Wheelchair Tuning Part XXX (Competitor)

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That standard wheelchairs, snow and sand are not the best friends is not really the insight of the day.

The low budget mountainbike wheelchair tyres
(see older blog post),

constructed by myself are indeed a big relief for me on bad ground conditions, but the small front tyres are for sand and snow by far the worst solution.

Well, with some special skating wheels as front tyres you might be able to illuminate the snow, but you are not moving any faster anyhow.

Actually I don’t understand it, but the engineers at the wheelchair companies don’t seem to know neither snow nor sand. Even after longer consideration I couldn’t think of any country which would not have at least one of it. Probably they live on trees, otherwise there would be adequate summer and winter equipment for each wheelchair as a standard.
Some day I will build in old MacGyver manner out of an inflatable physiotherapy ball and a hand fan a mobile mounting set with which my rolling vehicle turns into a ground-independent hovercraft wheelchair ;-)

Until I get there I continue combing through the technical aids scene to see what the colleagues are developing.

I am living in the city, but last year even my hometown Frankfurt was full of snow.

As formerly alpine skiing obsessed who was skiing with 2 meter skis in the Alps still in 2007 (no carving ski in children’s length) I already thought several times to cut my 2 cellar decoration skis in homeopathic pieces and screw them to my wheelchair instead of the front tyres to be able to leave my flat in last year’s snow chaos.

A seating test in a monoski on a fair was quite nice, and I was extremely surprised how stable I was sitting in it, until I asked my friend behind me if he was standing on the ski?

He said yes, took off his foot, I fell over, and the project monoski was postponed for the time being…!!!

Who was it, a Swiss man…!!!

When I read the post of a wheelchair hotel in Oberstdorf known to me I was immediately impressed.
Patrick Mayer, what a coincidence, a wheeler himself from Switzerland, who certainly has much more test snow than me each year, developed the Wheel Blades.
The

www.wheelblades.ch


are small blades which can be clamped with an iron clip anytime easily (even for quadriplegics) to the front tyres of the wheelchair.
The front tyres remain on the wheelchair!!! The binding is individually adjustable.

There was a real expert at work. Look at the Video,
he rolls down a flat ski-slope with these things on his wheelchair. The envy factor increases, ok I grant it to him.
He has even added slide rails to the blades so that they keep the track on the slope. Excellent, chapeau!!!

The Wheel Blades can be ordered in advance from October 2012, I will do it.
To anticipate anything, they might get paid by the employer’s accident insurance at best, or you have a good lawyer at the social court!!!

I haven’t heard anything yet about test rides in the snow board half pipe, and the snow and waterski suitability still has to be proved ;-)

Translator BL

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One Response to “Wheelchair Tuning Part XXX (Competitor)”

  1. FX says:

    Hi- hatte die Möglichkeit einen Prototyp der snowblades beim skifahren zu testen und war absolut begeistert! Anbau ist echt kinderleicht und dann macht es fast schon Spass damit ĂĽber Schnee zu fahren. Werde mir die teile sofort zulegen sobald sie erhältlich sind. Bis dahin ist auch ein “Snoll-on” eine brauchbare Alternative bei Schnee.

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