South Bay

SEAT OF THE PANTS: There was a time when Rob Adair was one of the highlights of a trip to Santa Catalina Island.

“At the end of the day every summer, people would line up around Avalon to watch me make my dive off of the big white steamship that used to drop anchor there,” Adair said. “I would dive 100 feet from the top of the ship into the water. People loved it.”

But Adair’s diving days were cut short in the mid-1970s when a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed. For 20 years, he has been in a wheelchair. One thing he learned is that wheelchairs are uncomfortable.

So Adair took his frustration with the lack of comfortable seats and developed a technology to make sitting for long periods of time more bearable. Adair took that technology, which uses a foam base that conforms to any individual, and created the Catalina Chair Co., which boasts “the world’s most comfortable office chair.”

“Take it from a guy who knows,” said Adair, whose chairs are now available at office furniture supply stores. “This is one comfortable chair.”