Your tax dollars at work

Some of you know that I have an electric scooter that the Veterans administration provided for me because I cannot walk very far without my feet and legs hurting and I get tired very quick if I have to walk. They originally gave me a weird looking thing that attached to a receiver under my rear bumper that was exposed continually. It lifted the scooter and then swung it into the trunk of my Chevy Impala. It was such a tight fit and labor intensive that I only used my scooter 3 times in the past year. Can you imagine standing outside in freezing weather or in the rain trying to get that thing out of the trunk? This limited my excursions and shopping trips to stores which provided electric scooters. Most of these are in pitiful condition, either they are extremely slow or they go dead about half way through your shopping. I told my story to the vets and they told me if I had a van they could install a lift that could pick up the scooter and slide it into the van.

So I went out and traded in my Chevy on a 2006 Chrysler Town & Country van, It has electrically operated rear hatch as well as electric sliding doors on both sides. Yesterday they came and installed my lift. It is a very big sturdy iron piece of machinery that will take it's toll on my car battery and my gas mileage. but it will be worth it. Today I think I will go to a shopping mall and just take in the sights. The only downside is that it is not removeable so I lost the use of my 3rd row of seats so it is now a 4 passenger van instead of 7. Here are a couple of pictures of the lift.