Yesterday the community support group who look after me had me driven about the country side looking at the various mobility scooters that could be bought throughout the region. We went to several stores and met helpful people who knew their product and were passionate about the world of mobility scooters. We stopped at the kebab shop at Long Jetty and tried their kebabs. Delicious!
I wanted to cover a very small part of the days efforts though. At least two of the people I met during the day shocked me a little. One of them, an owner or manager of a store was committed to a group of ideas about the mobility scooter community that I found deeply odious. He covered a lot of ground in his conversation with me and by the end of our time there I didn’t want to shop with them simply because I was so disgusted not only with his attitude but with my own knowledge that this guy’s passion to interfere in everyone else’s business made him the local political power in the subject. I did not want his disapproval each time I accessed his after-sales services!
When I told this guy that I was having trouble accessing the tracks up along dog scat ridge this guy told me people with mobility scooters should not be allowed to drive them onto bush tracks. Not only did he think I shouldn’t be on a bush track taking photographs while using a mobility scooter he though I should be not allowed to go beyond my local store and he even suggested that riders be banned outside of retirement communities and big shopping malls. This guy has decided people should not be able to explore their world of footpaths at all. They should be banned from going between towns unless they have to do so to go shopping. Everything in his world had to do with the most limited experience we can allow people who need mobility scooters. Note the term “we allow”. The busybodies are working their little bibs off to limit every one else’s experience as much as they can. These people think that mobility scooters seem to be a shameful thing to have to use and people must be prevented from expanding any joyful use of them such as following the lake-side tracks and enjoying the sun and view in case they get in the way of all the people who ride bicycles on the miles of concrete ribbon throughout the shire. He even made me as miserable as he could about wanting a scooter that was reasonable quick at 15kph. 10kph is all we cripples and old bastards (my words) should be allowed. He thinks it safer to make them slower. I see myself crossing the busy local road at Tumbi Umbi where cars hurtle along a many lane road and know there is no safe way to get across on a sluggish and slow little scooter. Of course he thinks I should be banned from going there at all. I know that the trip to the mall will go from a ride I have to make to a slow and painfully dreary hobble so the people who cannot help but interfere in every one else’s lives can force their partially digested over-the-dinner-table anecdotal theories on the rest of us. The really scary thing is that this guy is has probably made himself a major voice in the informational input to people who make local laws by way of his passion to force his ideas on others and his position as a store owner and thus likely expert. My view on his place in this is pretty obvious. Bugger off and leave us alone before you get someone hurt with your narrow little mind! I wonder if this is the guy who had the council lock me out of the bush trails. I think I might ask him over the phone. As I said, we had a great day generally and the people we met in the various stores were excellent. This conversation rankled though. The conversation doesn’t affect the quality of the guy’s store nor of his excellent service and product range so I see no need to identify anyone. What this is, is a warning, As so often happens guys like this are the passionate and busy ones in our communities and if we let them have their say without having ours our quality of life and ability to enjoy it will be bound into their narrow little visions of what should be allowed. We have a lot to lose still.
There is a letter in the making about the barricades preventing me from accessing the ridge. It is to Wyong Council but I am having some trouble with how to ask the questions. Councils are like lawyers and other people who use special words to cover their various services and if you do not know the terms they tend to treat you like an idiot and not really give you the information.