The Pilot's Modular Knee Board

I'm finally back for another, much overdue blog posts! My apologies for being away so long, it took some time to reorient my technology needs after the broken arm. I had to acquire a Windows surface and a tobii eyetracker , consequently I have been occupied With setup and configuration.

Now that has been said, on to the meat and potatoes of this article :-)

A while back I picked up a pilot modular knee board on from CP gear. The idea was to find a way to things like my iPhone and ID for adapted transport visible and easily accessible. One of my criteria has always been to minimize the amount of stuff in front of particularly things like tables attached to my wheelchair. That said, I will admit right at the
beginning that it didn't work quite as I had envisioned. But on occasion it has been extremely helpful.

I do pilot my wheelchair... right?
So I obviously need wingmen... right!

Most recently, I've been using it for things like grocery lists and managing my paper work at the hospital. These days, I usually get off at the hospital and left on my own as I can still communicate and get around quite well wheeled 2.0 I don't need an assistant following me all the time. So we start my iPhone to the need knee board along with my hospital cards. This allowed people to easily access what they needed, with my supervision and not rummaging through my bag. Kept everything nice, organized and easily accessible.

By sticking my iPhone to get on a band of Velcro tape I was also able to (relatively) easily maintain text message communication via Siri while I was there.

The board is comfortable to wear (with pants. With the shorts…meh!) on either leg and stays put quite well.  It is attached by a pair of Velcro loops that you close around your leg.

Personally, I quite like and I would say it is well worth the cost of C$50. It comes in one of three colors. Black, e Pat camouflage and optionally has a bunch of accessories that can be velcrod to it. Other pouches for example.

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And a huge thanks

I would also like to give a shout out to William Cassan for his incredibly generous donation to this blog. It is greatly appreciated and will go to financing the exploration of other useful tools :-)

Snapdragon Buckles

1" snapdragon buckle

I like my grab it pack  No. I love my grab it pack  That said, it is equipped with the standard slide clips and as we've mentioned before, with the loss of the ability to pinch this isn't really working for me anymore. I just can't release the clip. So after doing some research online I came across a very interesting, military grade quick release by ITW Nexus called a snapdragon buckle.

Instead of pinch, the intention of these is to be a quick pull on a tab or a loop which releases the buckle. Far quicker and easier than slide clips.

2" snapdragon buckle

The problem is, these are fairly hard to find because at the moment most of them are designed for military supply. So unless you need a box 1000 of them, it's a little tricky to find where to order them from. I however got little bit lucky. I searched on the Internet and the supplier lists and fortunately there was one relatively local who is willing to help me out. He sold me 5 2 inch buckles and 5 1 inch buckles.

So with the help of my rehabilitation facility, I added some buckles to my grab it pack (a 2 inch buckle for the waste, and a 1 inch buckle for the leg strap) and a 1 inch buckle to my shoulder bag. Overall I'm pleased with how well this works for me. Check out the video below. I should however first point out that when I release the shoulder strap, I'm usually sitting down. 

Now, as I mentioned these are military standard product meaning they are very strong and durable which can make releasing the snapdragon a little bit challenging. Especially for the 2 inch buckle. In my case I found the amount of force required to release the 1 inch buckle the one-inch to be just fine. I did however have to have the 2 inch buckle modified. This was done by my father who simply took a file to it and poured down the plastic teeth on the inside of the buckle and on the mail portion of the buckle reduced a bit of the profile, and rounded the edges a bit too reduce the amount of purchase between the two pieces. Only took him about 10 min. And since then the 2 inch buckle works absolutely beautifully.

So the big question is: "where do I get me some?"

Well the only place I found online that will sell in smaller numbers is CP-gear. However they only have 1 inch and three-quarter inch buckles in their inventory (last I looked).

• 1 inch snapdragon buckle
• 3/4 inch snapdragon buckle

You can also go the route I did, which was to find a local supplier from the IT W nexus distributors list. Give them a call, the guy I spoke to was really great and very willing to help me out. http://na.itwnexus.com/content/list-distributors

Pro:

• great alternative to slide clips.
• Military grade, very strong
• reasonably priced, on par with the slide clip replacement

Con:

• military grade plastic. may require modification
• very hard to find. I wasn't able to find any in local retail

Loose Change and Sanity

Occasionally getting out of the house to maintain contact with the rest of the world is often a good thing. Even if it is just to be around other people. One of my preferred destinations is to go to Starbucks just to grab a cup of coffee.

Now as you may have noticed from previous posts, I like my coffee.
I do have to admit that I have a certain bias to Starbucks. My first serious girlfriend worked as a barista their, so let's just say I  have a certain Pavlovian conditioning to the smell and the green aprons ;-)

One of the problems I tend to have is that for small transactions, you have a tendency to paying cash. It just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to bust out the credit card for $1.50. This then of course means that you are getting a handful of change back, and with the state of my hands this is very difficult to manage. I usually end up dropping it and if nothing else trying to figure out what to do with it later on… And I can pretty much forget about trying to use it to pay for my coffee the next time around…

Because of this, I decided to start using the Starbucks prepaid card thinking that fumbling with the card from my wallet would be much easier to manage than a whole bunch of coins. For the most part this proved to be pretty much the case.

Shortly after I discovered the Starbucks iPhone app which is really pretty cool. Not only does it have a whole bunch of extra features for things like finding the nearest Starbucks, but you can actually link to your prepaid card/account and then use your phone to pay for your purchase.

For me this is great, it eliminates with all the dexterity issues associated with dealing with cash and coins. Not to mention to a lesser degree, the prepaid card itself. On top of that, my phone is usually in the side pouch of my grab it pack and being much larger it is much easier for me to manipulate. The only pain in the but I would give it is a from time to time I have to re-login and enter my password… Which is now become a bit fidgety to do.

There are a few things about this that I find a particularly cool:

1. the iPhone app will show you the running balance on your card.
2. There are several options to reload dollars onto your card either via the Internet or via the app itself.
3. Starbucks offers a pretty good reward program starting with free refills and syrup, and ending with some free coffee :-)
   of course you can see how many rewards points it accumulated via the app as well.

Now some of you might be thinking "well duh! I've been using prepaid cards for ages". But sometimes we just don't see the obvious solutions that are staring us right in the face, and dealing with ALS a friendly little nudge can be really helpful… More stories on that one later ;-)

Hauling my Stuff…

For the next couple of posts, I thought I would talk about something that I'm sure we all have to do, which is periodically getting out of the house to run certain errands, visit the doctor and attend various appointments. One of the difficulties this poses us is bringing our  essentials with us. Things like your wallet, car keys, cell phone and so forth…

The problem I am often confronted with is:

1. how do I bring my stuff with me without too much difficulty.
2. once I get to my destination, how do I access it.

In the case of accessing I have very limited dexterity to access whatever is in the bag and my range of motion is also compromised, both of which make it near impossible to access regular pockets. This set me on a quest to try various products and homemade solutions. Some, more successful than others…

My current favorite solution is the Grab-it pack. I was a little unsure of it at first as I've never seen one in person and it does look kind of paramilitary/geeky. But I have to admit, I'm very pleased with… But the wife hates it…read "are you really going to wear that" ...LOL.

Essentially, it's a different take on the fanny pack. I like to think of it as a strap on  drop/cargo pocket, but with big difference being that it is reasonably secure to your leg and doesn't bang around. This is something that always drives me nuts when I'm walking is having things bumping up against me as I take a step. Even without the leg straps secured, it doesn't swing around that much.

As you can see from the image, it has three pockets. The narrow pocket on top of the large main pocket is zippered and due to my mobility restrictions I have not been able to find much use for it yet. It does however fit keys, loose change, hands-free Bluetooth easily. I also had to attach is a zipper pull. The large main pocket is great and is designed to fit the clinch wallet perfectly (which I'll discuss later) and being made of nylon anything placed in the pocket slides easily in and out.

But by far the third smaller pocket is my favorite and what made me actually decide to try the grabbed it pack. Its size fits an iPhone perfectly and when you are wearing it sits on top of your thigh, thus remaining accessible at all times.

This is quite important for reasons of safety, I had an incident before buying the grab it pack where I was walking the dog late one evening, and she pulled me over leaving me somewhat like the poor turtle shown here. I had fallen into a soft patch of grass on a very slight slope, I was unhurt but I had considerable difficulty in getting back up. I actually struggled for a few minutes…

Not having my phone with me scared me quite a bit as if I had not finally been able to get up, I could've been there for some time calling for help.  If I had been wearing the grab it pack, I simply would've had to roll onto my back or side, and because of the placement of the third pocket my phone would've been very accessible for me to call for help.

Because of this incident, I almost never go out by myself not wearing it or without some other option of accessing my phone.

There's a couple options for purchasing the grab it pack. You can order for the left or right side depending on your preference and you can also order the ultra version which is made from ballistic nylon and has a few more clips, but the same number of pockets and storage space.

Myself I bought the standard right side grab it pack bundled with the clinch wallet. I strongly recommend doing this. You will save a few dollars on shipping and as I mentioned above, the clinch wallet is designed for the grab it pack and fits perfectly. More on the wallet later...

Even though my dexterity limitations make it a little bit tricky at times to put on, I really do appreciate this product. It is most definitely helping me stay mobile.

You can also read more about it on Think Geek

Pro: 

• the pocket on top of the thigh ensures your phone remains accessible at all times.
• the large main pocket provides lots of storage, remains more ergonomically accessible and well secured to the leg.
• Large 2 inch slide clip used to attach around the waist is quite flexible and reasonably easy to undo, even with my significant dexterity and strength limitations
• it looks cool, kind of paramilitary

Con: 

• being made of nylon, it doesn't breathe very well and consequently can be a little bit warm on the leg. I don't find this to be too much of a problem.
• The other two slide clips on it are smaller and I find it much more difficult to undo. Fortunately the one on the leg can be left to done up and you can just step into it.
• It looks kind and paramilitary, and the wife might not like it ;-)

Cost: Between US$24 for the standard and US$40 for the ultra.

Recommendation: if you can spare the cash, it's well worth trying. I highly recommend including the  clinch wallet in your order as above only cost you about US5$ extra.