Being a wheelchair user is a bit like being a drug addict, specifically when it comes to repairing or updating your wheelchair. Recently, I have gone into the blackest markets of Los Angeles, sneaking down dark alleys behind nursing homes and special education schools to find tires which I have been waiting for Medicare to deliver. Like crack, I really don’t want to buy $500 tires and yet I need them desperately, and Medicare well I suppose, after 6 months of waiting, are hoping I'll outgrow the disability before they have to pay for new tires.So once paying the scruffy Permobil user for the tires, shoving them in the back of a van, I needed to find a special mechanic to actually put them on the chair. Wheelchair mechanics my friends, are far worse then regular mechanics as they prey on the Medicare abandoned wheelchairs users who have no where else to go, and are a bit more desperate for a working wheelchair than most are for a working car. And then as every wheelchair using woman knows, showing a bit of leg will get you access to the good stuff. The air modulated seats with knitted cotton covers, hydro electric backlights, impenetrable tire tubing, electric shorts increasing speed and the holy glory of it all, the massaging, heated, pressure sore sensitive back seat.Yes this is the dark hidden world of disability, and just think I haven’t even described the amputee black market.