When that happens to me I think back to a very old, original Outer Limits where scientists fake a creature from space (the recently departed Robert Culp). I remember, as a kid, being very impressed by the special effects. He points his ray gun at a station wagon and a moment later, there's nothing but a burning outline of the car left on the ground. One time, I blocked an illegal HC parker (a doctor's Mercedes, no less!) until the police arrived and the result was they let HIM go and tried to give me a ticket until I told them my sister was the county ADA. That shut them down *quick.* As an aside, I believe the cops where I live have learned that harassing people who call them lowers their workload because they know they'll never call them again. But I digress.
That's a good idea. Angle parking would allow more maneuvering room with the ramp, too, even if no one parked in the shaded zones. II'm a little fearful of doing that because some parking lot vigilante might take exception to the disorderly look of a diagonally parked car and key me.
Most of the times, (ironically) I just go to the far end of the parking lot and look for a space where I won't be easily blocked off. Since I'm in the powerchair, being parked far away is not so much of an issue except for the way some people zoom around in parking lots to get the closest space. The more distance you have to cover in a parking lot means the more you have to worry about some yahoo slamming into you. They hardly see the huge van, let alone me in the tiny powerchair. Still, it's better than having to pull the van out into the open lanes to effect the transfer, which I've been forced to do when some bozo parks in the lined space between the HC spots.
This thread has reminded me to install the two xenon flashers I got from Allelectronics on long fiberglass rods so that the powerchair is easily visible to motorists as I scoot through the parking lot. If I had the room, I'd install some truck-sized air horns, too. Especially for the families in the mall who walk 6 abreast at about 2 mph, stopping suddenly whenever something shiny catches their eyes forcing me to stop precipitously while they stand there like statues in the middle of the walkway.
Sadly, I am all too well-aware of the tradeoffs. But now that both knees have totally "blown out" the transfer problem has become a real issue. Moving from powerchair to driver's chair requires contortions that I am less and less able to accomplish. I may have to pull the driver's seat and have the EZ-lock moved from the van center to the driver's slot.
I have, but do not use, the EZ-lock for that reason as well as others. The last thing I need is more problems. Just recently, the chair has locked its brakes when going over something that has a different surface. I was coming out of the hospital, and the flying bridge to the parking lot has a metal expansion joint about six inches wide. When the chair's wheels come off the concrete walk and onto the smoother metal, the brakes apply. It nearly threw me out of the chair when it first happened. It's really a problem when it's rainy and some surfaces become exceptionally slick.
As for a proper group to post this is, I only found one wheelchair support group on Usenet, but it has very few posts. I'll crosspost there just in case it's just slow and not abandoned.
(I re-activated the cross-post to AHR because a) the people there have a very wide range of experience on a lot of matters and b) are mostly adults that don't go ballistic when a thread is not directly on topic, especially if they can contribute something to the thread that's useful. Since most ISP's have dropped Usenet, the volume of posts have lowered enough that people don't seem to mind OT as much as they used to. In fact, CHA has gone so moribund that I often wonder who's left to post!)
Crossposted: comp.home.automation,alt.home.repair, alt.support.wheelchairs
-- Bobby G.