Part II...Decision time

Part II
Price then came into play, a little bit, since I was paying for this out-of-pocket. One of the two chairs made in the US was in the mid 2Ks, the other 5K...the Trekinetic is 7K+. Seeing that high price, I was a little turned off and continued my research.

I was now leaning more towards the lower end of the spectrum. This chair, the Invacare Top End Crossfire was the most innocuous of the three chairs. It looked most like a regular sports wheelchair. It had knobby back wheels and bigger than normal front wheels. These front wheels, however, seemed smaller than necessary when handling wild(er) terrains. Also, one other "fault" was that it didn't have a braking system.

While these "faults" were somewhat big in the grand scheme of things, I started to shy away from this chair. Looking at the other chair, the Lasher Sport BT-ATB (ATB for All-Terrain Beast), I dug that it had a braking system. It also had much bigger wheels in the front. This is a big plus, because with my old chair and also the Crossfire you would have to pop a wheelie to manage roots or rocks. If you were to encounter these in those chairs, your chair's forward momentum would cease and you would be ejected from your chair. But then looking at the chair as a whole, those larger front wheels add almost a foot past where your legs are. For a dual purpose chair, this would limit its use in a day-to-day setting (working in an
office, shopping, etc.).

With the other two chairs not so great in my mind for what I was looking for, I was leaning toward the Trekinetic. Since the Trekinetic is not available for sale in the US, I realized I had to step up the game on research. I found that there was a Trekinetic user from South Africa who was blogging about her experiences with her chair (her blog is here). We chatted back and forth via her blog and she answered a lot of questions I had had about the day-to-day use. She made the comment that while the chair does cost quite a bit, it's a versatile chair that can handle just about anything you throw at it and will be an investment worth making.

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