheterizing for women and easily accessible pockets. A freelance designer in North Carolina assisted her in constructing the first prototype.

The process took three years, but in 2015, Alter Ur Ego was born. While the business continues to sell its jeans,

it’s hard to sustain an adaptive fashion line because the product isn’t massproduced. The jeans need to be priced high just for her to break even.

McKenzie sums up what she’s discovered about fashion and clothing as a woman with a spinal cord injury.

“I know it’s a cliché, but when you look good, you feel good. Find an article of clothing that makes you feel good, and base your whole style around it.”

Professional Help

If you want to adapt clothing, but you don’t have the ability or know-how, a tailor or seamstress is a great option. Explain what you need and they can use their experience and skills to help you modify clothing that works for you. Tailors can remove back pockets and buttons or rivets that may cause skin breakdown, as well as front pockets that create extra bulk. Another easy modification a tailor can assist with includes switching out a button, snap, or metal fastener for either a Velcro or magnetic closure. Finally, many female quads will create an opening in the seam in the crotch of their pants for easy-access catheterizing. A zipper or Velcro works to close the seam.

New Mobility editor Ian Ruder has cultivated a 20-plus year relationship with his seamstress and has a closet full of perfectly adapted pants to show for it. “I told her what my ideal pants looked like and paid her to build a pattern that incorporated all of my needs,” he says. That includes no buttons or rivets, a comfortable elastic waist, high back and room for his leg bag. He’s even built in subtle seams to help him keep track of whether the pants are on correctly. He keeps an eye out for bulk fabric he likes and then pays her to stitch the pants together. “Over the years we’ve honed the pattern as my needs and body have changed,” he says. “They’ve held up amazingly well — better than anything I’ve bought off the rack — and helped me avoid any skin problems.”

Ruder urges anyone who finds a good seamstress or tailor to hold on to them. “Knowing my clothes are working for me takes another thing off my mind and makes my life easier,” he says.

Heidi McKenzie designed her ideal SCI jeans (inset).

“The thing that has helped me the most lately is modifying clothes to make my life easier. I love wearing jumpsuits and overalls. But peeing is a bitch in them.”

Minna Hong

Summertime is the right time to turn off your screens, pack your bags and hit the road. After two years of uncertainty, restrictions and down time, we could all benefit from a little adventure and a lot of sun. Whether you’re looking for some scenic rest and relaxation, a sprawling expedition or some family fun, we’ve got an accessible, affordable trip to inspire you. We also have some ideas to make your time on the road easier.

Looping theOLYM PIC PE N I NSULA

BY LILLY LONGSHORE

Ihave visited tropical rainforests, including the Amazon, but a temperate rainforest? I couldn’t picture it, much less a temperate rainforest within three hours of a major American city. Yet Washington’s Olympic Peninsula is home to four temperate rainforests — the Hoh, Quinault, Queets and Bogchiel — as well as the Olympic National Park, and it’s just a short distance from Seattle. Once I rolled in, the region hooked me.

My first visit to the Olympic Peninsula started a tradition for me, rich with many repeat visits and years of discovery. Covering over 3,600 square miles, it has something for everyone. Over the course of a few hours of driving, you can travel from verdant rainforests to rocky coastline and on to snow-capped mountains. Accessible outdoor adventures are plentiful, and it’s a wonderland for nature lovers.

TACOMA

PORT ANGELES PORT TOWNSEND

FORKS

QUINAULT

RIALTO BEACH OLYMPIA

Giant trees (above) and giant mysteries (right) are but a few of the attractions awaiting visitors in the Olympic Peninsula.

On my many visits, I’ve honed a loop that starts and ends in Olympia on Highway 101, with overnights in Lake Quinault, Forks, Port Angeles and Port Townsend, and several accessible stops along the way. The short distances between stopovers allow more time to soak in each destination and experience the same sense of wonder that overcame me on my first visit. Just remember, traveling the Olympic Peninsula in summer is best because there is massive rainfall — and mud! — during other seasons.

Quinault Rainforest

My first stop on my loop was 87 miles west of Olympia on the shore of Lake Quinault. It rains an average of 12 feet per year in Quinault Valley, creating more shades of green than you’ve ever seen, once your pupils dilate to accommodate the dim, dappled light. I followed North Shore Road into Quinault and came to the trailheads for the half-mile Maple Glade trail and the 1.3-mile Kestner Homestead trail, across from Quinault North Shore Ranger Station.

Both trails were easy in my powerchair, but not ADA compliant. I was thrilled when the Kestner Homestead trail took me right into the rainforest, which technically stretches from Southern Alaska to Northern California. Sitka spruce, bigleaf maples and red cedars surrounded me, with their dripping branches swathed in layers of deep green moss. Tall, lush ferns grow thick below the dense canopy. I passed relics of the 1800s homestead, wheeling over fir needles and packed dirt on most of the trail.

A short loop at July Creek picnic area offered serene views

of Lake Quinault.

I wheeled by crops of sword ferns and barely missed a Northwestern salamander resting on the path.

A short drive to the south side of Lake Quinault took me to the 1,000-year-old World’s Largest Sitka spruce. Nearby, the grand Lake Quinault Lodge demonstrates the rustic, natural construction that is a hallmark of Pacific Northwest style architecture, as does the quaint Quinault Mercantile across the street. Although Lake Quinault Lodge has ADA rooms ($150/night), I opted for the Lake Quinault Inn ($100/night) in nearby Amanda Park.

I continued northwest — using my GPS since cell coverage is spotty — following Highway 101 for 38 miles to Big Cedar Tree Kalaloch. This massive cedar is one of the oldest of the rainforest giants. Three miles north on Highway 101, Ruby Beach offered a picturesque view of the Pacific Ocean from atop a high cliff. A worthy scene of the stormy Pacific crashing into haystack rocks, plus accessible vaulted toilets, make this a convenient roadside stop.

Forks and Rialto Beach

Forks is a quiet little town famous for two things: wood and Twilight. The Forks Timber Museum chronicles the town’s rise to being dubbed the “Logging Capital of the World” in the 1970s. As that fame dissipated, the Twilight series only made Forks’ reputation burn brighter, depicting the town’s gloomy weather as the perfect home for brooding teenage vampires and werewolves. The props and costumes on dis-

Woodsy cabins and lots of moss are the norm throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Ian’s Favorite Trails

You’d be hard pressed to find a wheelchair user with more knowledge of the Olympic Peninsula’s natural bounty than Ian Mackay, who resides in Port Angeles. We’ve covered Mackay’s zeal for exploring the outdoors in a number of stories (see Resources). A C2 quad, he has rolled at least one mile of trail using his sip-andpuff chair for 2,000 consecutive days, a streak dating back to October 2016. We figured there was no one better to give us the scoop on the region’s top accessible trail rides.

1. The Spruce Railroad Trail

“The pristine beauty of this trail is hard to oversell. On a newly paved surface, you’ll travel through two dank and dark tunnels before emerging on the bank of the emerald waters of Lake Crescent, where you can sit and appreciate the beauty, or continue on for 20 more miles of stunning natural space.”

2.

The Larry Scott Trail

“Starting at the Milo Curry Trailhead, this trail meanders seven miles into the quirky town of Port Townsend, where you’ll travel on a smooth, crushed basalt surface under towering evergreens, with the final mile following the coast of the Puget Sound.”

3.

Hurricane Hill Trail

“Hurricane Hill is a short three-mile round-trip trail with impressive wildflowers and stunning panoramas of the Olympic National Park’s massive glacier-clad peaks, which you can enjoy on a newly paved surface. However, there are some steep sections, so adventure with caution.”

Resources

• Ian Mackay, newmobility.com/ ian-mackay-the-trail-king • Ian’s Ride, iansride.com

play in the Forever Twilight Collections will interest some. It is wheelchair accessible, as is the first floor of the Forks Timber Museum and the surrounding area that holds many large wooden statues. But my focus was Rialto Beach, 14 miles west on WA-110.

A 25-foot wheelchair mat, available only in summer, provided access to the beach. I sat close enough for a great view of the gnarled, enormous downed Sitka spruce trees strewn along the sandy coast. It is sad that saltwater intrusion at the roots is killing these iconic rainforest trees. But it is oddly beautiful to see the enormous pieces of driftwood scattered for miles along the sand. I stayed one night at the Dew Drop Inn ($90/night).

Port Angeles

About 56 miles northeast on Highway 101 lies adventurous Port Angeles. It is the northern gateway to the Olympic National Park via Hurricane Ridge Road. The town offers a great waterfront with an active public pier where concerts and festivals — like Jazz in the Olympics and the Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival — are hosted. I followed the waterfront walkway for miles, past artistic murals of town history and magnificent maritime views. I watched as Black Ball’s Coho Ferry took its passengers across the Salish Sea to Victoria, B.C.

Spectacular wheelchair accessible trails, many part of the 135-mile Olympic Discovery Trail, wind for miles through forests, past waterfalls and along lakeshores and rivers in this area. There is so much to do that I stayed for three nights. Over multiple visits, I have stayed at the Olympic Lodge ($149/night) but I prefer Super 8 ($80/night). It is comfortable, and Joshua’s Restaurant is a quick wheel across the parking lot for great food.

The Spruce Railroad, one of the best trails on the Peninsula (see sidebar), was originally constructed during World War I to transport spruce logs to the lumber mills for conversion to biplanes. Now it has been transformed into an outstanding 11-mile paved rail trail. This excellent trail goes through tunnels, dense rainforest, past waterfalls and along the edge of pristine Lake Crescent, offering stunning views of the glacial lake.

The Kalaloch Big Cedar Tree is roughly 1,000 years old and measures 175 feet tall, 19.8 feet in diameter, and 12,000 cubic feet in volume — making it the third largest of its species.

On the west central segment of the Olympic Discovery Trail, near the Elwa River, I crossed a double-decker bridge high above the unspoiled river, then followed the water for miles. It is worth mentioning that the largest dam removal project in U.S. history occurred on this river, recovering breeding grounds for all five species of Pacific salmon.

South of town, Hurricane Ridge visitor center sits near the summit of Mount

Angeles. Best visited in summer after the snow is cleared, the visitor center has a gift shop, snack shop and a terrace with a gorgeous view of the Olympic range. Across the parking lot, a short trail to the Hurricane Ridge overlook offers a spectacular view across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic mountains.

Port Townsend

The charming town of Port Townsend is 47 miles east of Port Angeles on the north side of the Peninsula. Its lovely Victorian architecture truly makes this town unique. The town celebrates the Victorian Heritage Festival annually, as this is one of only three registered historic Victorian seaports in America (the other two are Cape May, New Jersey, and Galveston, Texas). The downtown is full of quaint shops and restaurants, and it hosts many won-

derful arts and music festivals.

Nearby Fort Worden State Park, part of a trio of armed garrisons known as the triangle of fire, showcases the historic military importance of this region. I wheeled to the top of the fort next to the cannons aimed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and explored the stillintact concrete fort right from my wheelchair.

The Larry Scott Trail, also part of the Olympic Discovery Trail, took me up and down hills, past meadows and into the rainforest. Another worthy Olympic Discovery Trail section starts at the bustling shipyards near downtown and follows the edge of the Salish Sea.

Many fine restaurants offer delicious fare here, but Anthony’s Bayview Restaurant is my favorite. The food and service are great, it has good accessibility, and it’s so close to the bay I’d have gotten wet if not for the protection from the windows. I watched the WSDOT ferry go to and from Whidbey Island from my table. For my two-night stay, I liked the Port Townsend Inn ($80/night).

I headed back to Olympia, taking Highway 101 south, along the scenic Hood Canal. Driving back, I reminisced over favorite outings — and started my to-do list for next time.

The Great American SOUTHWEST

MOAB ALBUQUERQUE

DURANGO

FE

TAOS

BY ASHLEY LYN OLSON

fore you hit the road, Las Vegas has much more to offer than gambling and shows.

The Neon Museum is home to working lights from old casinos and businesses and has a barrier-free pathway for easy access. For something more natural, the north half of the Wetlands Park Nature Preserve Loop is part paved pathway, and the rest is a firm, natural surface. Forty-five minutes southeast of Las Vegas, Hoover Dam has a number of tour options, but the only fully accessible one is the Guided Powerplant Tour. The hour-long excursion details the structure’s fascinating history and gives you some perspective on its magnitude and power in person. I’ll never forget the vibrations as I looked over the edge of the dam in awe of the force of the water.

ITINERARY

TOTAL MILES: Around 2,000 DAYS/NIGHTS: Up to You STOPS: Las Vegas, NV; Sedona, AZ; Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos, NM; Durango, CO; Moab or St. George, UT; Joshua Tree or Death Valley, CA

Igrew up on road trips and vividly recall the excitement and wonder of the family van winding through the various topographies. How did the world get this way? What’s behind that? What’s over there? Time slows down on the open road, reminding me to just be. I make the most of the present before it passes me by. Road trips give me the time to slow down, roll down the windows and take it all in.

The American Southwest has a special place in my heart. The colorful land, full of cultural diversity, is so much more than desert. I’ve outlined an ambitious, dream itinerary, built from my many trips around the region. With enough time and gas money, you can take on the whole trip in one continuous multiday stretch, or you can tackle one or two sections at a time. Whatever you decide, make sure you leave enough time to soak up everything and appreciate all the Southwest has to offer.

Nevada, Arizona & Utah

An international airport and plenty of accessible hotels are reasons enough to start your adventure in Las Vegas. But be-

Whenever I travel to the Southwest, I make a point to stop in Sedona, Arizona. It’s about a five-hour drive from Las Vegas. I’ve written about my love of Sedona in New Mobility before (see Resources). Many of the Sedona trails are naturally firm, but I’m particular to the paved walkway at the Crescent Moon Ranch at Red Rock Crossing.

Day trip options abound for your time in Sedona. Tuzigoot National Monument contains the sprawling remains of a pueblo built by the Sinagua people, and the Wupatki National Monument consists of multiple structures dating back as far as A.D. 500. Both offer beautiful vistas and culturally enriching outings with plenty of firm, barrier-free pathways. Seeing them up close deepened my perspective and appreciation for the native people of the area and for life itself.

LAS VEGAS

SANTA

SEDONA

PAGE

DEATH VALLEY

Santa Fe (above and top right) is loaded with cute and fun shops full of interesting art and tchotchkes. Right: Utah’s Snow Canyon State Park offers accessible trails.

From Sedona it’s about a four-hour drive north to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which straddles the border between Arizona and Utah. If you see signs for fry bread, stop and get some. Be prepared for busy roads at the park ($20 entry permit required) as the building-sized, carved sandstone rock formations make it one of the most photographed places on earth. The visitor center is barrier-free, with easy access to restrooms and an observation platform on the second floor.

A short drive across the Utah border, no reservations and no entry fee are required for the “Mexican Hat” rock formation, named after the sombrero-like stone it resembles. Befitting

the dirt road that takes you there, don’t expect any amenities — just enjoy a quick stop and move on. Further down the main highway is another fun photo op at Forrest Gump Point, a scenic pullout offering a majestic view of Monument Valley made famous in the movie Forrest Gump.

Two hours east you’ll find Four Corners National Monument, a can’t-miss opportunity to be in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, all at once. A ramp leads right to the point where the four corners touch. If you didn’t already get fry bread, make sure to get it here.

New Mexico

Continuing southeast brings you to Albuquerque, the first of our three New Mexico stops. New Mexico’s largest city is home to the spectacular Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, billed as the largest balloon festival on earth. If you’re going to be anywhere in the region in October, it’s worth adjusting your schedule to see as many as 500 colorful balloons take over the skies. On the ground, the flat, paved pathways around the bal-

loons let you get up close and personal. Make sure to book accommodations well in advance during this time of year.

Santa Fe is an hour away, and its museums and galleries make it a must if you are interested in art. However, with roots dating back to its origins as a 17th-century Spanish colony, it may be frustrating for wheelchair users to access some historic buildings due to narrow doorways or no ramps. Likewise, accessibility is a mixed bag when visiting some of the 80 galleries, studios and designers in the Canyon Road Arts District, but you can still have a good time sightseeing. The downtown art gallery for Georgia O’Keeffe is accessible and worth visiting. Some public transportation is available. The Corazon Concierge is a private company with a wheelchairaccessible van available by appointment.

Another hour and a half north you’ll find scenic Taos — the easternmost point of our trip. There’s plenty to see and do in Taos, but wheelchair users with an ironic sense of humor won’t want to miss Wheeler Peak — the highest point in New Mexico.

A two-and-a-half-hour Enchanted Circle Driving Tour loops neatly around the mountain and offers a captivating photo-op with plenty of places to get out and take in the beauty.

It’s worth making the 12-mile detour to drive over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which feels like you are driving over the Grand Canyon. A picnic area on the other side of the bridge has accessible parking, restrooms and a paved

pathway with views, but no barrier-free route to the bridge itself. If you feel brave, you can access the bridge’s pedestrian walkway via a dirt parking lot on the opposite side of the bridge from the picnic area. There is a ramp, but proceed with caution as the metal walkway has some large gaps where a wheel can get stuck, and it can be incredibly windy since it’s over a gorge.

Colorado

Heading back west, Durango, Colorado, is about four hours northwest of Taos. Upon arrival, the first parking spot I saw had a sign below the regular blue-and-white one with a picture of a person in a wheelchair and the caption, “Think of Me — Keep It Free.” The sign proved a good omen, as getting around Durango was easy in a wheelchair. Even in the winter it was beautiful. A paved bike path runs along the Animas River for seven miles with a few access points.

The town is known for the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad train that runs through the mountains for

Zion National Park

about 45 miles to Silverton. With sweeping views of the forests and mountains, the train was voted the top scenic train ride by USA Today readers in 2021. Decades ago, my grandparents took a ride on this train. I’ve always remembered my grandfather’s love of trains, so it was special to recreate the experience on my own travel journey. The access was good, too. The train had a lift and boarded two power wheelchairs into the accessible car. Staff removed seats so we could stay in our wheelchairs, and there was an accessible toilet close by. The dining car is not accessible, but the train attendants were happy to assist in getting items from the train’s menu and full bar. You can also bring your own food.

Utah

Utah is home to five national parks — Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef and Zion — and all are drivable from this route (see sidebar). Plan to spend a minimum of two hours at each, but you’ll likely want more time, especially at Zion and Arches. One strategy to take it all in is to use Moab as a hub to explore the eastern part of the state, and St. George as a western hub.

In addition to cute restaurants, shops and hotels, Moab boasts accessible outdoor options for all types of explorers. The National Ability Center in Park City offers plenty of ways to take in the region’s iconic red rocks via rafting, Jeep tours, handcycling and more. A good off-road handcycle or allterrain chair will help you navigate the hit-and-miss accessibility of the many trails at Arches and can be your ticket to endless off-trail adventures.

Historic St. George doesn’t have as much to offer as Moab, but works as a base for southwest Utah, with easy access to Zion and Bryce Canyon and more. The extreme geography of southwest Utah can appear daunting when planning accessible adventures, but there are some gems waiting for you to discover. Don’t miss the Pa’Rus Trail and Riverside Walk in Zion and the Rim Trail in Bryce Canyon.

California

From St. George, it’s less than two hours back to Las Vegas, but if you’re looking for the whole southwest experience, it’s worth extending your trip west to see Death Valley National Park and Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree National Park is subtly majestic with its stacked boulder formations and eponymous, tufted trees. Bring a lunch or at least snacks when spending the day in the park, and plenty of water — there are no cafés or restaurants, but you will find the occasional accessible vaulted toilet. Stargazing is spectacular, particularly on the east side of the park. Four hiking trails are accessible with firm, barrier-free surfaces, and other points of interest often have accessible parking.

Glamping is possible in the tricked-out Airstream trailers

at AutoCamp

Joshua Tree; otherwise, Palm Springs and Palm Desert are about an hour from a park entrance and ideal places to stay overnight and dine. Most local attractions have access, including the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens and the gondola that takes tourists up the mountain for a view of the valley.

Death Valley is four hours from Joshua Tree. With peaks, valleys, canyons and even a crater, it’s a natural marvel of color and contrasts. While there, make sure to visit Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the continental U.S. at 282 below sea level. Level boardwalks take you out over this eerie, saltencrusted landscape. If possible, try to visit Death Valley in the spring, as temperatures are reasonable — summertime temps often exceed 120 degrees, a definite deterrent to anyone with temperature regulation issues — and the spring wildflower blooms can be spectacular. From Death Valley, it’s a quick two-hour drive back to Vegas, where you can start dreaming about your next trip to the marvelous, magical American Southwest.

National Park Heaven

Resources

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The Family Trip EAST COAST

BY BILL BOGDAN AND HANNAH BOGDAN

CHICAGO

ITINERARY

TOTAL MILES: 3,024 DAYS/NIGHTS: 12 days/11 nights

STOPS: Ellenville, Rochester & Syracuse, NY; Boston, Salem & Dover, MA; Cape Elizabeth, Portland, & Bar Harbor, ME

As a 52-year-old husband and father of three, traveling and spending time with my family are two of my favorite things, but my L3 paraplegia combined with the COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on how I enjoy both. Planning a family road trip seemed like the perfect way to do something fun and new while being safe.

With that in mind, last summer my family and I set off from our suburban Chicago home on an epic road trip to experience some of the beautiful and historic sites of the East Coast. We took part in some serious off-road adventures over 3,000 miles and 12 days of action-packed activities. After outdoor fun in Ellenville, New York, we devoured clam chowder and lobster rolls in Boston, Massachusetts, and took in the scenic views and history at Cape Elizabeth and Portland, Maine. Then we explored breathtaking Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Off-Road Adventures in NY

The first leg of our trip from Chicago to Ellenville, New York, was the longest of our whole journey. Ellenville is home to Northeast Off-Road Adventures, an off-road driving school tucked away on 75 acres of pristine private property in the Catskills Mountains. When I stumbled on NORA and saw their adaptive program — Specialized Outdoor Adaptive Recreation — on YouTube, I knew I had to visit.

I had never experienced driving a vehicle off-road before, either as a passenger or a driver, so watching people learn to traverse the most extreme terrain had me itching to get behind the wheel of NORA’s four-wheel drive Jeep CJ-5 equipped with hand controls. NORA will tailor a program for you depending upon your comfort level and budget.

Before you can go off-roading, you must take NORA’s Off-Road Classroom Course, which consists of watching an hour-plus video of classroom instruction and introduction to

off-roading. An instructor will take you on a prelimi nary trial to get used to the hand controls before going up the mountains. As another safety point, the adaptive Jeep is equipped with a passenger-side braking system so the instructor can apply the brakes just in case of a sticky situation. My instructor had to step on the brakes at least twice on my trip! Still, rolling over fallen trees and maneuvering and climbing over large boulders and rocks was an adrenaline rush.

BOSTON SYRACUSE

ELLENVILLE

CAPE ELIZABETH

BAR HARBOR

PORTLAND

If you’re interested in riding roughshod in smaller, adaptive vehicles, SOAR is an authorized dealer for the Action Track Chair and the GRIT Freedom Chair. They offer onsite off-road obstacle courses where you can try out these awesome chairs on woodland dirt trails and rugged terrain. SOAR also hosts air gun marksmanship, off-road ride-a-longs and much more. I had never been to a place that offers so many unique hands-on accessible adventures in one place. My kids won’t forget hiking in the trails with the Action Track Chair and the GRIT Freedom Chair while each NORA Team member carried a can of bear spray in case of a chance encounter. Thankfully, we did not run into any bears.

NORA can also offer recommendations on hotels, places to eat and things to see. We stayed at the Honor’s Haven Hotel, an older hotel that was not the best for wheelchair accessibility. The two accessible rooms were already booked, but the staff was very willing to address the needs of my family and me.

Crabs, Lobsters and Ducks

Next up was a 3.5-hour ride to Boston in search of the best bowl of New England clam chowder and their world-famous lobster rolls. During stops at Faneuil Hall and the Quincy Marketplace, I learned a lot about clam chowder while talking to locals and people on the street and by observ-

Road Trip Chair

My preferred road trip wheelchair is my old, discontinued Boing by Colours. It is not my everyday wheelchair, but it is my favorite because of its suspension system and its ability to take a real beating. I have added off-road knobby tires and Frog Legs suspension forks. I also use the FreeWheel attachment to help me push through all that nature has to offer. If I have extra travel space, I like to bring two different sets of wheels. The knobby tires are great for going through mud, sand and dirt, but they are not really made for hotel rooms and getting in and out of hotel bathrooms.

ing which restaurants had the longest lines.

I enjoyed my favorite bowl of clam chowder at the Union Oyster House. The Cheers bar was a close second, and the Barking Crab House finished third. Do not even ask for a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder or the locals will kick you all the way to Rhode Island.

While in Boston, we unexpectedly experienced our first tropical storm. Her name was Elsa, and she dumped over 4 inches of rain in less than a day. It is not fun pushing a wheel-

Off-roading in the Catskills proved to be quite the adrenaline rush for Bogdan.

chair in pouring rain and through endless puddles, but you have to make the best of it, or it is a wasted day. Thank goodness I packed our rain gear, and my driving lessons from NORA paid off while navigating in the torrential rains.

Befitting the rain, one tourist trap not to miss in Boston is the Duck Tour. A Duck is an accessible amphibious military vehicle that can travel on both land and sea and can accommodate up to two wheelchairs. It is a fun way to see the city and learn about Boston’s history. My family loved this tour, as we saw the historic sites and made a real splash into the Chesapeake River.

Left: Specialized Outdoor Adaptive Recreation has a bounty of off-road chairs that are perfect for navigating the Catskillls Mountains.

From there it was on to the famous Paul Revere House and the historic “Midnight Ride” trail. We also toured the wheelchair accessible Boston Tea Party Museum and got to toss tea into Boston Harbor aboard a full-scale replica of an 18th century ship.

As with any big city, Boston has accessibility issues, like broken cobblestone streets, a lack of curb cuts and restaurants with difficult or no accessible entrances. Make sure you bring your disability-parking placard because parking is a challenge and expensive.

The Maine Attraction

On top of crossing off bucket-list items and sightseeing, road trips are a great excuse to visit family and relatives that you do not get to see often enough. Since some of my relatives live just outside Portland, Maine, we made the 2.5-hour drive from Boston to Cape Elizabeth. The town is known for its historic lighthouses and beautiful shore-side parks, and Fort Williams Park didn’t disappoint in either regard. Located in Portland Harbor on Casco Bay, it’s home to Portland Head Lighthouse, the oldest lighthouse in Maine, built in 1791. The park offers some breathtaking ocean views and is mostly wheelchair accessible with a few challenging areas to travel. The people there are extremely nice and help-

Coastal Kayaking Tours went above and beyond to accommodate the Bogdans and ensure a safe, fun experience.

ful. I asked two complete strangers to help me wheel down to the beach and back so I could experience the ocean up close with my family.

Portland, Maine, was voted the coziest city in America and is a fun city to visit with fabulous restaurants and microbreweries and some of the freshest seafood around. If you have some extra time, take the accessible ferry ride to Peaks Island, home to the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, tiny shops and restaurants, and the “World’s First and Only Umbrella Cover Museum.”

Wheelchairs and umbrellas do not mix well, and the museum is not wheelchair accessible, but the curator was more than willing to tell me what is inside and bring out some of her

most coveted umbrella covers for me to see. As you wait to catch the ferry ride back, you must try their famous Red Snapper Hot Dogs, known for their bright red neon color. They will give the Chicago hot dogs a run for their money, but remember, NO ketchup please!

Where the Sun Rises

The last leg of our road trip was a three-hour drive northeast to Bar Harbor, Maine, to explore Acadia National Park. With a stunning mix of rocky beaches and granite peaks, it’s obvious why Acadia is one of the most visited national parks in America.

I highly recommend stopping at the Visitor Center for information on accessibility and park maps. The Island Explorer shuttle bus is free, wheelchair accessible, and will transport you to many of the park destinations and local communities, but not all bus stops are wheelchair accessible. The most wheelchair-accessible trail is Jordan’s Pond. However, the trail is not fully accessible all the way around and can be challenging in some areas, but does offer some beautiful mountain views.

Other sites to check out are Thunder Hole, Ocean Path, Sandy Beach and Echo Lake. Wheelchair accessibility varies, but they all are very scenic. Acadia also has over 45 miles of rustic carriage roads to explore. John D. Rockefeller originally built these roads to travel by horse and carriage. Most consist of crushed gravel and are somewhat wheelchair accessible, if not ideal for handcycling.

Another great way to explore Acadia is by kayak. My wife

and I called several kayak outfitters to see if they could accommodate my disability. Unfortunately many said, “No.” Finally we found Coastal Kayaking Tours. The staff was superb to work with and very accommodating. Due to the high and low ocean tides, Coastal Kayaking changed our kayaking launch site location to make it easier and safer for me to transfer from my wheelchair into and out of the sea kayaks. Once again, it was a good thing I learned some off-roading at NORA because I got to use those skills and drive right onto the sandy beach to get to the launch site.

The 2.5 hour guided kayaking tour was an amazing experience. I can now say my family and I kayaked in the Atlantic Ocean. We reveled in gorgeous mountain views of Frenchman Bay and Porcupine Island and abundant wildlife, including bald eagles, osprey, blue herons, harbor seals and porpoises. Finding accessible accommodations in the area was difficult, but I finally found a wheelchair accessible room at the Bluenose Inn, a short drive from downtown Bar Harbor.

After 10 days of adventure, it was time again to load up the minivan and head for home. We made one

last stop to see family in Syracuse, New York (585 miles and 10 hours). With my daughter looking at colleges, we got a tour of Syracuse University and enjoyed a wonderful homecooked meal before heading out for the long drive home (680 miles and over 11 hours) with plenty of time to plan our next family road trip.

Eleven nights and 12 days on the road made for plenty of quality father-daughter time.

Six Tips for as a Wheelchair User LONG HAU L ROAD TRI PS

Afew years ago, I drove 1,600 miles over three days from my home in Portland, Oregon, to Calgary, Alberta, and back. It was an impromptu decision. There’s a bike there that I wanted to check out, and the opportunity came to test it out. The sooner the better. But I had to be flexible with weather and arranging child care for my 14-month-old son, and I’m not wealthy enough to be flexible with plane flights. It was either drive or not go, so I packed the car.

Fortunately, I have some experience with long road trips. I grew up in a small town in Alaska, where there are no roads into town — you have to fly or boat in. So as soon as I had the opportunity, while going to the University of Oregon a year after my SCI, I started hitting the open road, just to see where it could take me. I’ve now driven cross-country four or five times, twice on my own. I’ve driven from Oregon to Alaska three times. The farthest I’ve ever driven solo in a single, sleepless stretch is 1,000 miles and 18 hours from Seattle to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. I’d only recommend that if you’re interested in the finer points of masochism.

BY SETH MCBRIDE

The weirdest solo drive I’ve ever had was from Cincinnati to Denver in an inaccessible (except for some hand controls) RV. I had to get in the rear door by bumping up the stairs on my butt and then using a tie down strap as a grappling hook to pull my chair in after me. It was all fine until I almost passed out while shimmying along the couch to reach the ignition and AC during a 100-degree Kansas gas stop.

Over the course of countless hours on the road, many of them solo, I’ve learned a few ways to make the miles tick by more smoothly. Here, in no particular order, are my top six tips for long haul road tripping as a wheelchair user:

1. Cushion: Any long road trip means a lot of sitting in one position with little opportunity for a traditional pressure relief. On regular wheelchair cushions, you sit you up too high when driving, but if you have a bony butt like I do, anything over a few hours is too long to sit on a regular car seat with no extra cushioning. My go-to is a Roho Packit cushion, a minimal, low-profile cushion made up of Roho’s individual

air pockets that comes in a single 16.25-by-9.5-inch size. The unobtrusive size, with far better pressure relief than a foam cushion, makes it super versatile. In addition to road trips, I use it on my shower chair, for airplane seats and laying under my butt anytime I want to get out of my chair and stretch out while traveling. You can get one for around $150 from a variety of online retailers.

2. Pressure Relief: Even with an extra cushion, sitting still for hundreds (or thousands) of miles can be dangerous for skin health. I’ve found that by leaning from side to side, forward, and pushing up by putting my elbows on the door armrest and the center console, I can get some mini pressure reliefs while keeping one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the hand controls. It’s not perfect, but if I cycle through these regularly I can keep my skin from getting too angry.

3. Coffee: To keep me chugging down the road for any length of time, I need coffee. Back in my dumber days I’d use Red Bull — for one drive back to Alaska from college, I remember loading four or so cans into a Camelbak — but I don’t appreciate a twitching eye and a heart murmur the way I used to. Coffee gets prime position in the center console cup holder. An insulated, spill-proof to-go mug makes things easy. My favorite is a 16oz Zojirushi, available online and at some Target stores. It’s relatively cheap, easy to sip out of, will not spill a drop with the flip top lid closed and rivals the absurdly-expensive Yeti brand for insulating efficiency. If you pour your coffee straight from the pot at 6 a.m., it will still be too hot to do anything but sip at noon. Bonus tip: If you’re driving U.S. freeways, Pilot has the best gas station coffee out there.

4. Water: For a long road trip, you need quite a bit of water to stay hydrated. But it’s a pain to have to keep refilling a bottle that’s small enough to fit in a cup holder. To give me more capacity with easy access, I use a water bladder with drink-

ing tube. I put a large bladder behind my seat and run the tube around to rest either in my lap or on the center console, which allows one-handed sipping with enough water to keep driving all day long. You can get hydration bladders from a variety of online retailers, for $30 and up, depending on size.

5. When You Gotta Go: If you’re drinking enough, stopping to find an accessible bathroom every time you need to pee will seriously cut into your miles. To extend the time between bathroom stops, I connect my catheter to an extension tube and then connect the extension tube to a leg bag. Because leg bags typically have a one-way valve, this creates a closed system. I can cath into the bag and not have to worry about spillage like I would with a bottle. This way I can wait until I’m in the process of getting out of the car to find a spot to empty the leg bag. When you’re trying to put in miles, efficiency is the name of the game.

6. Gas Stops: In Oregon (and New Jersey), the law says you can’t pump your own gas. That’s great for chair users for whom pumping gas is a serious hassle or downright impossible. But everywhere else, you’re on your own. Gas stations are supposed to send someone out to help you pump, if requested. But in practice, this is hit and miss, at best. If the station only has one employee, it’s not going to happen. I used to get annoyed by this, but for long drives, it’s motivation to get my butt out of the car. Between 350400 miles (the amount I can typically go on a tank of gas) without any real physical movement is plenty. I get out at gas stops and roll inside to prepay (the pumping of gas isn’t so bad for me, it’s trying to operate the damn card reader that sucks), and stock up on any supplies I need. I’ll push a few laps around the parking lot or do some active stretching (yes, I look like a freak) just to get the blood flowing a bit and wake myself up.

Driving a long haul can be exhausting, but it’s also incredibly freeing to just be able to hop in your car and go. So next time you start dreaming about pulling out of the driveway and not stopping until you’re far, far away, go for it. You never know where you’ll end up.

Packing the right gear can make all the difference when you have to be on the road for a long time.

Routes to SCI Weight Loss Success

BY THE ROLLING RNS WITH IAN RUDER

In his 29 years as a C6-7 quad, Lee Ohnesorge has heeded a simple saying when it comes to managing his weight: If the pants are tight, something is not right.

He started to get that uncomfortable sensation eight years ago, when he moved to a power chair after two decades of manual chair use. Without the regular workout provided by pushing, Ohnesorge, 57, could feel — and see — the pounds piling on. Soon he was almost 50 pounds over his normal weight. “I was picking up a quad gut, and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to lose it,” he says. “I didn’t want to have to buy new clothes, and I didn’t want pressure sores. I didn’t like it.”

Nick LiBassi, 51, found himself with a similar problem on the 20th anniversary of his T10 injury. “I had pretty much let myself go,” he says. “I was gaining weight, and I had more and more self-doubt that I could lose weight. I wasn’t happy with the way I was looking. And more importantly, I wasn’t happy with the way I was feeling.”

Jamie Goodwin felt like she had tried everything to keep the pounds off in her 27 years as a T4-5 paraplegic and needed a new approach. “I can’t live in fear that I’m going to outgrow my wheelchair,” she says. “I can’t function that way.”

The battle of the belly (we don’t discriminate between quad and para bellies at New Mobility) is a frustrating and sometimes scary reality for many wheelchair users. The prospect of shedding unwanted pounds with reduced exercise options can be overwhelming. The knowledge that excess weight makes transfers and care more difficult and can lead to a loss of independence only magnifies the stakes.

There are no miracle cures, and the bellies won’t disappear overnight — but Ohnesorge, LiBassi and Goodwin prove you can win the battle with the right mix of routines and resolve.

A Motivating Mantra

It took a few years for LiBassi to fully commit to losing weight, but when he reached 270 pounds in 2016, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. Previous attempts at trendy diets had convinced him to go a different route. “I wanted to change my habits and try to make it a long, sustainable thing,” he says. “I wanted to change my lifestyle, with both exercise and what I ate. I told myself that the weight didn’t go on overnight, and it’s not going to come off overnight.”

He settled on a flexible low carb approach, limiting his intake to 20-25 grams of carbs a day, but making an exception for vegetables. He built a routine of a morning protein shake, midday almond packs and protein bars, and a dinner built around a protein and a vegetable. Giving up some of the complex and refined carbs proved manageable, but LiBassi’s Italian roots presented two major hurdles: bread and pasta. “We’re Italian, man — we eat bread with every meal!” he says. Whenever a food or meal tempted his resolve, he found strength in his mantra: “Nothing tastes as good as I feel being thin.”

Instead of diving into exercise with the same zeal, LiBassi purposefully played it slow. “I didn’t want to jeopardize my focus on trying to be better about my nutrition, and I knew if I worked out, I wouldn’t be able to stay as focused.” With that in mind, he held off on working out for the first five or six weeks.

When he delved in, he focused on cardio instead of weight training. Between his handcycle, stationary bike and regular pushing, he worked his way up to exercising six times a week.

Results came quickly. Within three months LiBassi had lost 30 pounds. By the time his first year rolled around, he faced an unexpected new problem: He had lost too much weight. He was down 100 pounds to 165. “I was too thin,” says LiBassi. “I didn’t like it. I didn’t have energy, and my body wasn’t happy.”

LiBassi eventually found his body’s comfort zone in the 180–185-pound range and has maintained a healthy approach that works for him. A stint with CrossFit helped him get in even better shape, but the time commitment wasn’t sustainable so he settled into an exercise routine that was. Foodwise, he still stays away from bread, rice, potatoes and “all those really heavy carbs.” But he has learned to make exceptions, like enjoying a few fries from his girlfriend’s plate on a date. “I can enjoy a little without feeling deprived,” he says.

The Calorie Counter

thing with high fructose corn syrup and sodas. When the weight stayed on, he started looking at how many calories he was consuming. “I realized that I was eating anywhere between 1,800 and 2,500 calories a day,” he says. “I didn’t realize how much I was eating.”

His eyes opened, Ohnesorge became an expert in counting calories, keeping a dietician’s eye on how much he was putting in his body. He focused on eating healthy, natural foods like chicken

amount,” he says. He learned what worked to maintain his energy levels and avoid low blood sugar through trial and error.

After a couple of years, Ohnesorge settled around 1,000 to 1,200 calories per day. He allows himself the occasional splurge, whether it’s a beer or two with friends or some of his favorite ice cream, as long as he’s been otherwise vigilant. “Now I’ve got a good two inches underneath my belt,” he says.

You’re not crazy for thinking the “Ideal Body Weight” chart at your doctor’s office seems unrealistic for your post-SCI body. A decrease in muscle mass and bone density results in a different calculation. According to American Dietetic Association guidelines, manual wheelchair users should subtract 5-10% from general weight guidelines, and power wheelchair users should subtract 10-15%.

With your target weight in hand, you can get a sense of how many calories you should be consuming using a formula researchers came up with back in 1985. For paraplegics, multiply your body weight in kilograms (1 kg = 2.2 lbs) by 27.9 calories; for quadriplegics, multiply by 22.7 calories. For example, a para with a target weight of 150 pounds would need approximately 1902 calories, while a quad with the same target weight would only need 1547 calories. Keep in mind this formula doesn’t account for gender, age or activity level, which can change calorie needs.

As soon as Lee Ohnesorge felt his pants tightening up, he was ready to start looking for a weight loss solution. With his shoulders “fried” after 20 years of manual chair use, his daily exercise had dwindled to range of motion stretches. Without an easy way to burn calories, he knew losing weight would require cutting them. He was ready to make sacrifices but had his limits. Among them: rocky road ice cream. “It’s just awesome ice cream,” he says.

RESOURCES

• Preventing Weight Gain After SCI: craighospital.org/ resources/weight-gain-battle-of-the-bulge

• Weight Management and SCI: tinyurl.com/5n7jj2y3

and spinach and built an eating schedule around two meals a day. “It really took discipline at first because you’re counting, and then you kind of get sick of counting,” he says. “You’re going, ‘Damn, I can’t even eat that.’”

Looking back on his early calorie counting days, Ohnesorge wishes he hadn’t been so tough on himself about missing his targeted calorie counts. While his approach is not for everyone, he believes in it. “It might take a month or two to get your diet down,” he says, “but once you do get it down, then it’s cool because you can do your ice cream.”

A Fresh Start

If the battle of the bulge gave out commendations, Jamie Goodwin would be a highly decorated commander for her 20 years of service. Ever since she tacked on 50 pounds the year she married, she has been pushing for a victory that has narrowly eluded her multiple times.

Ohnesorge started by cutting out some easy calorie culprits, like any-

He targeted 1,500 calories per day initially. “It took me a long time of lowering my calories to find the right

She just missed becoming the first wheelchair user cast on NBC’s weightloss reality show, The Biggest Loser, and made it deep into casting for another weight loss show before being cut. She later lost 50 pounds through a regimen of calorie counting and committed exercise, only to regain the weight after suffering a wrist injury that impacted her ability to

What is a healthy weight? And how many calories do I need?

push her chair. After three children and 20 years, the former 120-pound cheerleader weighed 247 pounds.

She hoped the skills and habits she’d developed would help her re-lose the weight once she healed, but when her family moved to an 11-acre farm on the side of a mountain, Goodwin lost access to easy recreation and the structure on which she had relied. The added weight complicated transfers and took a toll on her self-image.

The turning point came in 2015 when Goodwin hosted a retreat for three other female wheelchair users. One of the women had bariatric surgery and raved about how it had improved her life. There are several different bariatric surgery types that involve making changes to your digestive system to help you lose weight. Goodwin started doing research and eventually scheduled a sleeve gastrectomy. The surgery removes around 80% of the stomach,

with the idea that limiting the size of the stomach restricts the amount of food you can consume. “It’s not something that I did lightly because it does have risks,” she says. “For me, the need to lose weight was more than the risks of the surgery.”

She had surgery in December 2020 and has lost 80 pounds. As a para, Goodwin didn’t experience any pain after the surgery, but she did lose all of her hair a few months later—a common side effect caused by nutrient deficiency post-surgery (it grows back). Recipients take vitamins for the rest of their lives. Still, Goodwin says the physical side effects have taken a back seat to the emotional ones.

“You have to emotionally look at your plate and think, I can’t eat as much as I used to,” she says. “It is a mindset … In the back of my head, I know that a lot of people gain the weight back. It’s a constant reminder of the good food

choices I have to make.”

She still has to be hypervigilant about what and how she eats. She always eats protein first, consumes few starches and stays away from sugar. She intentionally chews her food and paces her bites and drinks.

Goodwin knows many people look at bariatric surgery as an easy way out. “It’s really not,” she says. “It sucks at the beginning because you have to do a liquid diet, and then a soft food diet. Watching everybody around you crunching solid food is hard. The first month is very hard. But after that, it becomes easier.”

Goodwin points out that she didn’t reach her goal weight, but she has kept the weight off and feels infinitely better. “It’s the best — I feel great,” she says. “I got a new car, and I’m able to lift myself into it. Being able to lift yourself is a big thing in the disability world. That’s freedom.”

The Wheelchair Users Helping Make SPACE FLIGHT ACCESSIBLE

BY TIM GILMER

Sawyer Rosenstein, 27, is from Jupiter. No, not that Jupiter. He’s a TV news producer from Jupiter, Florida, who also does a podcast called Talking Space and happens to be a T10-12 paraplegic since the age of 12. Not long after being injured, he went to a summer camp that runs simulated space missions for children. “I wasn’t really a huge space fan, but I thought it was interesting,” says Rosenstein. “So, I went there for summer camp and became the camper that never left.”

His initial love of all things space eventually led him to cover NASA’s last space shuttle launch in 2011 as a member of the press. “That was it for me. I knew I wanted to do journalism and in particular, space journalism. That’s what started my career in both regular TV news journalism and covering space,” he says. From there, Rosenstein learned of Mission: AstroAccess, a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion in space exploration, a first step toward the larger goal of flying a diverse range of people to space. In mid-September 2021, he and three other wheelchair users were chosen as part of a group of 12 disabled “ambassadors” who took part in AstroAccess’ first suborbital parabolic research flight.

INTO THE ATMOSPHERE

The flight took off Oct. 17 and did not require participants to climb a launch tower of seven flights of stairs in under 90 seconds like Jeff Bezos’ space flight require ments. Instead, they boarded a converted Boeing 727-200 cargo plane that is much like a regular passenger airline plane but easier to board for wheelchair users. Inside were 38 first-class passenger seats with stan dard seat belts mounted in the rear of the aircraft. At the front was a large, open area 66 feet long, 10 feet wide and 7 feet tall — with padded walls — for experiencing various levels of weightlessness.

Their mission was to fly 15 successive parabolic arcs ranging from 24,000 feet to 32,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. It started with two sets of three parabolas each that simulated limited

gravity, first similar to Martian then to lunar gravity. After those, it was onto the highlight: 12 parabolas with a 22-second period of complete weightlessness.

Rosenstein’s first tasks were to prove that he could stay in place in a limited gravity environment, control his body position and move from place to place in the cabin — including the return to his seated station on a cushion on the open floor space.

“In the first step, Martian gravity, I pushed off my floor cushion with my hand and was bouncing up and down like a frog, basically,” says Rosenstein. “There’s not really much I can do in that.”

Lunar gravity was far different. He pushed and his upper body floated up while his feet stayed put on the floor. “After a few seconds, I stopped and looked at the two people who were helping me and realized I was standing. So, I quickly put my arms on their shoulders. And I literally just stood there. And I remember shouting, ‘Oh, my God, I’m standing!’ For the first time in 15 years, I was actually upright,” he says. “The three of us had the biggest grins on our faces after realizing what just happened. After 30 seconds passed, we came back down and they said, ‘So what do you want to do for the second lunar gravity?’ and I said, ‘I want to do that again!’”

Then came zero gravity. Again, he pushed off from

his floor cushion and started moving up, but this time there was no stopping, so he quickly grabbed onto a handrail. “It’s such a bizarre feeling, like when you get to the top of a roller coaster and are about to go over the edge,” he says. “You kind of feel like you’re floating out of your seat except you just stay there, it’s not shaking you around. The blood doesn’t rush to your head or anything, no matter what orientation you’re in with the weightlessness. And honestly, my body felt really good. For the first time in a long time, I realized I wasn’t in any pain, you know, the neck and shoulder and arm and wrist pain from wheeling … It’s amazing how the body so quickly adapts to that and how good it felt.”

PROBLEM-SOLVING IN ZERO G

In addition to seeing how people with different types of disabilities cope with the demands of partial and zero gravity, another goal of the flight was to find out what access problems there are in existing space flight environments. Eric Ingram, another wheelchair user who served as an ambassador on the AstroAccess flight, says that one of the biggest issues in a zero-gravity environment is staying still. “In the International Space Station, for example, the way most astronauts stay still is using foot holds,” says Ingram, who also serves as the chief executive of SCOUT, a company that develops tracking sensors and systems for satellites. But foot holds don’t work for many wheelchair users or people with lower limb amputations.

Sawyer Rosenstein will never forget his first experience in lunar gravity. “After a few seconds, I stopped and looked at the two people who were helping me and realized I was standing. So I quickly put my arms on their shoulders. And I literally just stood there. And I remember shouting, ‘Oh, my God, I’m standing!’ For the first time in 15 years, I was actually upright.”

Ingram and others at AstroAccess want to make sure that solutions are as simple and applicable to the widest number of people as possible. One clever option is to use handhold straps that also have tactile markers that could be used by people with limited vision to tell where they are in a spacecraft and what direction they’re facing. “Then you’re solving for multiple groups with a simplistic design. That makes it much more effective,” he says.

While in zero gravity, Rosenstein learned he needed hand holds and more, since he needed to have both hands free to do tasks. He talked with astronaut Cady Coleman, and she mentioned a semi-rigid mecha-

The 12 AstroAccess ambassadors had a variety of disabilities, including SCI/D, amputations and vision impairments.

nism they use on their space suits for spacewalking flights to attach themselves in place while still allowing some mobility and free use of the hands. “Something like that would be fantastic. Something that already exists in NASA technology,” says Rosenstein.

Most inventions for getting around in space aren’t hightech though. Rosenstein says he used simple Velcro straps to hold his legs together and a thigh loop on his pants to slip two fingers under and help position his lower body. “With weightlessness, one finger goes a long way. I could make my legs bend up into a kneeling position,” he says.

THE FIRST OF MANY?

More than just claiming a space for participation in space travel, AstroAccess is determined to ensure people with disabilities are involved in the critical stage of planning. “We’re at a point where these spacecrafts are so new that it’s very easy to go in and modify them now, to make them accessible, so you build that into spacecraft design and avoid expensive retrofitting,” says Rosenstein. “And to prove that the modifications that you would have to meet for a spacecraft are minimal. All it took for me to make this happen was basically duct tape, Velcro and a foam pillow. I also completed every single task, which means that we can easily modify the spacecraft, so everyone gets a chance to see the earth and to go into space.”

Ingram is a member of Space Frontier Foundation, which

is “dedicated to advocacy and opening the space frontier for settlement.” All of this would have greatly pleased the late Stephen Hawking, the celebrated astrophysicist who experienced weightlessness on a suborbital flight and famously said in 2010, “I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space.”

Ingram says there is a lot of interest from private space flight companies about things they can do proactively to make their spacecraft more accessible. He says the whole point of this flight was not to be a one-off, but to be a foundation for a whole series of flights that expand upon the research and develop the capabilities. “I want to do a whole flight of just lunar prevalence,” he says. “Maybe there are therapeutic things for spinal cord injuries, maybe new things we can figure out, like body movement and stuff like that. I think there’s a lot of intrigue there that I would not have anticipated before the flight, like how it changes your basic functional abilities within partial gravity.”

Maybe Stephen Hawking had already envisioned this. The moon seems to be a logical place to begin research, as well as habitation of nearby planets. Can you imagine leaving your wheelchair behind to float about lightly on the moon, where pressure sores no longer exist, your shoulders never wear out and you feel no pain?

See newmobility.com/the-wheelchair-users-helping-makespace-flight-accessible for videos and links on disability inclusion in space.

MAXPRO

CABLE FITNESS MACHINE REVIEWED

Once upon a time, I used to go to the gym five or six days a week. But then I became a dad — looking at you, Ewan. And then I got a job. Then a pandemic came and my wife, Kelly, gave birth to a second, equally-adorable energy suck — hi, Lou! Now it’s 2022, and I haven’t been inside a gym since 2019.

Between dumbbells, kettle bells, fitness bands, a handcycle trainer and a pull-up bar, I’ve mostly figured out how to get my workouts in at home. But there’s one piece of gym equipment I’ve been missing: a cable machine. I’d looked at home cable machine options, but they all took up huge amounts of space or cost thousands of dollars — or both.

Fortunately, earlier this year, a rep from MAXPRO reached out. MAXPRO makes a fitness machine aimed at the general public that mimics the action of a gym-based cable machine, but in a tiny 10-pound package. I’d seen it online and been intrigued. Most fitness products are crap though, and I wasn’t willing to shell out almost $1,000 for the MAXPRO just to see if it would work for me (the price has since been lowered to $879). When the rep offered to send a unit to review, I was excited.

After two months of testing the MAXPRO, my excitement hasn’t faded. Despite a few quirks, it has quickly become my most versatile and most used piece of fitness equipment.

SETUP

The MAXPRO is marketed as a portable machine — their videos have bronzed, muscly bodies working out with the unit attached to trees and park fences — but setting the thing up was difficult enough that I haven’t wanted to change the height of it, let alone take it to the shores of a scenic alpine lake.

The unit comes with some ratchet straps and plastic mounting plates that let you attach the MAXPRO to a door. I’ll admit that some of my difficulties came about because I did the guy thing and neglected to read the directions before I started. But even after I figured out proper protocol, there was no way I was going to be able to attach it to the door at a functional height on my own. Even with Kelly helping, it was a bear trying to hold the unit at the right height while she fed the straps through the door protectors, positioned them and tightened them down.

I’ll likely invest in their wall track ($318 on maxprofitness. com), which screws into a stud and allows you to slide the unit from floor level to over your head with the push of a button. They also have a foldable bench under which the unit attaches, but I likely wouldn’t use that for much more than chest presses so it doesn’t seem worth the expense or the space.

WORKOUT

Once the MAXPRO was secured on my utility room door, I realized what a unique piece of equipment this is. I started by rolling up facing the unit and locking my brakes. The unit can deliver 5 to 300 pounds of resistance, which you control with two dials that go from 1 to 25. With the dial set on 1, it did feel similar to 5 pounds on a cable machine. I have no way of verifying the upper end of the range, but even performing one of my strongest movements (a high row), I was barely able to budge the handle with the dial set on 20. For most users, it will have plenty of resistance.

I went through one of my standard back workouts — singlearm rows, reverse flys, straight arm pull backs and side pulls — and hot damn, I had the functionality of a cable machine again. The resistance was so easy to adjust that I could do it with a single quad finger.

I’m more than satisfied with the strength workouts I’m getting with the MAXPRO. That’s because building and maintaining balanced strength — including all those antagonist muscles that don’t often get worked during daily life as a wheelchair user — has been one of the keys for keeping my shoulders healthy over 20-plus years with a spinal cord injury. But it can be difficult to get a quality back workout with a home gym setup. No more, thanks to the MAXPRO.

There were a few quirks, though. One is that the cable pull isn’t entirely smooth like a gym machine. This is likely due to the operation of the clutch plates, which provide the resistance. There are ticks in the line as you pull, but they are a mild annoyance and don’t impact functionality. After a few workouts, I stopped noticing. The other thing that takes some getting used to is that the unit only provides resistance as you pull the cable out, not as it retracts. At first this felt a little weird, but I quickly adjusted to it.

VERSATILITY

Once I’d done a strength workout, I started playing around to see what else I could do with the unit. With the resistance lowered, I realized that I could do cardio workouts similar to a row machine or a ski erg that many adaptive athletes use. Or I could do circuits — switching between rows and straight arm pull backs, alternating or not — getting my heart rate up and my chest heaving without having to go out in the nasty weather we’ve been experiencing. I could do a solid cardio routine — and one that targeted my back no less — in the time it took Ewan to watch an episode of Wild Kratts. “Baba, did you know the

pileated woodpecker has shock absorbers around its brain?!” “That’s fascinating bud — I’m gonna keep working out.”

For anyone with kids or familiar with the frequent, unexpected disruptions of disability life, starting a workout with minimal hassle, and thus being able to come back to it whenever you have time again, is huge. It means that dad life and all, I actually use the MAXPRO.

I also appreciate the unit’s ability to deliver some more advanced training methods. Plyometric training is often used by athletes who want to increase power and explosiveness. But you have to be careful with plyometrics. If you do a rep fast enough to make the weight jump, it inevitably falls back down, and a momentary lapse of form can easily tweak a muscle or joint. The MAXPRO’s concentric-only resistance means that you can be as explosive as you’d like and you never have to worry about the impact of the weight coming back down.

The instantaneous resistance adjustment meant that I was better able to do some of the muscle-building workouts, like pyramids that I used to perform back in my athlete days. You can start with a heavy weight and once you reach exhaustion, quickly dial back the resistance, and continue to exhaustion again, and again. I was able to obliterate my triceps, which

sometimes is what you need. Sadly, I didn’t have any cans of protein powder on hand to really get the full “bro” experience.

THE TAKEAWAY

If you can’t afford it, I get it. Back when I was an athlete, my monthly social security checks were less than the MAXPRO. It’s worth researching grant opportunities, as many organizations provide funding for fitness equipment. MAXPRO also offers financing that works out to around $37 a month for a base unit.

Normally I’d have a hard time recommending a piece of fitness equipment that costs almost $900, but I’ve yet to encounter anything else that offers anywhere near the versatility and functionality of the MAXPRO. If you’re looking to maintain a functional strength and cardio routine as a wheelchair user, you can get by with this single piece of equipment. Plus, it takes up almost no space. That’s hard to beat.

RESOURCES

• Fitness Equipment Grant Opportunities, sralab.org/lifecenter/resources/listinggrants-adaptive-sports-equipment-automotive-and-home-needs

• MAXPRO, maxprofitness.com

• Stay-at-Home Wheelchair Workouts, newmobility.com/stay-at-home-wheelchair-workouts

MAXPRO CONNECTED

MAXPRO does have smart features that allow you to connect the unit to your smartphone so you can use an app to track and log your workouts, participate in virtual classes and view training videos. I’m not really a connected fitness guy, but for those who are, the app is full-featured and easy to use. Even being a fitness Luddite, I found the feature that automatically tracks reps and resistance to be useful.

There aren’t any adaptive workout videos yet, but I talked with the founder, Nezar Akeel, and he says they are working with a wheelchair user to integrate adaptive fitness coaches and training examples into the app within the year.

TIME IS ON YOUR SIDE

It’s easy to feel like a captive of time when you live with a disability. Time is the sixth sense that controls our lives. Appointments, caregiver schedules, sitting time, weight shifts, peeing or pooping, switching tires, getting a new chair, medical tests and exams and more — all subject to minutes, hours, days, years. Our constant internal clock ticks away as we plan each moment for the short and long game of life with disability.

Disabled or not, we are constantly bombarded with reminders about time: how our lives are beholden to it; how technology can provide us with more of it; how we should be investing in products to erase it from our bodies and faces; how little of it our species has remaining on this planet if we don’t change our ways.

Yet the main thing I absorb from the constant time-consciousness and supposed advancements is more pressure — to be, do, work and live faster. And with this pressure, I feel like the quality of everything is diminished.

Even the act of trying to decide your overall life philosophy about time usage is stressful. Do I go with “Good things take time” or “Carpe diem”? “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “Just do it”? “Make a five-year plan” or “Live in the now”? Ugh.

When we think on it too much, time shrinks our lives.

With this in mind, I now think positively on the period I spent in rehab

OWN IT

By Regan Linton

after my spinal cord injury. For three months my entire world came to a halt. My crammed college schedule was suddenly moot. And time expanded.

Lying awake in my rehab room, it felt like night would never come to an end. Every minute spent in pain or discomfort felt like an eternity. Each tiny recovery gain — turning over in bed, pushing up a 10-foot slope, completing a transfer — seemed to take FOREVER. Then, suddenly, it was over. I was headed home. Three months of my life had whizzed by like I was a tourist on an out-of-control scooter. Weird.

The absurdity of time can feel so confusing, conflicting and incongruous that we can be driven mad by it, like the Hatter of Alice in Wonderland.

Or…

We can free ourselves by remembering time is a construct — not a fundamental truth. We humans have manufactured it to help us make sense of our life events, memories and change.

Time is a way to check in and situate ourselves, so we can derive some small measure of comfort amidst the vastness of existence; there’s solace in knowing that we have a mechanism for showing up together at a happy hour or for the start of a baseball game. Time gives us regularity, reliability.

Physicists and philosophers have long interrogated the concept of time. Some quantum physicists theorize that we aren’t progressing through any-

thing, that it’s all happening right now — past, present, and future. All at once.

For those of us who feel the pressure to move faster but often need — or want — to slow down, the physicists may provide some measure of relief.

Thinking this way reminds us that obsessing about saving and wasting time isn’t achieving anything other than added stress. If we really did create time, we can manipulate it, stop it, even remake it. We have the freedom to essentially TURN IT OFF. Or change the way we heed it.

Now, this isn’t necessarily easy when some of our vital elements — like caregivers, vents or skin checks — operate according to the time construct. We have to adhere to it, somewhat. But challenging the construct in little ways can help us own it.

Instead of feeling frustrated or guilty about how much longer certain tasks take because of your disability,

“Instead of feeling frustrated or guilty about how much longer certain tasks take because of your disability, lean into them. Don’t set timetables for things that are stifled by them.”

lean into them. Get rid of unneeded deadlines for, say, developing a relationship with a new person, or creating an artistic piece. Don’t beat yourself up when you set a goal to wake up at 6 a.m. and you can’t pull yourself out of bed until 8:30. Don’t set timetables for things that are stifled by them. Instead, choose to explore them, like, for instance, the many possibilities for sensual pleasure, which take more investment to discover. Luxuriate in the investment.

I urge us all to take a cue from two populations who seem to have a more reasonable approach to the abstractness of time: kids and centenarians. Kids couldn’t care less about time. I remember vacationing on the Michigan beaches as a kid. I must have spent hours upon hours sifting through the sand with my fingers, floating in the water, looking at the sky and feeling the sun, scanning every grain for burrowing ant lions. Time was irrelevant.

And while I can’t claim to know what it’s like to be 100, I recently read a book about Japanese centenarians on the island of Okinawa. Their days are filled with all sorts of life events, but they aren’t stressed about temporal concerns. They take time to master activities like gardening and craftsmanship. Not much changes on a regular basis, so they find joy in every moment because there is no compulsion to rush. They enjoy the process, and over much time they have become masters of life.

I remember these two groups when I have to do things like make my bed by myself, which on the hands of the clock takes at least three times as long as it would if I could stand, lean and reach. I think of a child making it into a fun game, or a centenarian enjoying some silence or music time while engaging with the task. Here those of us with disabilities have an advantage, if we choose to embrace it. We often have no choice but to operate at a slower pace and to focus on what’s immediately facing us, rather than jump three steps ahead.

If we don’t fight this adjusted pace,

we can be the masters of stretching time, making temporal space for simple, intentional things. We can allow the slower details of our lives to expand our experience. We can resist the pressure to hurry. We can maintain the integrity of doing things long-form — with focus, breath and intentionality — realizing there is time for everything if we allow it. Perhaps, ultimately, we can resist allowing the construct of time to rob us of fully appreciating all the intricate joys

of our ephemeral existence.

So, TAKE YOUR TIME. Own your velocity, own your rate of perceived change. Resist setting the end-point and luxuriate instead in the process. Turn off your phone, take down your clock (at least for a bit). Trade instant gratification for long-term gratification. I have a hunch that in doing so, we will actually be more productive and fulfilled.

Slow and steady wins the race.

OUTDOOR TRACKS

By Kary Wright

A NEW ACCESSIBLE HUNTING SETUP

My daughter Shania and I pull up to our hunting shack.

“Give me a few minutes,” she says as she jumps out. “I’ll get the heat on.”

Our shack has a wood stove that can keep us warm in temperatures far below zero. Soon I see smoke from the chimney and a thumbs-up coming from Shania in the shack’s window. I hit the button on the dash and the van’s door slides open, the ramp unfolds and I wheel onto the deck and into a warm, comfy shack.

A skillet full of last year’s deer sausage fills the shack with a delicious aroma, conjuring memories of previous hunts. The wildlife is still an hour or two away from stirring, so we pour a couple of coffees and smile as we gaze out the windows overlooking some of the best deer hunting territory in Central Alberta.

This slick setup was a whole year in the making. It started with post-hunt wisdom exchanged in the fall of 2020 …

I missed my old van. The trusty old white Ford 350 diesel had faithfully carried me along for 300,000 miles with only a few hiccups. It had towed a trailer over mountains and across prairies, crossed the continent a few times, escaped a few winters by going south, and in her last years, with tire chains on, she had taken me to some hunting grounds that made 4WD vehicles shudder and shake their heads. I thought she was invincible, but a couple of years ago, she finally

succumbed to a fire that took most of what my wife and I owned.

While rebuilding our lives, we picked up a new adapted Toyota van. It has all the bells and whistles — GPS, backup camera, sensors galore, nice sound system — it doesn’t smell like diesel, has no loud 4-inch exhaust and steers itself back into its lane with a polite warning when I wander over the lines. It even hits the brakes if I miss the lever. It’s pretty spiffy, but for hunting …

My sweetheart suggested — in her subtle way — that I should perhaps consider not taking the shiny, newsmelling van, with its lowered floor, through muskeg to get stuck and

winched out, only to haul a stinky old deer back home.

She had a point. Man, I missed Old White. I decided to scour the ads. I knew from experience that finding a lowered-floor van with low-effort steering that I could drive from a power wheelchair was next to impossible, especially in an affordable price range. I searched and searched, and just when the hunting season was upon us, there it was.

At first, I didn’t call — it seemed like a typo. A 2006 Chevrolet Uplander with low mileage, decked out for a quad to drive, for a reasonable price. I was super skeptical, but my eventual call to the number

Dave, Kary and Joe level the shack.

revealed a friendly fellow with a nearly identical injury. He was selling his old, neglected van he’d stored on his farm. We agreed to meet.

When we got there, the van didn’t look too bad. It had a few dings, bumps and scrapes from caregivers’ experimentations with hand controls, but that would just save me the effort of having to do it myself. My daughter started it and quietly drove it around the yard. It ran like a top. We gladly paid, and my buddy Dave and Shania picked it up a few days later.

Dave summed up the situation when he parked the van in my garage. “Well, we have a tinker project,” he said. “She has a shimmy, there are no shock absorbers, and she needs a major cleaning. Then we’ll reevaluate.”

I wasn’t surprised. We’d rolled away with a new hunting van for about the cost of a new tie-down. I didn’t expect it to be perfect. We replaced the shocks and the wheel bearings, fixed the door and tinkered with a few other things, and wouldn’t you know it, Old Blue ran pretty darn good.

I realized that it

would be difficult to access our current shack, which sits four feet off the ground, with the new, lowered minivan. When I mentioned this to my friend Joe, a hunting-shack-builder extraordinaire, he remembered the 10-year-old shack we had built on a tent trailer. That shack had been retired for a few years, but Joe had an easy solution: “You have the old shack-on-wheels. Let’s bury it in the ground at van height along the fence line and out of the way.”

“Great idea!” I said.

Dave and Joe pulled the old shack to a prime location we discovered

while hunting the year before. Joe drove a borrowed skid-steer to the site, Dave took his truck, and I jumped in Old Blue and zoomed out to see the progress. Just being able to drive out to watch was liberating.

Joe was busy moving dirt. He’d already dug a trench for the shack and was leveling the terrain around it. The high-speed “to-ing and fro-ing” continued for an hour or more. I think he was having fun.

When they completed the job a few days later, Old Blue could back up beside a ground-level deck. I could wheel off the van’s ramp and roll barrier-free right into the heated shack.

Hunting in the new shack gives my daughter and me time to catch up on the past year. The wheelchair-accessible hunting shack and Old Blue are a perfect fit to enjoy the chilly days from a warm, comfortable space. We can drive right up and unload me into it, even on the coldest blizzardy days. I’m so incredibly thankful to have friends and family that make these great times happen. I don’t miss Old White so much now.

Old Blue can roll right up to the now-lowered hunting shack for seamless entry. Below: Kary and his daugher, Shania, enjoy coffee in the cozy shack.

DAILY DILEMMAS

By Sheri Denkensohn-Trott

TO RETURN OR TO STAY REMOTE?

Q. I have worked at a midsize online apparel company for 10 years as an analyst on their social media and marketing development team. As a T2 paraplegic, I would get up at 5:30 a.m. for my two-hour morning bowel and shower routine and leave by 8 a.m. to commute to the office. With a nine-hour work day and another 30-minute drive home, I had a recipe for exhaustion. Then COVID happened and, like my team, I began working exclusively from home. My routine changed dramatically. Without a commute, I can sleep until 6:30 a.m., begin working by 9 a.m. and finish by 6 p.m. I feel like a new, more rested, healthier person. I accomplish my work within established deadlines, and for the first time in years, I have energy for extracurricular activities.

My manager recently sent an email strongly encouraging everyone on our 11-person team to return to the office. I do not want to go back to my earlier grind, but I feel pressure, especially because everyone else on the team is returning.

I found that working from home did not affect the quality of my work and improved my productivity, but I’m concerned about being excluded — and possibly punished — if I am the only one working remotely. I don’t technically need accommodation because of my disability, and I don’t want to abuse the “disability card,” but I’d really like to remain working remotely. Should I be direct with my boss and tell him that I want to continue teleworking? Do I go back to the office and just “suck it up” because others are?

Your experience is not unique. Many places of work are encouraging staff to return to

the office. Even employees without disabilities have found advantages to working from home. For you, your productivity and quality of life have improved. These are important factors to consider.

While your company apparently strongly encourages in-person work, it does not seem to be mandated. You should schedule a meeting with your manager, ideally in person, to explain your situation and why you would prefer to continue working remotely. This will also give you a chance to hear why he/she is pushing for staff to return to the office. Use the meeting to address those reasons and make your case for why it’s in everyone’s best interests for you to continue working from home. If it feels appropriate, don’t hesitate to share how your SCI affects your schedule, but make sure to focus on your increased productivity and mental health. Every good boss wants productive, happy workers.

If there is a specific project for which your supervisor wants everyone back in the office, consider suggesting a hybrid schedule, like coming in for certain project-oriented meetings and events, but working remotely the rest of the time. Stress that you want to remain as flexible as you can for the good of the team. You might also suggest partial telework schedules — “x” number of days in the office each pay period, alternating weeks of in-person attendance, or once a week in-person meetings. Remember, you are the only one that can judge how these options

will impact your health and well-being.

If all of your proposals are met with resistance, it may be worth raising this to a higher level in the company or consulting with human resources — especially if after meeting with your manager you still fear some form of retribution, should you decide to keep working from home.

Working remotely is a new concept for many people, and adjusting to a new work paradigm can take time. Hopefully, your boss and place of work will listen to your request and see the benefits of it. If you feel they are still pressuring you, it may be a sign of deeper issues with your job. If your current employer doesn’t see the value in a happy, healthy, remote-working you, chances are better than ever that another employer will, thanks in part to the pandemic. How you balance your job and your personal health is up to you.

“

If your current employer doesn’t see the value in a happy, healthy, remote-working you, chances are better than ever that another employer will.”

Adam’s goal is to raise $1,000,000 to donate toward United Spinal Association—the organization that was critical in helping him find purpose after his spinal cord injury.

San Diego – April 11, 2022

Phoenix – April 19, 2022

Albuquerque – April 26, 2022

Oklahoma City – May 3, 2022

Kansas City – May 11, 2022

St. Louis – May 18, 2022

Indianapolis – May 25, 2022

Columbus – May 31, 2022

Pittsburgh – June 7, 2022

Washington, DC – June 12, 2022

alongside United Spinal’s Roll on Capitol Hill

NYC – Saturday, June 25, 2022 (CLOSING EVENT)

Adam Lane, a member of the Oklahoma chapter of United Spinal Association is handcycling from San Diego, California to New York City to raise funds to support the organization’s #StrongWheeled Together campaign and show how exercise and fitness can have a positive impact on the rehabilitation of individuals living with spinal cord injuries and disorders.

PRODUCTS

By Michael Franz

THE WHILL

C2:

AFFORDABLE POWER AND PORTABILITY FOR SOME

When most people think of a power wheelchair, they probably envision a large, heavy and expensive piece of equipment. Wheelchair manufacturer WHILL has challenged that stereotype by introducing a line of portable, compact and affordable power wheelchairs.

WHILL debuted the Model C2 — previously called the Ci2 — in May 2021, touting several improvements on its predecessor, the Model C. With enhanced suspension, longer range, higher weight capacity and WHILL’s signature omni-directional front wheels and stylish looks, the Model C2 promised a better all-around experience for users. I was skeptical about how well a power wheelchair that’s not much larger than my manual chair would perform, but after trying out the Model C2, I was impressed.

Portable Power

The Model C2 arrives in three boxes containing the components of the wheelchair: the seat assembly, the reardrive base, the front-drive base, the Li-ion battery, the cushion and the basket. Ease of assembly is one of the main selling features of the Model C2, along with the enhanced portability of its compact size and relatively light weight.

The front-drive base connects and locks to the rear-drive base, and the seat assembly locks to the rear-drive base. The battery slides into the reardrive base. Once you throw the cushion on and snap the basket to the drive base, you are ready to go. The heaviest component, the rear-drive base, weighs in at 42.8 pounds. The Model C2 has

a total weight of 114 pounds when assembled, much less than a traditional power wheelchair, which can easily weigh over 300 pounds.

You don’t need any tools to assemble the Model C2, but you do need to be able to lift and maneuver the different components. I was unable to do this, but once my aide was familiar with the process, she could take it apart and put it back together in less than five minutes. WHILL has a helpful assembly/disassembly video on its YouTube page, also linked to in the WHILL app.

Impressive Ride

The Model C2 performs very well for a wheelchair of its size and price. It has a maximum range of 11.2 miles and three speed modes that you can switch between in the WHILL app. Eco mode has a top speed of 2.5 mph and turns and accelerates smoothly. It is probably best suited for indoor use. Standard mode and Sport mode both have a top speed of 5 mph, but there is a noticeable differ ence in how the Model C2 turns and accelerates in Sport mode. I found the turning and acceleration to be quite jerky in Sport mode

compared to Standard mode. It was noticeable enough that if I were using this wheelchair frequently, I probably would not use Sport mode because I found no obvious benefit.

What surprised me the most about the Model C2 was how good the ride was. I expected a stiff and bumpy ride, but the Model C2 handled cracks, bumps and curbs quite well. It was not as smooth as the ride in my personal power wheelchair, but for a wheelchair that costs a fraction of the price, I was impressed. The Model C2

and power assist devices I have used. The Model C2 has a tight turning radius for navigating small areas. I was able to do a complete 360 on a ramp outside my house that is about 5 feet wide. For comparison, I can make the same turn in my manual chair but not my power chair.

The WHILL app allows you to switch between the three speed settings, lock and unlock the wheelchair, check the remaining battery life and range, and drive the Model C2 with a virtual joystick. The virtual joystick is useful for moving the wheelchair next to a bed or a car seat for easier transferring, but probably not ideal for regular driving.

Limited Configurations

The Model C2 does have a significant drawback that may affect its appeal for full-time power wheelchair users: limited customizability. As a C6 quadriplegic who is 6’3” and has no core control, the Model C2 did not fit me well and does not have standard options that would make it suitable for someone like me. The wheelchair has some customizability for back support height and back angle adjustment, but I am simply too tall for the wheelchair. The lack of lateral support options made it unsafe for me to use without someone nearby in case I lost my balance. I can only safely recommend the Model C2 to individuals with a body frame that fits the Model C2 and those with core control and good balance. If you are unsure if that’s you, I’d recommend contacting a dealer to try a Model C2 and see how it feels.

The cushion that comes standard with the Model C2 leaves a little to be desired as well. It is comfortable enough, but I would not use it for

Model C2 vs. Model Fi: Which Lightweight Travel Chair is Best for Me?

Less than a year after releasing the Model C2, WHILL debuted the Model Fi, a foldable power chair the company describes as “lightweight and easy for travel.” To see how the Fi compares to the Model C2, we reached out to travel writer Sylvia Longmire. Longmire, who has MS, uses a Quantum power chair at home but relies on her Model C2 “anytime and every time” she rolls out the door. She was one of the first to try the Fi and assess its strengths and limitations.

“When it comes to folding chairs, the Fi is light years ahead of its competitors and looks great,” she says. “It serves a very good purpose, but it’s a very targeted purpose.” Namely, providing an easy mobility option for seniors and people with limited mobility. “Because it folds, it has limits. For example, the armrests don’t go up or move, so lateral transfers aren’t possible. You really have to be able to stand up and walk a couple of steps to get in … I can’t use that chair comfortably, but it’s a great option for people with some mobility who need a portable solution for longer distances.”

Longmire recommends the Model C2 for full-time wheelchair users looking for a portable power option. “It’s much more comfortable for me, and it goes everywhere,” she says. “I love it.” For more of Longmire’s writing, visit spintheglobe.net.

extended periods without monitoring my skin for signs of pressure. If I were to use the Model C2, I would use my own wheelchair cushion.

The Model C2 also lacks powered features that more expensive power wheelchairs offer, like tilt, recline and elevate, but that seems reasonable for the $3,999 price. The target market for the Model C2 is not necessarily those who need those functions in a wheelchair.

Despite the issues I had with the Model C2 because of my height and lack of core function, I think it is a great wheelchair for those looking for a compact power wheelchair that is easy to travel with and is relatively affordable. The Model C2 would be best for a para, a quad with core control, or someone who is ambulatory but wants a power wheelchair that is functional for many daily tasks and won’t break the bank.

The Model C2 is available in seat widths of 16, 18 and 20 inches and

has a maximum weight capacity of 300 pounds. You can choose from six colors to customize the arm covers and many accessories, including lap belts, extra batteries and joystick designs. The Model C2 is available from many online retailers like Amazon for $3,999 (sometimes still listed as the Ci2). Medicare and Medicaid do not cover the Model C2, but some customers have successfully obtained payment from private insurance companies. For more information about the Model C2 and other products from WHILL, please visit whill.inc.

MORE PRODUCTS AND PRO TIPS

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REHABS

ARIZONA

Barrow Neurological Institute at Saint Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ; 602/406-3747

Encompass Health Rehab Hospital of East Valley, Mesa, AZ; 480/567-0350

Encompass Health Valley of The Sun Rehabilitation Hospital, Glendale, AZ; 623/878-8800

Honor Health Rehabilitation Hospital, Scottsdale, AZ; 480/800-3900

CALIFORNIA

Dignity Health - Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Center for Rehabilitation, Northridge, CA; 818/885-8500

Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego - Division of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine, San Diego, CA; 858/576-1700

Sharp Rehabilitation Center, San Diego, CA; 858/939-6709

Sutter Rehabilitation Institute, Roseville, CA; 916/878-2588

COLORADO

Colorado Acute Specialty Hospital, Denver, CO; 303/264-6900

Craig Hospital, Englewood, CO; 303/789-8800

Post-Acute Medical Specialty of Denver, Denver, CO; 303/264-6800

CONNECTICUT

Gaylord Specialty Healthcare, Wallingford, CT; 203/284-2800

Hospital for Special Care, New Britain, CT; 860/827-2761

Hartford Healthcare Rehabilitation Network, Newington, CT; 860/9720990

Mount Sinai Rehabilitation Hospital - a Trinity Health of New England, Hartford, CT; 860/714-3500

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Medstar National Rehabilitation Hospital - SCI Program, Washington, DC; 202/877-1000

FLORIDA

Brooks Rehabilitation Hospital, Jacksonville, FL; 904/345-7600

Encompass Health Rehabilitation

Hospital and Organizational Members

Hospital of Sunrise, Sunrise, FL; 954/749 0300

Pinecrest Rehabilitation Hospital at Delray Medical Center, Delray Beach, FL; 561/498-4440

GEORGIA

Atrium Health Navicent Rehabilitation Hospital, Macon, GA; 478/ 201-6500

Emory University Hospital Center for Rehabilitation Medicine, Atlanta, GA; 404/712-7593

Rehabilitation Hospital Navicent Health, Macon, GA; 478/201-6500

Shepherd Center - Southeastern Regional SCI Model System, Atlanta, GA; 404/350-7645

HAWAII

Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific, Honolulu, HI; 808/531-3511

ILLINOIS

Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, Chicago, IL; 312/230-1000

The Spinal Cord Injury Program of Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital, part of Northwestern Medicine, Springfield, IL; 217/788-3302

INDIANA

Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana, Indianapolis, IN; 317/329-2000

IOWA

Childserve, Johnston, IA; 515/727-8750

KANSAS

Mid America Rehabilitation Hospital, Overland Park, KS; 913/491-2400

KENTUCKY

Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital, Lexington, KY; 859/254-5701

Frazier Rehabilitation Institute, Louisville, KY; 502/582-7490

Gateway Rehabilitation Hospital Florence, KY; 859/426-2400

LOUISIANA

The Gilda Trautman Newman Rehabilitation Center, New Orleans, LA; 504/899-9511

Touro Rehabilitation Center, New Orleans, LA; 504/897-8560

MASSACHUSETTS

Spaulding New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center, Charlestown, MA; 617/952-5000

MARYLAND

Adventist Rehabilitation Hospital of Maryland, Rockville, MD; 240/864-6132

International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD; 888/554-2080

Medstar Good Samaritan Hospital Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Program, Baltimore, MD; 443/444-8000

University of Maryland Rehabilitation and Orthopaedic Institute, Baltimore, MD; 410/448-2500

MICHIGAN

DMC Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, Detroit, MI; 313/745-1055

Mary Freebed Rehabilitation Hospital, Grand Rapids, MI; 800/528-8989

Special Tree Rehabilitation System, Romulus, MI; 800/648-6885

MINNESOTA

Essentia Health Miller-Dwan Rehabilitation Services, Duluth, MN; 218/727-8762

MISSOURI

Ability KC, Kansas City, MO; 816/751-7812

SSM Select Rehabilitation Hospital, Bridgeton, MO; 314/768-5200

MISSISSIPPI

Methodist Rehabilitation Center, Jackson, MS; 601/981-2611

NORTH CAROLINA

Cone Health Inpatient Rehabilitation Center, Greensboro, NC; 336/832-8153

UNC Hospitals Rehabilitation Therapies, Chapel Hill, NC; 919/966-4131

Vidant Medical Center, Greenville, NC; 252/975-4100

Wake Forest University Baptist

Inpatient Rehabilitation Program, Winston-Salem, NC; 336/716-2011

WakeMed Rehab Hospital, Raleigh, NC; 919/350-8861

NEBRASKA

Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital SCI Rehabilitation Program, Lincoln, NE; 402/489-7102

QLI - Spinal Cord Injury Program, Omaha, NE; 402/573-3700

NEW JERSEY

Bacharach Institute for Rehabilitation, Pomona, NJ; 609/748-5480

HMH JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, Edison, NJ; 732/321-7070

Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, West Orange, NJ; 973/252-6367

NEVADA

Renown Rehabilitation Hospital Reno, NV; 775/982-5000

NEW YORK

Garnet Health Medical Center, Middletown, NY; 845/333-1000

Helen Hayes Hospital, West Haverstraw, NY; 845/786-4000

Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY; 212/241-6500

Orange Regional Medical Center, Middletown, NY; 845/333-1000

Rusk Rehabilitation at NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, NY; 212/263-6012

St. Charles Hospital Rehabilitation Center, Port Jefferson, NY; 631/474-6011

St. Mary’s Hospital for Children, Bayside, NY; 718/281-8987

Strong Memorial Hospital of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY; 585/275-2100

Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital, Schenectady, NY; 518/382-4560

The Burke Rehabilitation Hospital - Spinal Cord Injury Program, White Plains, NY; 914/597-2500

OHIO

Metrohealth Rehabilitation Institute of Ohio, Cleveland, OH; 216/778-3483

Ohio Health Outpatient Neurological Rehabilitation, Columbus, OH; 614/484-9600

Summa Rehabilitation Hospital, Akron, OH; 330/572-7300

OKLAHOMA

Integris Jim Thorpe Rehabilitation Network, Oklahoma City, OK; 405/951-2277

Valir Rehabilitation Hospital, Oklahoma City, OK; 405/609-3600

OREGON

Legacy Rehabilitation Institute of Oregon, Portland, OR; 503/4137151

PENNSYLVANIA

Allied Services Integrated Health System Spinal Cord Injury Program, Scranton, PA; 570/348-1360

Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Altoona, Altoona, PA; 814/944-3535

Magee Rehabilitation HospitalJefferson Health, The Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center of the Delaware Valley, Philadelphia, PA; 215/587-3000

Moss Rehabilitation Hospital, Elkins Park, PA; 215/663-6000

Reading Hospital Rehabilitation at Wyomissing, Wyomissing, PA;

484/628-8000

Spinal Cord Program at The Children’s Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; 412/420-2400

UPMC Rehabilitation Institute at Mercy, Pittsburgh, PA; 800/533-8762

UPMC - Williamsport Joint Commission Certified SCI Inpatient Rehab, Williamsport, PA; 570/3211000

SOUTH CAROLINA

Roper Rehabilitation Hospital, Charleston, SC 843/724-2800

TENNESSEE

Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center, Knoxville, TN; 865/541-3600

Regional One Health Rehabilitation Hospital, Memphis, TN; 901/5457100

Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital, Nashville, TN; 615/963-4051

TEXAS

Texas Rehabilitation Hospital of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX; 817/820-3400

TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital, Houston, TX; 713/799-5000

TIRR Memorial Hermann Hos-

pital - Outpatient, Houston, TX; 800/447-3422

TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospita; - The Woodlands, The Woodlands, TX; 713/897-2300

Trustpoint Rehabilitation Hospital of Lubbock, Lubbock, TX; 806/749-2222

UTAH

University of Utah Craig H Neilsen Rehabilitation Hospital, Salt Lake City, UT; 801/646-8000

VIRGINIA

Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, Norfolk, VA; 757/388-3000

Sheltering Arms Institute, Richmond, VA; 804/764-1000

Spinal Cord Injury at VCU Health, Richmond, VA; 804/828-0861

UVA - HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, Charlottesville, VA; 434/924-0211

WASHINGTON

University of Washington Harborview Medical Center: Northwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury System, Seattle, WA; 206/221-7390

WISCONSIN

The Spinal Cord Injury Center at Froedtert and The Medical College

of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; 414/805-3000

UW Health Rehabilitation Hospital, Madison, WI; 608/592-8100

Organizational Members

Center for Neuro Recovery North Palm Beach, FL; 888/875-7659

Florida Spinal Cord Injury Resource Center, Tampa, FL; 813/844-4711

High Rollers Adaptive Sports Foundation, Las Vegas, NV; 702/372-9622

Miami Physical Therapy Assoc., Inc. Miami, FL; 305/444-0074

NextStep - Orlando Sanford, FL; 407/571-9974

Project Walk Boston Stratham, NH; 603/583-5119

Project Walk New Jersey Mt. Laurel, NJ; (856/439-6772

Push to Walk Oakland, NJ; 201/644-7567

TRYAbility Neurorecovery Center Downers Grove, IL; 331/775-2813

United Spinal Association knows that disability is a shared experience that affects you, your family, friends and communities. Fortunately, we are stronger together, and United Spinal brings decades of expertise to help: information, peer mentoring, advocacy and much more. Become a member today and

FOR SALE

RT300-SL FES bike. adult leg system, sage 7 controller, with universal stimulation cable, electrodes, manual. Access to web database system. Purchased refurbished for $14,000, used very little. excellent condition. Pictures available. Asking $8,000. Tobie 860-874-4129

Smart Drive MX2+ with push tracker E3 watch. Bluetooth connectivity for manual wheelchair propulsion assistive device. $1,250 OBO. Contact 619-884-8304.

2016 FES 300 cycle- 3 muscle group therapy. Purchased from Restorative Therapies for $13,300. Asking $5,000 OBO. Call 360-461-5569

CushPocket Wheelchair Storage Bag, visit cushpocket.com

Nationwide Wheelchair

Van Rentals. For the next time you want to get out, vacation, doctors appointment, or try before you buy. Learn more at www. BLVD.com

Over 1500 wheelchair Accessible Vehicles for sale at one website. A complete selection of New, Used and Pre-Owned wheelchair vehicles from dealers and private parties nationwide. Check it out today. www.blvd.com

VACATIONS

Cape May farmhouse near beach. First floor entirely wheelchair accessible. Sleeps eight. Visit www.beautifullyaccessible.com for more info and reservations.

Ocean-front condo, wheelchair friendly, sleeps six, pool, boardwalk to beach. Rents daily, weekly, monthly. St. Simons Is., GA. bmmk4@frontier.com 419-569-6114.

New Zealand Accessible Vehicle Hire. New Zealand disability vehicles, hand control cars, left foot accelerator cars for hire. Explore New Zealand – we make it easy! We are happy to pass on our former clients’ recommendations of accessible activities and accommodation. See www. freedom mobility.co.nz

ADVERTISE WITH NEW MOBILITY!

To place your classified ad or to get information on advertising rates, call: 800-404-2898, ext. 7253 or email your request to mchintalla@ unitedspinal.org

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SPINOUTS

ONE MORE ROAD TRIP TIP

When it comes to road trips, New Mobility correspondents have assembled a travelogue that would make even Johnny Cash jealous. Over 33 years, we’ve truly been everywhere. One of our favorite road trip tricks comes from Senior Correspondent Bob Vogel’s 2012 article, “Dad and Daughter: Epic Road Trip.”

I quickly discovered that finding a hotel room late at night during busy summer months is a challenge. So I taught my 10-year-old daughter, Sarah, how to ask for a room, and she became my ace in the hole. We would pull into a crowded hotel parking lot around 10 p.m. and Sarah would walk up to the front desk and say, “My daddy is in a wheelchair and we are tired. Do you have any rooms available?” More often than not, “one last room” would somehow become available for us.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR ON NEWMOBILITY.COM

Summer is finally here and our web site is heating up with more web-first content for you to enjoy. Here’s a sneak peek at what we have scheduled.

Gear Guide: Push Assist Options — Make that next uphill roll a little easier with the right push assist addon for your manual chair. We’ve broken all the options down to help you select.

Where Did All the Docs Go? — Who do you call if you have a syrinx or other serious spinal cord issue? The experts of yore have dwindled and finding a qualified doc can be hard. Bob Vogel investigates.

Best/Worst: Hotels — Our travel expert describes his best accessible hotel experience and weighs in on which chain exceeds expectations when it comes to access.

NM Live — If you enjoyed Teal Sherer’s profile of actor and model Lauren “Lolo” Spencer (page 16), make sure to catch their great live chat, now archived on Instagram. Teal has hosted a string of great guests, including Tony winner Ali Stroker and author Emily Ladau. Don’t miss her next Live by following @NewMobilityMag.

And of course, we’ll have plenty of updates and posts on breaking news and new products. Stay on top of all of our content via Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Actor Lauren “Lolo” Spencer

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