Hi from Atlanta, Georgia, US

[Simple Don]

Hello, my name is Don Simpson, I am a 61 year old disabled and retired electrical engineer in Atlanta, Georgia.

I have slow onset ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease for my fellow Americans, Motor Neuron Disease for the folks in the UK. My arms and legs are still strong, but I have completely lost my sense of balance and the disease has left me mute. I have been in a wheelchair because of the balance issue and to avoid fatigue for the last three years. I am currently in a big boy Permobil HD3 chair. However, I have dropped weight and soon will be able to get a normal 250 pound capacity chair.

I need a chair similar to the powerchair discussed here. I live two miles from my gym that I go to four or five times a week. I have the HD3 chair and a Merits four wheel scooter. Neither is completely satisfactory for me. The HD3 chair is slow and it travels most of the way with the motors running at enough of a differential speed to engage the half speed mode because the chair believes that I am entering a corner, when all I am doing is traversing a slope in the road or the sidewalk. No more front wheel drive chairs for me. But the HD3 can take me into the gym right to the pool or the weight room. The scooter is much faster, about 9 mph on a full charge but it has much too small batteries, size U1s, 35 AH to get me there and back at anything approaching full speed, and I must park it outside and walk with a walker for a hundred feet which tires me and which is dangerous, especially in bad weather.