Tag Archives: transportation

Gifts, Unwrapped

Posted on by John

And we have reached that time of year, the period for which I save to take time off work and get in some much-needed relaxation. So my vacation began on the 20th and will last till January 2nd as we aspirationally start 2025.

The first thing that happened, after our Friday holiday party, was our early dismissal at 3 instead of the usual quitting time of 4 PM. Those who work in manufacturing at my employer actually leave at 3:20, so figuring there might be a glut of people using our GoTriangle Access Paratransit service, I opted to summon a Lyft car. My driver spoke no English, which was immediately clear to me as I entered the vehicle and he didn’t respond to my initial statement and was using his GPS in Spanish. I was ok with this, except for the logistical challenge of ensuring I had arrived at the correct address. But never fear, I used basic high school spanish to convey my address’s exact numbers and we both had a laugh. It later occurred to me that I could have used my phone’s translation app. He was courteous though, waiting to see if I got inside and declining a cell phone call while driving.

I enjoyed that extra hour as a cold Friday unfolded and relief filled me at the time stretching ahead. My next task? Find a couple of good books to accompany my wife and me as we took our Christmas to Myrtle Beach to celebrate ten years since our relationship basically began. Well it’s actually part of our complicated story, one that involves an overlapping circle of friends who saw that we might connect given our similar temperaments. I’m sure I wrote about it in those early entries of 2015.

Anyhow, the two books I settled on after much deliberation were Playground, by Richard Powers, and Katharine, the Wright Sister, by Tracy Enerson. The former is sort of complex even to me, but it talks a lot about the ocean, colonization of so-called French Polynesia, and some sort of “floating city” the Americans want to build. It’s decent. The latter is an attempt to Chronicle the role the Wright sister played in getting her famous brothers off the ground. It flits between three first-person perspectives, Kate’s, Orville’s, and Wilbur’s. It’s riveting.

So after a quick jaunt to pass out and receive gifts from her folks on Saturday, we laid about on Sunday then headed for the beach on Monday. This time we opted to stay in a new (to us) property. I often find it interesting how so many of these hotels choose names meant to evoke faraway places: Tropical Seas, Coral Beach Resort, and our hotel, the Paradise Resort . We pulled in and arrived at the oceanfront king 1-bedroom suite as a cold, rainy wind blew in off the Atlantic. We were completely fine with this though, as it brought back fond memories of our trip down to Myrtle following our January 2018 wedding.

We took a couple of walks down there: a frigid one on Tuesday and a slightly warmer one on Christmas Day. She joked that this constitutes her anual “Christmas-day 5K” but she chopped it up so I could hang. Ha, well truth be told I ain’t no walker. In fact on Wednesday, my apple watch kept tapping my wrist to ask if I was doing a workout, probably to make sure nothing off was happening as my heart rate accelerated. I definitely need to exercise more. Maybe that’ll happen in 2025. Says about half the country.

So didn’t I earn the food we ate there? There was the Olive Garden, where I always get their spagheti and Italian sausage, alwayswith angel hair pasta. And then there wasPaula Deen’s Family Kitchen, a restaurant we found in Myrtle in 2018 and have visited every other time we’ve gone down there. Let’s just say you don’t go there to eat sallads. I had meatloaf, fried okra, and a mac and cheese that had been improved since I had last gone in May.

The only other noteworthy thing we did there was to exchange our own gifts. She got me a comfortable robe to drape over myself on these cold days that feels like a blanket. For my gift, I got her the Usher Confessions 20th Anniversary vinyl. “I know you didn’t spend $200 on this!” she said as she extracted it from the box. The joke was that we had been trying to get Confessions on vinyl from Amazon for some time but could not find it for less than that. I decided to just plug it in and see if I lucked up, knowing it was something she wanted and would enjoy. For the record (get it, record?) no I did not spend 200 bucks to acquire that. They’d only just released the 20th anniversary version.

So all in all we had and are having a good time. Hopefully I’ll be prepared for whatever the next year brings. At the least I hope it brings us all full hearts, full wallets, and whatever else we desire.

NIB 2024: Arrival

Posted on by John
Me standing near the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool

And so it begins… This year, as I’ve noted, I had been invited to attend the annual conference of the National Industries for the Blind in Arlington, Virginia, as LCI had awarded me Employee of the Year. Well one of them, another individual with whom I’d actually done some training as it happens, also received the designation. I was allowed to bring a guest, so my wife came with me.

The good news for us is we didn’t have to leave super early. Our American Airlines flight from Raleigh/Durham International Airport to Regan National Airport didn’t depart until Monday October 14 at 10:45 AM. Having prepaid for parking the night before, we loaded the car with bags packed to the gills for our weeklong trip and headed to the Economy lot. A shuttle arrived shortly after 8:00 AM and took us to the terminal, where we then had to hoof it with those heavy bags and I was sucking air by the time we reached the check-in counter.

“Would you two like to each check one of those bags for free?” The woman behind the counter asked. I have never been so relieved to hear anything in my life. My newly acquired briefcase (I had to look businesslike, time to shed the backpack) felt light by comparison as we continued onto the security checkpoint. This was my first time flying since… well, 2020, and one thing I’d forgotten was how annoying this process could be. Or maybe my patience has just shortened over the last four years. It was belts off, shoes off, Mantis braille display out, iPhone out, and oh I forgot to take off the Apple Watch. Oh, well. They did two inspections of my stuff, having a little trouble unsurprisingly working out exactly what the Mantis might in fact be. It looks like a computer keyboard, but… where’s the screen! They also had to dust my hands I guess to see if I might have some kind of residue on them.

Anyhow, once I put myself back together again we made our way to the coffee line as my wife got a free one with the parking reservation and I wanted some in preparation for a long day.

The rest of the wait was fairly uneventful, nearly 2 hours because hey it’s better to be early than late. I thought someone else from my employer would show up, but as we sat there in the terminal no one did.

“Now boarding American Airlines Flight 5545, with service to Washington Regan Airport.” We make our way to the line for preboarding, as usual, and my wife tells the gate agent I am blind as they initially say we are not eligible to board yet. We are on an extremely narrow-body Regional Jet, so have to just about turn sidwways to make our way to seats way back on row 20. I learned something new about airplane seat configuration, too: when I first saw our tickets, I noticed it said 20A and 20c.

“Wait, someone’s gonna be sitting in between us?” I thought. But no, there are no middle seats on this aircraft. So I assume any window and aisle seats will be A and C, and F and D respectively. The middles, if there, will be B and E. Interesting stuff, if you’re a nerd like I am.

We took off pretty much on time, shortly before 11 AM, and had barely completed our climb before we began descending. We mostly just sat there and made small talk, as you really didn’t even have time to get anything out. I suppose even with those security hassles, getting there that quickly still beats driving.

As it turns out, one other person from LCI was aboard but he couldn’t catch us before we got to our seats. He did get an Uber for us all and we piled in to make the short jaunt to the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, which is an airport hotel. It took them only a few minutes to get our room ready, so we ventured up in the ear-popping elevator to the 17th floor to deposit our luggage.

Flying, even a short distance, tends to make one hungry. So the next thing we did was locate the hotel’s featured restaurant, Cinnabar. I’m not really sure why it was called Cinnabar, as it is a full-service, sit-down restaurant. Their food was delicious but expensive. I had a chicken sandwich with cheese, mayo, and tomatoes. I guess I ate too many of the fries though, as my wife regularly chides me for doing, because I couldn’t finish that entire fairly large sandwich.

Not much else happened prior to dinner. We went and officially checked into the NIB Training Conference and Expo, collecting our lanyards and my Employee of the Year swag. We also had to attend an Employee of the Year orientation at 3, where we discovered how many of us there were (like 70 people). I was excited, but parts of me became overwhelmed quickly because of my hearing problems among such large crowds.

And speaking of crowds, prior to dinner we dropped in on the Welcome Reception. This was open to all conference attendees, and it sounded like one full-on roar as we huddled in the hotel’s basement-level vault. I stood in a corner and sipped on a Corona, feeling nice and reflecting on how I got here.

And finally, there was dinner. It was a simple affair, served buffet-style, with chicken, broccoli, and potatoes. There was supposed to be a Murder Mystery presented along with our meals, and I think it did happen later, but it took them a little while to get everything together. This is because it was to involve the audience in some kind of who-dun-it, where they acted out parts based on their role in the so-called murder. My wife and I didn’t stay to hear that part though, as the day and all its activities had caught up with us. We again rode that elevator into the sky, headed into our room, and called it a night.

More in Tuesday’s post, including a description of the room and some of its features.

All Aboard for a Much-needed Weekend

Posted on by John

Do you have that person in your life who always gets you, no matter what? The one who, because of similar experience and an upbringing that involved many of the same challenges is someone to whom you always look for advice or just to vent. That person for me is my cousin: technically a year younger than me but seeming older in many respects.

For our early life, really until mid-20s, we were never that far apart. Both of us are totally blind and have significant hearing loss due to a condition called Norrie Disease, so we have to work hard just to fit in to this world. We went to college together and lived in an apartment (albeit a slum) for six years.

Then life rolled on, and we were both fortunate to marry wonderful women. That has though necessitated changes in our relationship, as is common for all adults really. Now, we usually see each other maybe three or four times a year (with the time from January of 2020 till May of 2022 being the longest we didn’t get to spend time together due to Covid).

Anyhow, that’s slowly, finally, starting to change. This past weekend, as my work life ramps up and I feel increasingly nervous about my hearing challenges, I decided to see if we could just have a marathon Saturday watching sports and talking about nothing and everything as I like to do. My cousin and his wife agreed to allow my visit, so I purchased round-trip Amtrak tickets from Cary North Carolina to Charlotte.

I had to get the 5:43 Carolinian train, being fully aware of likely delays as it makes its way all the way down from New York City. And delays indeed happened, with emailed announcements throughout the day that the train was getting later and later.

I had Lyft take me over to the Cary station after a long day at work trying to hammer out the material for our upcoming Microsoft Excel workshop. The building was cold, and I found myself wishing I’d chosen to stay outside in the beautiful Fall-like weather to wait. I sat, snacking and reading, and tried to make myself take a break so all of my devices would make it onboard with a little life left.

The train finally arrived shortly before 7, and as I feared I was given an aisle seat so couldn’t plug in as easily. I always feel weird about asking my neighbor if I can stretch the cord over their legs.

The ride down was uneventful, and we arrived in Charlotte around 10. Knowing I would want to pick up food on the way to my cousin’s house, I decided to try downloading the Jack in the Box app to see if I could place an order in advance of getting there. I get Jack in the Box whenever I visit the Queen City, because we don’t have any of those in our area. And this would have worked, if I had already entered my payment method or at least set up Apple Pay. Trying to do that at the last minute just… didn’t work. Choosing the menu items I wanted though was accessible. Anyway, the driver just rolled me close enough to the Drive-through window to put in my order and I collected the food and headed to my cousin’s house. I do love this tech that makes it so much easier to independently move around and run errands.

Because it was already nearly Saturday by the time I finally arrived, we just stayed up a little while listening to the NFL game in Brazil and scarfing down the food. Then we retired for the night. I’d already understood that we would mostly be spending Saturday together anyway.

Knowing these folks wake by 8 AM, I was crawling out of bed just as the smell of bacon and eggs permeated the air. My cousin texted me, and I headed on down to sink my teeth into it. A small cup of orange juice and a big, piping hot mug of coffee completed the morning.

As far as sports go, our Alma mater UNC Charlotte (they call themselves Charlotte in the sports world) played, and were pretty much slapped around by, the North Carolina Tar Heels. Bowling Green University gave Penn State a scare, and number 5 Notre Dame were nipped by the Northern Illinois Huskies in an awesome upset. The prime-time game, North Carolina State University versus the University of Tennessee, was a bust as State were dragged all over Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium.

While the games played, we chatted about our roles as Assistive Technology Specialists. We also noted the recent availability of high-powered, AI-driven Phonak Hearing Aids (NOTE: those may or may not be the right ones). Anyhow, I’m considering trying to get those, as they’re supposed to be really good at filtering out background noise. I have a hearing test (Oh fun! Except not), scheduled for September 18th, at which point I will begin this conversation with my audiologist. Where the money will come from for such a thing? Well… we shall see. No doubt I need it though, to help my rising career.

After our day of fun, we got food from a restaurant called the Skrimp Shack. (They mean Shrimp, but ok haha). I had a giant chicken “sammich” that I could not eat entirely, and a big styrofoam to-go plate of fries (the small is really small, the large is really large, no in-between). The food was really good, though.

And that was the crux of a great Saturday and weekend. I’m writing this as we speed back toward Cary on Sunday morning from 6:45 till 9:45. A bit of amusement: as we departed Charlotte, the conductor said we would be arriving in Cary, our next station stop, in 25 minutes. Cary takes three hours to reach, as suggested by the time I just posted, and it is not our next stop coming out of Charlotte. He meant a town called Kannapolis. I can only assume that it was too early in the morning for him, as it is for me of no or very little sleep. Although for some strange reason I feel hopped up on energy right now. Let’s hope that lasts till my Carolina Panthers (NFL) play the New Orleans Saints at 1, and hopefully start this season off right. You can’t get much worse than our 2-15 record the previous season. I do hope more of these restorative weekends are in store, and that you are able to find a way to lift your spirits when needed as well.

Tech-No-Dependence

Posted on by John

Friday morning, 5 AM. I roll over as my arm continues to vibrate, alerting me to the fact that work is imminent and I must arise.

I do what I always do and reach over to grab the iPhone as I stumble toward the bathroom to get ready. A quick check of the headlines reveals that a tech outage of some kind (one of my friends pointed out that it was neither an internet or Microsoft outage, but its exact nature still sort of eludes me) has occurred. Travelers stuck at airports nationwide, and worldwide again.

“Glad I’m not flying anywhere” I think to myself.

I head downstairs and eat my meager breakfast. “Hmmm, GoTriangle Access (our area Paratransit) has usually called by now”. The clock had struck 5:25, and the service regularly sends an update via automated call and text message giving us an estimated time of arrival for our vehicle. I know it has been broken before though, so I don’t make much of a deal of it and continue with my morning preparations.

I sit on the porch, basking in the warm July morning and getting some reading in, but as we hit 6:20 AM I become concerned. I am usually picked up between 5:40 and 6:15, so I finally decide to call the agency’s Customer Service. The person who answers sounds far away, possible on her regular cell phone. “I’m sorry,” she says” but we’re impacted by the same outage that is shutting everyone else down. I will let you know if we get up and running, but till then I apologize.” Oh great, this means I will have to get an Uber all the way across town.

Summoning the ride actually goes seamlessly, with the driver pulling the back door even with me, me hopping in, hopping out at work, and walking right into the door. Fortunately they seem to have gotten it where the GPS leads them directly to the correct door, which hadn’t been happening initially.

Into my office with about fifteen minutes to spare, at the appointed time of 7:25 AM I boot up my computer and prepare to punch in. Only the site I need to visit is also a no-go. We have a few other administrative tasks that were to be completed today, but at least at that time they are all grounded. And I’m fairly sure few others came in either, given that paratransit isn’t running. So, I opt to head back out with my wife and the family, as they are off to visit the Greensboro Science Center anyway.

I love technology, heck my very job is completely centered around it. But what this craziness showed us are the potential perils that come with being too reliant on this stuff. The funny thing is, this wasn’t even the only such occurrence I had this week. On Tuesday, as I innocently plodded along through my presentation on using the JAWS screeen reader on the web, my company’s internet stopped working. Since I was online remotely, I didn’t notice the outage immediately and continued talking to… myself! Folk were emailing and texting me, trying to alert me to the error, but like the indistractable instructor I am I didn’t stop to check the messages. I finally started to wonder after the third time I tried asking for questions with absolutely no response, not even any background noise. It was a good presentation, trust me, the best you would have ever heard.. if you’d been online to hear it.

Then on Thursday, my iPhone inexplically wouldn’t open some apps, like Safari, our local news app, and X (Twitter) while allowing me to access Facebook, YouTube, and a couple others. I tried resetting and restarting the phone, but no dice. This also impacted my ability to work with the employee I was training, as we use a security app to log into the software they use for Customer Service. I had this problem all morning, but after lunch for whatever reason everything was working fine. Yeah, go figure. It’s been a crazy week.

And I’ll end this post with a complete aside and an exciting announcement: my employer LCI, has named me Employee of the Year. This means I get to attend the National Industries for the Blind’s annual conference in October, in Washington D.C. This will be a fascinating experience, and hopefully one of many. So yes, while I bemoan some of the challenges it can create, I as a blind person am very thankful for the existence and rapid advancement of technology.

LABOR DAY: The Grind Continues

Posted on by John

Happy Labor Day! As I like to say, this is the one holiday where you are supposed to relax and just take it off. Of course I say that knowing full well that not everyone gets to take it, as stores, restaurants, movie theaters and other businesses continue to operate. But hopefully many at least get off early or have a day of relatively light traffic.

I know that most of my posts of late have been jobs-related, but that aspect has been the most salient for me as uncertainty continues during this period.

Thankfully, I am still working at my job. I guess I didn’t write about it in my last such update, perhaps because it wasn’t happening yet, but now in addition to the afore-mentioned Employee Resource Group, I am tutoring an individual in JAWS for Windows, the computer program used by many blind and low vision people to hear on-screen text spoken aloud. I have sort of done this before, way back in 2016 when working with a blind individual to acquire basic email and internet skills, but as I’m not really a teacher it’s challenging for me. My “student” insists that he is learning something, and the Workforce Development Specialist at our employer keeps “kicking me in the butt” to keep me going. I know I need this, if I am ever going to really advance. I of course also need to get some real training and a certification in this area myself to really take it to the next level, which is what I think she very much has in mind.

Even as I work to advance myself in this area, I am exploring other possibilities which I will go more into should anything come of them. But let’s just say that I’ve learned a thing or two about persistence as I worked to file applications on sites that are, to greater and lesser extent, accessible. One of the reasons I’m being forced to rethink what I am doing and where is changing transportation needs. My wife had been taking me to and from work faithfully for the entire time I’ve been back during the pandemic. But her job has now changed. This means she definitely can’t take me home everyday, and fortunately the bus line I need to bring me back to the Cary bus depot is still available. It also means that taking me in the morning is tougher, as our schedules don’t exactly line up. Sadly, that morning bus no longer runs, and the door-to-door service I use says they do not have available drivers at the time I’d need, arriving by 7 A.M. Like everywhere else, they’re suffering from driver and other staffing shortages. So it’s a hard problem for me to solve without spending a truckload of cash each day. I do not yet know what the answer is.

On the whole though, life is trending upward in exciting ways. I’m enjoying what’s left of this summer and my 42nd year of life (I’m turning 42 next Monday but that means I will have completed 42 years). I’m happy and finally healthier, as I worked out that the biggest issue behind my heart rate acceleration was that I wasn’t consuming enough water. Since I’ve corrected that, blessed relief and much better sleep have occurred. Small changes, but ones that required me to listen fully to my body. I hope all is well in your corner too, and will be back with more soon.

50 Days of Solitude: When and How To Return To Work

Posted on by John

And it goes on and on and on and…

Almost eight weeks of mostly poking around the crib, trying to stay awake more than I sleep, and wondering what it all means. As states, including my own, tentatively begin reopening, I know that it is time for me to start contemplating what the “outside” is going to look like. One thing is for sure, it will not be anywhere near what it was for the foreseeable future.

I got a little taste of what to expect this past Saturday. My in-laws, needing supplies not readily available in their rural town and tired of being boxed in, decided to make their way up to oversupplied Cary to collect the gathered items. We paid them a short, appropriately socially-distanced and masked visit, just to say hello and talk to others for a change. Our hands grazed as we met, and I felt my own air pushed back into my face.

Ugh wearing that mask is not going to be comfortable, that much I know. Two good things about it though, I guess: A. You sure know how your own breath smells, and B. Others (hopefully) aren’t able to smell it. My wife did find some that are, well better than many, as they have a slightly cupped middle that gives you at least a little breathing room. I will of course wear them, as I understand that they are more for those who encounter me than for myself, but marbles. The eight-hour workday and transit to and for will be very long.

Speaking of transit, I am now trying to sack the admittedly somewhat involved system I had of taking GoCary’s Door-To-Door vehicle to the Cary train station and boarding the bus in favor of having the former take me all the way in. There are two main reasons why I hadn’t done this a long time ago. The first and most pressing is money: it costs just $2.50 to have them drive me to the station, but $8 to go all the way in. I think though that they have some kind of program that provides low-income individuals with a discount, so I will try and sign up for that and see what happens.

The second reason is more about my own needs I guess? I will feel more isolated, having little to no interaction with the wider community. I had gotten to know the five people I saw on a regular basis pretty well, and always enjoyed talking to them and whomever else I came across while waiting about any and everything. But with all these measures being put into place for who knows how long, I’m sure that such spontaneous encounters will not occur for a long time, and I might find it difficult to get assistance from others who wish to stay socially distanced. (I prefer to think of it more as physically distanced, as the last thing I need is to not socialize with folks in some way).

RELATED: The Cary Characters

I am hesitant about returning to work and will wait for them to call me back in while keeping a metaphorical eye (I’m blind after all) on the Covid numbers in North Carolina. I do hope things can get going soon, but I hope we don’t end up doing things too soon. We shall see.

Cha-cha-changes

Posted on by John

Welcome to the first official post of 2015! Yeah I know, some of the Louisiana entries were made during 2015, but they were referring to an event that happened way back in ancient times of the year previous. So, here ya go.

Man, has this year gotten off to a rockin’ start! It is setting up to challenge me in ways I’ve never really been challenged, but that will help me get closer to where I want to be pretty quickly. These changes are happening on both a professional and personal level.

First, excitedly, I have been named President of the Norrie Disease Association. This was necessitated by our previous president having to step down due to some unfortunate circumstances that have made it difficult for him to continue in that role. While the reasons make me sad, I am still appreciative of having this opportunity and hope I can make the most of it. I got a strong vote of confidence from my fellow board members, though I honestly am not entirely certain why. Me? One who is sometimes too shy to make a simple phone call? Who definitely has a ways to go before he is as assertive as he would like to be? But, I hope I have made and am making progress in this area, and it will help to have such knowledgeable people to assist me as I do so. We’ll see if this August’s conference goes off fairly well.

RELATED: Five Years of the NDA

Second, this city and the Triangle Transit system have decided to pull a bit of a switcheroo on me. They’ve altered some of the routes that I take, especially that which I use to get home from work. I hadn’t known this initially, I suppose because I wasn’t smart enough to check the service changes page they posted shortly after the year began. This meant I got stuck at Durham Station downtown for 30 minutes, in the cold wind! I have since been trying to learn how to get from my old bus to the new one, and a cool thing is that BlindSquare GPS, an app on my iPhone, can actually tell me where the buses are within the station. Well it probably has some set database that doesn’t change often, as some of the numbers are transposed a bit. For example, the 700 now stops where the 400 used to, so it still calls that the 400. But as long as I know this, I can easily still use it to track my location. Hopefully I will know it by rote soon enough.

The final change I will talk about at this point is in my reading habits. Check out my 2014 Booklist, which you should find in the “Pages” section of this site. There, I note that I consumed 34 titles last year, a record for me. Many of these titles were by so-called “indie” authors, as I’ve befriended them on Twitter and wanted then to check out their works. As local writer Monica Byrne noted in an article that discussed her book, 2014 was actually the year of the indie author in many respects. One of its best reads, The Martian, had been put out by an unknown guy named Andy Weir. The thing I most liked about this book is that, while he clearly knows his stuff regarding what the planet is like, how one might experience a mission there, etc.; he does a good job of making things understandable to those of us who maybe don’t have such advanced knowledge.

I also took in more nonfiction than I ever have before. I’m thus starting off this year in the same way, currently reading a very popular title called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks about a black woman who’s cancer cells were scooped in the 50s, implanted in a dish, and have gone on to aid in lots of research, medications, and the like. It’s an interesting read.

I have it as a goal this year to reach fifty (5-0!) books. That’s a lot for me, as I normally don’t have a whole lot of time to sit and read. I’m doing them two at a time though, and already about a third of the way through both books three and four.

I have them all in my iPhone these days, using the Audible, BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) mobile, iBooks, and Kindle Apps. All of these apps have their pros and cons, but as far as functionality goes I think Audible tops the list. In Kindle, if I happen to get a notification it shoots me to the top of the page I was currently reading. In iBooks, I am slowed by having to wait for the page-changing announcement to disappear, though I suppose I do like this announcement since I can keep track of my progress. And in BARD, the audio books work fine, but I wish the Braille books would be automatically marked when you stop. If I forget to set a mark before closing the app, it’ll jump back to the beginning of the book and I must then find my place again. Depending on how far I’ve read in, this can take a while!

Anyway, that’s a quick scan of 2015 as it has unfolded thus far. It looks to be an entertaining year, full of unexpected occurrences. I just hope most of those are favorable for me and for us all. More soon.

Christmas Vacation 2: The Party

Posted on by John

Because I am completely unimaginative, I will use the same subject line I did at this time last year. As I had then, this year I also venture to Lumberton NC to attend the now-Annual Christmas party this past Saturday.

First, the departure. I am excited to learn that Megabus has now made available a route straight from Durham to Fayetteville. This means that, unlike last year when I had to get a neighbor to drive me to Raleigh where I connected with Greyhound, I am able to launch straight from home.

I almost don’t even manage to get out of here in the first place, though. Uber, I still love you as a service, but I have to wonder about the drivers you’ve hired of late. I know that the Megabus is scheduled to leave at 11:25, and I would have to stand in the near-freezing rain to wait, so I admittedly opt to push it about as close as I can and leave at 11. The Uber driver I get though is unable to understand English or, I gather, follow the GPS. I try in vain a couple of times to explain the somewhat complex instructions for locating my apartment and finally hang up. Pondering what to do and prepared to call Durham’s Best Taxi, another taxi happens to pull up in front of me and ask if I need a ride. I’ve seen this guy before as he regularly cruises the neighborhood, and so I don’t hesitate to jump in and hope I still have time to get to that Megabus stop. And because I was unable to properly cancel my Uber, they still billed me $4, I guess their base fare.

Oh man is it cold at this stop! The wind is cutting, and the rain isn’t absolutely pouring but it’s certainly hard enough to make even checking my iPhone impractical. A couple of other families stand nearby, kids milling around and probably trying to keep themselves warm as well. The vehicle mercifully arrives, and a woman lets me stand with her so that I will know when we can board.

I guess the vehicles can be designed differently, as this one has virtually no seat pitch. I sit with my knees almost under my chin, well ok maybe not quite that drastic but close, and try to figure out a way to balance my Braille display on my lap so I can read.

“Excuse me, sir” I hear a voice ask: “where are you getting off?”

I tell her, and discover that she is an older woman from Connecticut who is coming to visit her mom for a month. She has some kind of physical issue who’s origins she is not even certain of, and thus is unable to walk easily.

“I usually use an electric wheelchair,” she tells me: “but they’ve taken it and put it somewhere else. Having to use my walker now, which kind of hurts me.”

We talk about potential careers, and she says she once worked in customer service, but wants now to use her cooking abilities to start a food truck. MMM!

She has offered to help me sort things in Fayetteville in the event that I arrive and my pick-up ride isn’t there, but as it turns out, my ride is indeed waiting. She, as well as the woman on the bus, expresses some concern about the area of town in which the bus disembarks, noting that it’s “real ghetto”. I am just relieved to not have to wait in the cold again.

We speed toward Lumberton as I make conversation with the driver and a front-seat passenger who is also a friend. Both of us blind folks opt to remain in the car during the quick grocery stop, sitting for only about 7 minutes while some additional supplies are acquired.

The party is much the same as it had been the year before and the one before that. I meet my cousin and his wife there, as well as another couple from smalltown NC not far away from Charlotte, who had also been there the previous two years. But, a friend from my university days has made an appearance for the first time in a while. And the most exciting find: my other long-lost “cousin” also shows up with his very kind girlfriend, who impresses us all by her willingness to just jump right in and make herself at home among this disparate, sometimes crazy group.

I am given two tins of cookies, as well as a gift that I still have wrapped because I want something to tear into on Christmas. Just a little of that childhood sentimentality, for old time’s sakes.

The evening’s highlight is the gift exchange. I brought an umbrella, easy to tell what it is even though wrapped, but hey a useful device! Especially considering that we’ve turned into Seattle lately. I don’t know who takes it, but it is plucked near last. I initially get a $25 Starbucks gift card (OO, nice!) but am not surprised in the least when someone opts to “steal” it. On my next draw, I got some sort of ringholder. Funny.

We also consume delicious nachos with cheese and meat, pasta sallad, and the requisite sausage ball that I have every time I go to this particular residence. We laugh as the NFL’s Washington Redskins amazingly knock off the Philadelphia Eagles, ending the Eagles’ hopes of making the playoffs.

After more chattering and ingestion of punch mixed with OJ, lemonade, Southern Comfort, and perhaps something else, I slunk off to bed.

And that’s pretty much the crux of the happenings at this year’s party. Most everyone had already departed long before I do, but I stay with my friend and watch our Carolina Panthers keep their playoff chances, which should by rights have been long gone, alive with a win over the Cleveland Browns 17-13. We have to defeat the Atlanta Falcons this Sunday starting at 4:25 in order to win the woeful NFC South, and extend our season with the worst record in NFL history of any team that has managed to do so.

I guess I’ll check in on that one while down in Louisiana, as I will be from this Friday till next Tuesday. Those will of course be my next series of posts. I’m guessing more will happen than I can even contain in two entries. We shall see, though. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, and happy holidays.

EDIT: Oh, and I also don’t have to await a ride when I arrive on the Megabus in Durham, as the individual I’ve designated as my favorite cabbie happens to be there. I guess she positions herself near arriving transit vehicles like that and Amtrak to see if she can get a fare. Makes me happy, again.

#TransitThursday : On Uplifting Passengers and Drivers

Posted on by John

This post inspired by the most recent on GoTriangle’s blog entitled A Shout out to Operator George Walker, in which we were asked to recount our good experiences aboard Triangle Transit buses.

It never takes long for a routine to develop. Both in coming to and leaving work, I have encountered individuals who do surprisingly small things that make a big difference in the day’s direction. I suppose they are aware of the effect they have, but it never hurts to acknowledge in a formal way.

At 6 AM, I arrive at the Durham Station transportation center, where I await the usually timely 700 bus. This will take me to the Regional Transportation Center, (RTC), which is right across the lot from my employer. Usually I have my iPhone in hand, headset on, and some interesting programming to try and keep myself awake.

I think maybe a month and a half ago, I heard something unique as we approached the dropoff point. The driver, I guess an older woman but don’t know for sure, began talking to us on the PA. Ever since, she usually offers some word of encouragement, and makes a point of saying hi and bye to each passenger as we board and disembark.

She also has a pretty good singing voice. I admit I got a bit nervous when she began singing “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands” while navigating the winding roads near RTC. Fortunately though, she left the “clap”ping to us. We were all highly amused though, stomping and cheering by the time we arrived. The smile I had on my face after that, and after so many of her fun interventions, caused me to easily sail through at least the first half of the day before my head began to bob on a stick. I know she probably feels pretty tired herself, and so think it’s great that she takes the time to inject that little bit of life into her regular passengers.

The other person from whom I regularly draw energy hops on to ride in the afternoons. I’ve searched this blog high and low, and am surprised to discover that I hadn’t yet written about her, at least not in a way that I can think to find. I guess I’ve just done so in other circles.

Our initial contact happened, because she was concerned that I might find it difficult to get home safely through a forecast storm, maybe in mid April. I ensured her that I would be fine, and unwittingly, a friendship was born.

We only get two minutes, if traffic causes us to slow up enough, so the getting-to-know-you has occurred in fits and starts. She is an older, wiser, person with whom I talk a lot about my employment goals. Doing so leaves me feeling more positive, and also helps me think things through.

I enjoy watching the camaraderie she has with her colleagues, as they all band together to help each other out when needed. She has also helped me run errands on occasion, and would have allowed me to join their group for a fun night out in Durham if I’d not been too slow on the uptake with regards to checking messages. I would say that if there’s anything I most enjoy about public transit, it would be this kind of community-building.

So thank you drivers and passengers for helping to add some spice to what would in many cases be drab workdays. As always, I hope that I give at least half as good as I get.

#WhiteCaneDay : A Big Piece of Freedom

Posted on by John

Four cylindrical segments of aluminum, fitted together around a double elastic string. She, (because I want her to be a she), stands approximately 54 inches tall and comes to just below the second button on my comfortable sweater. She is the friend who is all good with me, as long as she doesn’t SNAP!

My beautiful, foldable, white cane. I often enjoy the stunned reaction I get when on public transit and I slide the holding string away and pop it open with a flourish.

“Wow, that stick is cool!

As an aside, I don’t have a great understanding of color, not surprisingly, so maybe you can explain why white is better than, say, red? Does red look too much like an emergency, and thus perhaps serve as a grater distraction rather than a signpost to just be aware? I’m curious.

In any event, today marks the 50th anniversary of National White Cane Safety Day, hashtagged on social media as #WhiteCaneDay. The National Federation of the Blind has published this article detailing the history and significance of this particular day. I immediately notice that it was born at the same time that equal civil rights for people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds were also being established. I doubt that this is entirely coincidental.

RELATED: Another great #WhiteCaneDay post: Don’t Fear The Cane

While I now consider her my friend, this “stick” and I were not always on such chummy terms. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of them being that my first metallic staff was a straight thing with curved top, like a candy cane. As a kid, I hated being further ostracized by this thing that I would have to slide under three chairs so as not to trip other children and teachers as they made their way around the class.

I knew the older blind kids had a folding cane, and that it would be a privilege afforded me if I got to a high enough level of Orientation and Mobility (O&M) to move around well and demonstrated a willingness to take care of the thing. Unfortunately, I did not always exercise sound judgement once I acquired that jointed object. For it also made a concealable weapon, ready to be whipped out as soon as I felt I was being insulted. Funny how quickly those halls cleared when it made that fantastic sound, like someone engaging in a sword fight. Get out of my way!

Into my high school and eventually college years, where I finally learned that she needed to stay on the ground, rising only high enough to make the taps that give me critical feedback about my environment. Are we nearing a curb? How far has the bus stopped from the sidewalk onto which I must step. And if I and my companion(s) in my blindness-oriented place of employment use proper skills, our extendable foldable friends will meet in the middle, instead of our heads! This is clearly a more desirable outcome.

As I practice these skills while out and about, I often wonder what some thoughts are that go through sighted people’s heads.

“No, ding dong, it’s not time to cross yet. You’re lucky I see you!”

RELATED: Travel By Leg: on my mobility abilities

“Aww, look at that amazing blind person who has dared to venture beyond his apartment and into the mean streets of town. I wonder where his attendant is?”

“Wait, is she really blind? She’s wearing glasses! Why the cane.

On this last point I’ll let a person with low vision explain more, but basically those who can see to some degree sometimes opt to carry canes in order to inform Joe or Jane Public that they might act in ways more consistent with individuals who are blind, due to an inability to take in a fuller picture of the environment. This can even include challenges in facial recognition, difficulties noticing where sidewalk turns to street, etc.

So if you see this person or any other using a cane, don’t make snap judgements regarding their visual acuity. Probably the best thing to do is clarity is really needed is to just ask, again as is always the case. And for my sake and all of those like me who wish to traverse our nation and world’s streets safely and in one piece, please use caution when operating a vehicle. Eyes on the road and your surroundings! Thank you.

I am grateful for those who have come before and worked hard and tirelessly to clear te way ahead for me. As the above-linked NFB article points out, as recently as 1930 most blind individuals didn’t dare venture beyond their home bounds alone. Now with a combination of fancy-shmancy technology and that good ol’ white cane, we range about as far and wide as we can dream. Here’s to 50 more years of safe, fun, informative, and ultimately life-affirming travel.