Chris has been testing the durability of the revolutionary below-the-knee socket the Infinite TT while at sea. His feedback has been the catalyst of many Infinite TT features that has helped him set sail to places we can only dream of. Read his journey below.
I met the folks at LIM five months ago in San Francisco. A photo of me riding my bike to a sailboat race found its way to the office and they asked me to come in and chat. I had been in conventional sockets for the past 11 years and they always worked well, but I always wanted a little bit more from the fit. Since the first day I entered LIM I was made to feel like family, and since then I have been involved with testing and refining the new TT socket.
I work as a sailing instructor most of the time in the Bay Area. I put a lot of stress on my legs, so we thought I could provide some valuable feedback about how the socket handles the extreme conditions on the bay, on a bike and elsewhere. A month of testing close to home brought lots of observations and the real test was yet to come.
Over the last 4 months, I have been living aboard a sailboat, touring the east coast. My job involves bringing the boat to various sailing associations and programs to show off the history of the sport and engaging youth sailors in the wider context of sailing. I am on my feet a lot and the environment is more than a little extreme for a prosthesis. I have put over 8000 salty nautical miles on my Infinite TT and it is more than holding up; it’s performing better than any conventional socket I’ve used before.
With careful help from LIM, we’ve seen how the socket performs and reacts to stress and the result is a rigorously tested product that is comfortable, strong and durable. Between daily fluctuations in volume, changes in activity level, even crossing the threshold between land and sea, my socket holds up and has taken me places in comfort and style.
You can follow Chris’s progress on his blog
