Let’s talk about Molly

Molly is an eccentric creature who has caused me moments of great anxiety, yet as we get to know each other, she is opening a new world of opportunity for me. However, when I tell you I considered calling this blog ‘Death spins, pirouettes and new horizons‘ you will understand that life with Molly is not all sunny uplands.

Let me go back a step. Molly is a ‘personal mobility device’ made by Omeo Technology in New Zealand. The Omeo is built with a Segway at its core but with a seat instead of a standing platform, and in the same way you pilot a conventional Segway, you control the direction of travel by leaning forward and backward, and steer by leaning left or right.  She arrived at my house in March, roughly coinciding with the start of lockdown, and we have been using the weeks since then to get to know each other. And boy, does she take some getting to know!

To start with, she is moody and likes things to go her way. For instance she insists that the temperature in the garage should be above 6 degrees Celsius if you want to recharge her batteries. When she first arrived the weather was still cold at night so we had to let her stay in the main house as she clearly needed molly-coddling, hence the name Molly. Her other quirk is that her default preference is to face downhill, which is fine if that is the way you want to go (to the pub for instance) but less convenient if you want to climb a hill. The default preference means you have to work quite hard with your steering if you want to get her to climb, especially on rough terrain when the rider gets thrown about as the wheels bump in and out of potholes. The secret is to control the position of the chair using your hips rather than a full body lean, but even still, uphill  progress can be punctuated with a pirouette or two when the required amount of lean is greater than anticipated and Molly seizes the opportunity to head off back downhill again.

Going downhill by comparison is a breeze, as long as you have set the sensitivity of the seat control properly and, in the words of Buzz Lightyear, it is simply a matter of ‘falling gracefully’. In one instance I was half way down a steep bit of rough terrain when it dawned on me that the seat control function hadn’t cut in properly and my left/right leaning was having no effect, and yet I still managed a very orderly descent!

Her least endearing feature however is the ‘death spin’. When turning, as with steering a boat, you have to counteract the turn by leaning in the opposite direction before the turn is completed otherwise the chair will oversteer. If you have turned too quickly and are still leaning too far over in the direction of the turn it is possible to get into a spin which is very hard to control. The centrifugal force instead pushes your body outwards into an even more exaggerated lean making the spin worse. The ‘death spin’, as another Omeo user has termed it, is pretty scary, although as I get more experienced it is less common as I have learned to steer more with my hips rather than leaning with my upper body. You will note I said ‘less common’ rather than suggesting it is a thing of the past, as you can never afford to become complacent with an Omeo.😱

So, with all this negativity, why do I love Molly so? The answer is simple – it is because of this:

and this:

and this:

and most of all, this:

Molly has restored to me that which muscular dystrophy has sought to rob me of. I can once again travel to places that I thought I would not be able to see again, and what is more, to enjoy them when I get there. It is not a carte blanche opening up of access to everything, but the places we can explore are massively widened. Yes, she has her foibles, and she must not be taken for granted, but she restores the possibility of adventure that I was scared had been taken from me.

Today we went to the beach at Brean Sands and Sally was able to walk for miles in her favoured habitat with me bounding off like an excited puppy then running back to catch up with her again. This is freedom the like of which I have not known for a long time. Molly, you are welcome in our family, even if you can be a bit moody at times. 😁