Woody the Safety Bloke talks about his shoes… His Wheelchairs!
Good day everyone. Woody again. This week, I want to take a couple of minutes just to show you my shoes. No, not THOSE shoes; these shoes. Now you think about this for a minute, if you’re sitting in your lounge room with your Macys on or with your ugg boots, and you want to go outside. You just chuck a pair of boots on or a pair of outside shoes on. For me, it’s just a little bit different. I have to actually change wheelchairs. Now, I’ve got a couple of different wheelchairs for different purposes. If you can have a look at this one, this is my outdoor, off-road wheelchair. It’s got a set of big fat wheels at the back, some chunky wheelbarrow wheels on the front. That makes it easier for me to get around on the grass or on the rough roads.
This one is just another spare everyday wheelchair. I always have to have a spare chair, because they’re only made out of aluminium, the frames only aluminium and they do break. How’s this – I had an airline break a wheelchair on me one day. Now I’m not going to name the airline but they start with J and end with ‘etstar’ and they snapped a wheelchair in half. Now, can you imagine what that would be like; sitting on an air plane and they come in and they say to you, look we’ve broken a wheelchair. So I’ve always got to have a spare chair to be able to get into. The cost of these things is pretty expensive. I mean these chairs are custom made, just for my height, my size, my weight. You’re probably looking at about, four and a half, five thousand dollars each chair. So there’s five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of wheelchairs; that’s a lot of money.
When I do get in and out of my chairs, or when I do change chairs, I mean for you it’s just a matter of pull off your old shoes and put on a new pair. I actually have to physically line myself up or try and line myself up, and physically lift myself out of one chair into the other wheelchair. So that can be a pretty involved process.
So just have a think about that next time you slip on a pair of shoes. It makes a bit of difference. Anyhow, I’m Woody; stay safe Australia.