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Hi Janet, Your comments on the public reaction to you when you used a wheelchair, tie in well with other recent wheelchair anecdotes posted as part of the visibilty thread. My only personal experience with wheelchairs comes from years ago (1973) when I was a patient at the Roehampton hospital in London. As I was there to have a rather nastily broken leg put back together I was, not surprisingly, in the orthopedic wing. The Roehampton specialises in orthopedics (it is the hospital where Douglas Bader, the WW2 air ace got his 'legs') so there were a lot of crutches and wheelchairs about the place. As is the nature of orthopedic wards, many of the patients where young men who were fit in every sense except their ability to use their broken/missing limb(s). Add to this the fact that the hospital had the longest, widest corridors I have ever seen in a building and yep - you get the picture - wheelchair races. If you've ever seen the look on the face of an orderly carrying a tray of coffee cups, as she catches sight of a speeding wheelchair bearing down on her you will never doubt that people in wheelchairs are visible. Was it Mark Twain who said that youth is wasted on the young. That man knew what he was talking about. Dennis. ************************************************* Dennis Greene 48/10 [log in to unmask] http://members.networx.net.au/~dennisg/ **************************************************