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The Red Wheelies

Jackie Weedon

Open Door - August 2008 pages 10-11

'The Red Wheelies' are a group of people, all with MS, who have formed a display team on mobility scooters! The team came about really by accident as these things often do and hopefully has helped with both fundraising and MS awareness.

The red wheelies

Some years ago a group of us with MS wanted to race our mobility scooters. People race all sorts of things, so why not us? That year the MS Society was one of the London Marathon's chosen charities. A letter was written to the organisers asking if we could take part, but we were turned down for a number of reasons. Even more determined now, we contacted the MS Trust to ask if they could help us find a venue where we could race. Hannah Jones, who was then MS Trust fundraiser, directed us to our local athletics track manager who couldn't have been more helpful and said we could race there.

From our initial meetings with him the whole idea grew from simply racing to organising a Fun Day with the races being a big part of the day. To show our thanks for their help we offered to help out with the athletics group's Children In Need fundraising and on a cold November night a group of us met up at the track to race. While waiting for our turns some of us started riding our scooters and weaving in and out of each other and someone said 'lets create a formation team' and that was the beginning!

We asked around among our local physio group and a number of people wanted to join in and help form the team. One of the group had a relative who was involved with dressage (with horses) and she choreographed the initial routine for us! Not all the team had scooters, or indeed had even ridden one before. To help out with this minor problem a local mobility company were approached and agreed to lend us the equipment. We now had the riders, the scooters and a place to practice - and we had selected Frank Sinatra songs to accompany our routine. Many an afternoon was spent at the track 'perfecting' the routine. There were a few crashes and near misses but gradually we became more competent and started adding more and more to the display.

A search for a name and a team outfit was now needed. The name Red Wheelies was easy as we all had red scooters, and we decided red and white for the outfit would follow the theme. Another team member's son made us signs for our scooters and our first performance was at the Fun Day. Despite our nerves it was hailed a success as nobody had ever seen what we were doing before. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and decided to carry on practicing and trying out new ideas in the hope we may be able to do it again.

Our first TV appearance came about through the MS Trust. They were asked for any zany fundraising ideas that had been undertaken for them for the GMTV breakfast show when they were one of it's chosen charities. They suggested we might fit that description and so at 5am on a sunny June morning we were all at the track doing our routine live three times on the programme (with help from presenter Richard Arnold).

As the Fun Day had been so successful it was agreed to do it again the following year. This time there was to be a medieval theme and the Red Wheelies decided to join in. A new routine was designed to a medley of Queen songs with the Red Wheelies dressed as knights - our helmets were plastic milk bottles, hand knitted chain mail, lances made of drain pipes and our scooters were dressed as horses with horse's heads and bottoms and tails. As part of the routine we did a jousting element with targets attached to the sides of our scooters. We were told this would be impossible but proved otherwise. The music we chose for this was 'Another One Bites The Dust' which seemed quite apt. We also had one of the Wheelies dressed as a dragon and she was dispatched by the knights.

The dragon on her scooter

After the second Fun Day the group as such broke up for a number of reasons, mainly people moving away. We all looked back fondly on our days as team members but we thought that was the end of the Wheelies. But like the phoenix they have risen from the ashes.

Three of the original wheelies moved to the Kent coast and became involved with the Kent MS Therapy Centre in Canterbury. The Centre is fundraising for a new building, which is very necessary to replace their current worn out prefab. We mentioned to the fundraising committee the success we had had with the original Wheelies and offered to do it again. Notices were put up in the centre asking for volunteers to join us and a number of them did. We contacted UK Mobility in Herne Bay to ask if we could borrow scooters for those who did not have them and they kindly agreed - and so the Red Wheelies was reformed. We now have an eager core of riders who meet at least once a week to practice and have several performances booked for the summer. As the Wheelies are now all women we changed the music for the updated routine and now use Shania Twain's 'Feel Like A Woman'.

An item on The Red Wheelies was shown on BBC South East news when an open day for the centre was held. We were also filmed by kenttv.com one very wet morning and this is currently being shown on their website.

We hope the Red Wheelies are showing that there is life with MS and that we can enjoy ourselves. We have fun doing our own thing whilst raising both money for the Kent MS Therapy Centre and awareness of a condition that at times is misunderstood! None of this could have happened without the support and help of husbands, partners and friends too numerous to mention by name but they all have our heartfelt thanks for allowing our dreams and aspirations to come true.

For more information on the Red Wheelies, visit their website

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