Ask HN: What are some cool things you've done?

I spent about 14 years designing and building vans that C4-C5 quadriplegics could drive. We shipped them all over the world while I did that. Our clients included many war veterans as well as Jill Kinmont (champion ski racer) and Teddy Pendergrass (musician).

While I was working on those it was the only vehicle in the world a quad could drive.

To put it into perspective, most of them came to us knowing they could not pick up a sandwich and take a bite by themselves, and we were telling them they could open the doors, operate the lift, get inside and securely seated next to the controls, and drive a big Ford Van safely away wherever they wanted to go all by themselves.

And they all did, and that was always cool to see.

It's much more common now to see someone in a wheelchair driving a car but it's still not common to see a quad driving. Shortly after I stopped working with the company that made those vans they went out of business.

They'd gotten bought out by an "investment firm" who didn't value the small crew that had been building them since the company had started and we all decided to stop building them.

I'd mostly subcontracted work from them and just went back to building custom cars full time and the rest of the crew just stopped taking orders from the government and insurance agencies that paid for the vans. They finished up what was on the line and did some maintenance work for clients that had them while the new "CEO" sat upstairs smoking cigars in his office for about 4-5 months without ever realizing the crew was shutting the business down.

By the time he realized it the company didn't have any money in the bank, the inventory on the shelves was gone, there were no vans in the eight slots we had set up to build them, and he owed the crew a month's salary. They all agreed to take the tools and machines and whatever else was owned by the company as compensation and started their own business, all as equal partners.

That was pretty cool too.