Thank you

[cjsmith]

Thank you all for your thoughtful and supportive comments on my "gimp social life" post. Folks made many good points.

- Yes, a scooter would help an awful lot for outings involving movem um, "outings" do tend to involve movement, don't they? I plan to get one as soon as I decide which one is lightest/smallest/easiest-to-transport/reliable/cheap and as soon as I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get better (they're pricey, so I don't want to buy it just to have it for a year). Soon. I'll probably buckle down and get to it soon. I've test-driven several models now.

- Yes, which activities people are doing makes a *big* difference. Anything with the words "explore" or "see" should be planned much more carefully than events with words such as "crafts" or "pot luck". :)

As some of you probably guessed, my main frustration is with myself. If asked to label myself two years and change ago, I would have said: "runner, hiker, camper, backpacker, square dancer, square dance caller, pilot, computer programmer, owned by cats". Scanning down that list will give some idea of how big a shift this is for me. It will take time before I'm comfy in my new life. My thanks for all the words of support.

Comments

Re: 1. scooters

[moriamerri.livejournal.com]

I didn't look very far, but on the surface this looks pretty good: http://visforvoltage.com/forums/
At least from the forum headings, it claims to cover a huge, huge range--- golf carts, scooters, motorized bikes, power chairs, and all kinds of things that I wouldn't even know what the distinctions mean...... "electric quads" -- oh it does go on.

This one I think is NOT about "your kind" of scooters (not that I have any freakin' idea) -- but you could ask them where to find discussion of the types of scooters you are looking at:
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/TwistnGoScoot/

Now, what about Consumer Reports? I easily found stuff from them on scooters, but, again "wrong" kind -- these are the stand and kick with a foot on the ground typd.

This one is not exactly consumer opinions
http://arthritis.about.com/od/assistivedevicesgadgets/tp/scooters.htm?terms=scooters
still, it looks like it is in the right ballpark, and I have sometimes found the links from ABOUT articles helpful. This article is pegged under "assistive devices", so I think it is at least barking up the right tree. The links at the bottom part of the page look pretty interesting to me, but your mileage may vary (e.g. you have read a lot on related topics and I have not -- and I don't know if some of the topics are too far afield "how to protect your joints")

okay, well, that was a very quick look, so I'm not claiming these are the bestest.....