The Port of Columbus is Fully Accessible, part 2 of 5: From Airport to Hotel

From Airport to Hotel

The Port of Columbus is Fully Accessible • The Perplexity of Hotel Shuttles • Lifting • Dan, Al & Muhammad • The Legend of Permission from the Port

Without much difficulty we came upon an information desk and asked where we might find a wheelchair van to take us to the hotel. Goodness, the  information lady had absolutely no idea. Nor whom to ask. The information desk is for the purpose of handing out brochures. If it’s not on a brochure, it’s not information. The map of restaurants in Columbus, that's information. The flyer about golfing, that’s information. But how to get your wheelchair to the city of Columbus in order to dine or to golf, that’s not information.

But just as it all looked bleak, we were pleased to come upon a very nice woman holding a sign that read, “Welcome Episcopal General Convention!” We knew that quite a number of delegates, exhibitors and visitors to the convention were of limited mobility. So surely the representative of the Convention would know how to get people to it, and so she did.

“The Port of Columbus is fully accessible!” she said happily.

“Really?” Pamela asked, skeptical.

“Oh yes, every van has a wheelchair lift!”

And our welcomer wasn’t even wrong. Of course, she wasn’t anywhere near right, either. After a bit of confusing oversignage that showed us you can get there both ways, but the one you take is always the least convenient, we found the shuttle area. On our right, shuttles with hotel names. On our left, plain white shuttles. Across the street, a little island with a waiting area, a bus stop, a hotel phone kiosk, and a little house for the Port of Columbus Transit guy. Then beyond another street, taxi stands, and a door to get back into the airport.

Let us digress for a moment to meditate upon being lifted. Feel free to mentally hum some happy hymns. Being lifted is so metaphorical for people. We lift babies. We remember the joy at being lifted when we were children. We may find uplift in religion, and our spirits are lifted. If it’s something that hasn’t happened to you much since you hit adulthood, it sounds pretty fun, and pretty easy.

But say you’re all grown up. Imagine that it is no longer a metaphor, but that everybody you talk to keeps suggesting that you agree to have some stranger, or a group of strangers put their hands all over you and haul your body around. And worse, what if the stranger is overestimating his or —nevermind, sorry, it’s nearly always testosterone-influenced— ability to lift weight? What if they drop you or hurt you? What if they fumble your incredibly heavy, incredibly expensive chair? What if they damage it? What if this suggestion pops up every single time you need to go somewhere? Being lugged around as an adult is uncomfortable, tiresome, awkward and dangerous. So everybody with two working legs: unless there is fire, flood or earthquake, think of another idea, or shut up.

Brainteaser: there are eight vans. Four are white, and four have hotel logos on them. Your hotel is the Crowne Plaza, which is near the convention center. None of the vans have the Crowne Plaza logo on them. All eight vans randomly come and go at approximately ten minute intervals. The vans with logos will not take you to your hotel, but they will take you to a hotel near your hotel. They are not wheelchair vans, but the drivers are more than willing to carry you. All the white vans are wheelchair vans, but they will not take you to the City of Columbus. They will take you to your car parked in the airport parking lot. The city bus has a wheelchair lift, but does not have a map. Which stop will you need to get to the Convention center? The driver does not know, but it will take at least an hour, and require a transfer. He is not certain of the stop for the transfer, either, and there is no route map. He does helpfully hand you a list of stop names so that you can familiarize yourself with a list of stops whose locations you cannot possibly imagine, so that’s nice.

Along came Dan and Al. They are from Rhode Island, and were already friends of Pamela. First we chatted generally, then about transport, then specifically, how on earth we were going to get to the city. We began working the phones to Crowne Plaza. No, the Crowne Plaza does not have a van. Yes, the Crowne Plaza is fully accessible, once you’re there. No, the Crowne Plaza has absolutely no idea how a woman in a wheelchair actually gets there, perhaps we should have a taxi driver carry her? We’d rather not, so the hotel guy offers to call around and get back to us, and we never hear from him again. Dan and Al found a shuttle to their hotel, and we bid them adieu, just as we were about to make a new friend.

The Port Authority Transit of Columbus has a little house on an island, which sounds both exotic and tropical, but it’s a booth on a traffic island. But the man staffing it that day was a kindly, curious, and smart guy named Muhammad. First, he explained that the Port of Columbus is actually fully accessible. That is to say, the Port of Columbus only owns the white vans that take you to the parking lot to your car, and the city busses. And all of those have wheelchair lifts. The Port of Columbus does not own the hotel vans, or the taxis. So the Port of Columbus is fully accessible if you pretend that the things that aren’t accessible don’t exist, and you pretend that the things that are accessible will actually help. When he realized where this left a newly arrived and tired traveller in the soup, and found out that over the next two days many more would arrive, Muhammad snapped into action. He contacted everybody, and in two hours, Muhammad achieved the impossible. He found a livery service wheelchair van. It was the only livery service wheelchair van in Columbus. And it really was impossible, because it turned out that the company had been trying for months to get a license to pick people up at the airport, but was repeatedly denied, because it was neither a taxi nor a shuttle. Most of the two hours was Muhammad getting special permission from the Port of Columbus to allow our one pickup.

The Port of Columbus is Fully Accessible, part 1 of 5: Getting There

Disclaimer: this story occurred in 2006, when I accompanied a woman from my church to the Episcopal Convention in Columbus Ohio, where she was a delegate. Our heroine uses a wheelchair, hearing aids, and is missing an arm. I've changed a couple names for privacy reasons. I hope things have changed for the better in the intervening years. The bar was certainly low enough.

Peter Eisenman architect of Greater Columbus Convention Center: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Eisenman “It was frequently repeated that the Wexner's colliding planes tended to make its users disoriented to the point of physical nausea; in 1997 researcher Michael Pollan tracked the source of this rumor back to Eisenman himself. In the words of Andrew Ballantyne, ‘By some scale of values he was actually enhancing the reputation of his building by letting it be known that it was hostile to humanity.’”

Getting There

Our Heroes Embark • Security and Mobility • Let’s Go Riding in a Plane • Ancient History Our Heroes Disembark

Saturday, June 10, began for me like most other days, except about three hours too soon. Packed, showered, and moderately alert, I bade goodbye to my family and arrived at Pamela’s around six am. By seven-thirty or so, we were on the road to the airport with our friend, Scott.

I hadn’t flown since before 9/11, so I was nervous about what security would entail, and I looked up a lot of tips online. Either I got lucky, or my research paid off, because I sashayed through. However, Pamela, in her wheelchair, had to undergo a complete and infuriatingly thorough scan. Perhaps it is the same spirit that causes the TSA to feel that infants and extremely elderly nuns so closely fit the prevailing profile of a terrorist. They think, "aha, here is a person who is faking her inability to walk, and hates our freedom here in America." Still, if they’d known we were going to the Episcopal General Convention, would they have let us through at all?

Those of limited mobility get seated in airplanes first (as well as people accompanying them, score!). They also find themselves at the end of a boarding ramp to discover that the plane is a shuttle run by Chautauqua which looks for all the world like a pop-‘n-fresh biscuit tube, and contains about as many seats. Maybe they did know we were going to a church convention, because it is at this point that the airline personnel suggested that Pamela rise and walk.

Well worth a shot, however, because the alternative is just as loopy. To get a person from a wheelchair into an airplane is a difficult and never-practiced maneuver. First, you must debate for a bit on the philosophical nature of the phrase, “I cannot walk. I am paraplegic.” Because the dissenting view from the staff is that she may well be a person who simply feels entitled. The thought process on the dissent is as follows: she’s got legs. I mean, you can see two of them right there, so she must be able to use them. Once it’s grudgingly settled that a person may possess legs that do not work, the next point to debate is that your passenger could simply be carried. Surely that would work. Heck, it might even be fun—who doesn’t like a piggyback ride, or that rush of being hoisted by your teammates? If no one volunteers, they must send a minion away for the mysterious “aisle chair,” and hope someone has an idea which janitor closet in the airport they keep it in.

An aisle chair turns out to be an amusing little foldy toy about 12 inches narrower than a standard adult human, made largely out of bent electrical conduit, a couple of office-chair rolly wheels and inadequate velcro. With a bit of backwards driving, a hairpin turn and a caught foot that the staff, still struggling with the concept of paralysis, couldn’t believe she didn’t feel, our passenger is finally seated.

We left Hartford in dreary rain, passed over a quarter of the United States having perfectly lovely weather, and landed, two hours later in a Columbus of dreary rain. Because I feel that the pilot should either land or crash with no help from me, I was resolutely not looking out the window. So I found out about the next bit of fun when Pamela said, “Oh no.”

Traveling in a wheelchair is like a do-it-yourself version of The Great Race. Open your instructions, contestants. You’ll find that the Columbus Airport don’t use no new-fangled jetbridge for no stinking model-airplane-sized shuttle. Instead, as we traveled an hour backward on the clock, we traveled substantially backward in time because a staircase was wheeled to the plane. The kind the Beatles are waving from. Or Nixon in his tight suit flashing his V fingers. Or Jackie O smiling in her cute pink hat.

Columbus Airport is the Land That time Forgot, because here we are, and there, in the rain, is the only way to get off the plane. Limited mobility people leave last (un-score). And The Great Race begins again, only in this version, it’s not about getting there first, it’s about getting there at all. The staircase is replaced by giant modified forklift. Again with the toy rolly chair, and practice has not made anybody more perfect. Now onto the wet forklift, take a little wet ride, go down to the wet ground, transfer to the wet real wheelchair, and have a short discussion about battery connection. Have I mentioned that it’s pouring rain? With a little luck and much banging of umbrellas, Pamela is sitting in a wheelchair that has not shorted out, and off we go.