When 2 Become 1,000

When my power chair and I hit 100, it felt like a significant milestone in the coming together of one soul and one motor. We’d bonded in those first 100 km, and I remember being sure that it was impossible for woman and machine to be any closer unless in a cyborg situation such as mine with my VNS, which is literally inside of me.

In the case of my Quantum Edge 3,™ it was as if, to paraphrase the immortal words of the Spice Girls, our two had (almost) become one. Indeed, that classic song—“2 Become 1,” in case you weren’t a tween in the 1990s whose first album purchase was a cassette tape of the Spice Girls’ masterful debut, Spice—describes my relationship with my Quantum with an accuracy that borders on the alarming. “Free your mind of doubt and danger” corresponds with the near-reckless abandon with which I navigate the city in my power wheelchair. The following line, “Be for real, don’t be a stranger,” also rings true. I mean, we rely on each other to stay alive—so far, so good!—and I’ve clocked hundreds of hours sitting on it; if that doesn’t make us more than casual acquaintances, I don’t know what would. “We can achieve it, we can achieve it” comes next and is, at this particular moment, strikingly fitting.

Our first 100 km went by in a flash, as did the next 600. In my overconfident and self-competitive way, I assumed that we’d get to 1,000 in no time at all. We’d become one, after all, and were presumably united in our goals of a) being out and about and busy as many waking hours as humanly/mechanically possible, and b) steadily racking up kilometres on the odometer, which I 100% treated, and still treat, as an enormous Fitbit (minus the exercise).

Perhaps the good thing we had going on wouldn’t have come to an end had it not been for the inevitable beginning of winter. For a while, I did my best to brave the weather in the name of satisfying my obsessive desires. If risking frostbite is inadvisable, though, ramming through snowbanks is purely impossible, and between inhospitable temps, a trip that separated me from my chair for ten days, and the famous snowstorm that kept me inside for a further twelve days, I lost a ton of valuable ride time. The 300-kilometre stretch from 700 to 1,000 thus took forever. Months. I tried to be OK with it, and mostly I was.

Once the sidewalks were reasonably clear and my horizons rewidened, I got back on the road. I was determined to be more relaxed—to use this interruption to my routine as an opportunity to stop taking the long route in order to log more kilometres and instead take the long route to log more experiences and to enjoy more fresh air; to have the rising kilometre count be the byproduct of adventures rather than an end in itself. Much to my surprise, my reframing stuck, and I saw the benefits. Indeed, by paying closer attention to my surroundings, I stopped paying such close attention to the number. I hardly noticed when the odometer ticked past the 800 mark. I’m not sure I noticed at all when it reached 900. No longer forced apart due to variables outside our control, my and my power chair’s 2 was back to our 1, and we were taking advantage of our combined forces to catch up on all we’d missed but, like, being chiller about it.

I’d be lying, however, if I were to claim that I didn’t get a little excited when I saw “990” on the screen. 1,000 seemed momentous: the difference between 1990 and Y2K, an occasion worthy of novelty sunglasses and coordinated global celebrations.

I was on the phone with a friend while I powered through one of the final kilometres of the 900s, fact I couldn’t help but mention. It was she, not I, who brought up a defining feature of the millennial zeitgeist that loomed over the historical moment when the true worry should’ve been the potential for mass havoc wreaked by battling militias of abandoned Furbies.

“What if your chair gets to 1,000 and it crashes like people thought would happen to all computers in the year 2000?”

She was joking, and it was funny, and I laughed. We finished our call and I started listening to a lowbrow but imminently enjoyable novel, promptly dismissing the “chair imploding because it can’t handle my incredible feat” idea as being as ridiculous as the one that caused millions of people to prepare for the world to come to an end at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000.

Shortly thereafter, the console read 999.9. My heart started racing. Excitement overtook me, making it impossible for me to concentrate on my audiobook.

Thirty seconds later, it flipped to 000.0.

Anticlimactic? A little. Disappointing? Quite the opposite, for the very instant 999 became 0, the 1,000 was transformed into a secret shared by my Quantum and I as we ascended to the next plane of our mutual existence: our 1 became infinity, and endless possible, if not probable, futures were unlocked. By which I mean, I shrugged off my mild annoyance, smiled at the irony of having been so obsessed with reaching a number I’d never see, and continued with my day. It really is about being present in the journey, I guess, not singlemindedly fixating on the destination.

The Spice Girls, expounding the virtues of “set[ting] your spirit free” phrased it best: “It’s the only way to be.”