Predictably enough, the chair I chose was not available and I had to choose another. To be clear, I knew that the original Kuschall K-Series had been discontinued by the manufacturer, but that there were still some examples available to buy. However, the retailer I chose, Invictus Active, doesn’t have any in stock. I’m sure I could have found one elsewhere, but it turns out that:

1. Invictus are a little cheaper than most of the retailers I’ve found
2. They are currently offering a set of free offroad wheels with some new chairs, and
3. I’m lazy

So I chose another chair instead. As I said in the previous post, there isn’t a great deal to choose from between chairs at this price range (as far as I can tell) and I applied the same criteria. This is what I’ve ordered:

It’s the Quickie Helium, and while the brand name is as lame as I am (Quickie? Really?) I am assured that the chair is not. It’s a little lighter than the Kushall at 6.8KG (without wheels), which is about the same weight as my (admittedly monstrous) cat. Let’s hope it’s a good choice. It was a little more expensive than the Kushall, costing just a little over £2000.

The next step is to customise the chair (colours, options, accessories) and to have it built to my measurements and specifications. Much and great importance is placed on measurements when buying a wheelchair of this sort. I’m not sure quite how important that really is, though, since the instructions for measurement are fairly fag-packet, blind-man-on-a-galloping-horse in nature. We’ll see, I might get told off for saying that. Here’s Invictus’ instructions, which are much the same as others I’ve seen.

Invictus will be in contact in the next day or so to take those measurements and it might turn out that they’re really, really important after all, so be prepared for a grovelling update. As for other specifications, other than colour (of which there seems to be a bewildering array) the most interesting to me is the seat angle, which determines the centre of gravity. This seems to be the main factor in choosing between stability and manoeuvrability. On the face of it, this seems like a no-brainer; I’m always going to choose manoeuvrability over stability. But I suspect that it some configurations might be better than others for the kinds of moderate distance (half marathons, to begin with) I have in mind, so I’ll be taking advice on that. I’ll report back if and when I learn anything about that.

I still have a lot to write about wheelchair accessories. It’s a singularly frustrating topic and there’s very little advice to be had (hence this blog). But before I post at length on that subject, I should mention that I also ordered this thing:

It’s an attachment rather than an accessory, I suppose; It fixes onto the front of the chair, where the footrest usually attaches. It’s for offroad and uneven conditions. Given the state of the pavements around here, I suspect it will get a lot of use.