Travel’s a pleasure with lightweight scooter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2011 (5289 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS we get on in years, most of us find ‘getting around’ increasingly difficult. When considering holiday choices to unknown climes, the issue of personal mobility becomes a greater concern. One alternative to consider is a battery powered mobility scooter.

Our moment of truth came last spring. My wife Sandra and I had seen Turkey five years ago, driving from Istanbul some 1,500 kilometres west to Gallipoli, down the Aegean coast to Ephisis, across the Mediterranean coast, then north through Cappadocia, staying in an underground motel, then to the Black Sea and back to Istanbul.

During the trip we were helped by a university student studying to be an English teacher, and discovered that it was nearly impossible to obtain English language books. I gave her my email address and volunteered to send her books, (I have lots) if she sent me a list of her needs.

Over the next four years I sent her many shipments and a regular email correspondence ensued. By video link, we met her classmates and parents.

In January she emailed that she was getting married in May. Would we come to her wedding? I wondered if I were losing my mind even thinking about it, but it promised to be an adventure (2,000 people were invited to the wedding and the bride expected me to dance with her) so we planned to go.

This brought forth the challenge that my wife walks with a cane with difficulty and, increasingly, walking any distance is a problem.

I mentioned buying a mobility scooter, an idea that was summarily rejected, which is apparently a common first reaction. However, as the time to leave arrived, I insisted that she at least try one. We ended up buying a very light scooter, 50 kg, that folds up and comes apart in three pieces easily, and away we went. It was a hoot!

To begin with, the airlines are obliged to carry mobility scooters free of extra baggage charges, but passengers must inform each airline in advance of the intention of taking one.

Thus, from when we arrived at the airport right to the door of the aircraft, Sandra was able to ride her scooter. The baggage people stowed the scooter and returned it to the door of the plane upon arrival. This made getting through airports much easier; clearing security was straightforward.

She soon acclimatized to steering through pedestrian traffic, and when we got to Istanbul we had everything organized.

Yes, one has to take van-type taxis to accommodate the scooter, but ours folds down with the seat on it, but quite flat if the seat is removed, which takes four seconds and one finger. Reassembly is equally quick.

The largest problem we encountered in Turkey was a lack of ramps at the edges of sidewalks, requiring that Sandra dismount for a few seconds while I lifted the machine over the curb. I kicked myself for failing to pack along a length of plywood to use as a ramp. I had experimented before I left, and it worked fine but, inexplicably, I decided not to take it. Hinged in the middle so it folds in half, it attaches neatly to the seatback.

Other than the curb problem there were two other issues.

First, many of the sidewalks are crowded with sidewalk café tables, making passage difficult, and much of Istanbul is steep, thus the sidewalks have steps. This often drives the mobility scooter operator to threading her way through the cars and buses in the very crowded Istanbul streets.

It took more than a little courage to risk the stream of oncoming traffic, but the fact is traffic is so jammed up that it often moves more slowly than the scooter, and drivers willingly gave way. Rough cobblestone streets that give the rider’s kidneys a good shake, created some discomfort sometimes.

Then there is always the worry of running out of power before you get back to the hotel. We solved that by carrying a spare battery and the charger and, when we stopped for lunch, asking if we could plug in the scooter battery. The charger accommodates 110 and 220 volts, but a plug adapter was necessary. Theft is not a problem, although we carried a bicycle chainlock.

Everywhere we went, Turkish people were helpful, often offering help loading the scooter into the rental van for our trip to the wedding in rural Turkey, and over high curbs.

Needless to say, the scooter itself was an object of great curiosity. We did not see another while we were there. People would stop us and ask us about it, often I think to practise their English, which is now compulsory in Turkish schools. One group of teenagers cross-examined Sandra in the Grand Bazaar. Where were we from? How much did it cost? And so on.

Our (or rather Sandra’s) pronouncement was that the scooter truly made the trip a pleasure.

Now, she hardly leaves home without it, and it has opened up our own neighbourhood to us.

She uses it for going on walks with the grandsons, for walking the dog, for touring Granville Island, all with an ease that was not thought of previously.

The wedding was the adventure of a lifetime. And yes, I did dance with the bride.

— Postmedia News