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.
No comments:
Post a Comment