Sep
30
2008
10:34 am. I always advise people to check things in advance and do their research, but I’m very bad at taking my own advice. Instead of looking up which tram lines have the low-floor vehicles and when those vehicles run, I just came out to the stop. The two trams that have passed have both been high-floor vehicles, with steps up into them. I did see a low-floor one, going in the opposite direction. It looks like the new ones have the same design as the Dutch and German ones: the floor is lower so it’s easier to get on, but not 100% accessible. At this stop, there’s about a 5-inch gap between the road and the floor of the tram.
It’s now too late for me to wait for another tram and hope it’s the right type for me to get on, and I don’t feel like being lifted onto a high-floor one, so I’m getting a taxi. I’ll investigate tram accessibility tomorrow.
10:39 am. That was quick! The taxi’s here already.
Continue Reading »
Sep
30
2008
I had planned on sleeping late this morning, but the upstairs neighbors are having a new floor put in, so it was a 7:30 am hammer-and-nail wake-up call followed at 8-ish by a buzzing floor polisher. Bear-with-a-sore-head awake, I decided to go for a walk instead of stubbornly trying to sleep with a pillow over my ears.
It’s a chilly autumn morning here, around 39°F (4°C). The neighborhood is a quiet one, with two parks within five minutes of the flat. I went around the block once, then over to the larger park which is beside the Wroclaw University of Technology Architecture Faculty building. There’s been a lot of work done on the city, but it hasn’t made it out here yet, so the sidewalks are still very uneven, and the pathway to the park is heavily potholed. It was still a pleasant walk though: the park was very lovely with the leaves starting to turn gold and russet and amber against the backdrop of the still rich green summer growth.
Stanislaw Tolpa Park in Wroclaw. Left: a view of the fountain. Right: The Architecture Faculty building
I’m off into the city center now to meet Christian. I noticed on the way in from the airport that there are more and more low-floor trams in Wroclaw, so I’m going to try my luck. When I lived here, I couldn’t use the trams because of the steps up into them: hopefully I don’t take the wrong one and end up getting lost!
Sep
29
2008
I had a lazy afternoon with the cats, and then it turned into a lazy evening. Marcin and I had dinner at home and watched Battlestar Galactica. The closest thing I did to work was writing a review of Box Office Poison Kolor Karnival for Retro Review, and the most exciting moment was watching the pups play fight. So, as you can see, I do enjoy downtime sometimes. I’ll get back to doing things that I can tell you all about tomorrow, promise. Good night all!
Sep
29
2008
9:55 am. We’ve reached our crusing altitude, the fasten seat belt sign has been switched off, and the man beside me keeps sucking his teeth. And here’s me without my noise-reduction headphones.
Just as we were leaving the terminal, the five missing passengers for the Turin flight showed up. It was the businessmen who were getting their seats changed when I was in line. They thought it was very funny and said they couldn’t hear the announcement in the VIP lounge, but that it didn’t matter because the plane wasn’t due to take off for 10 minutes.
The aisle on this tiny plane is so narrow that the aisle chair scraped the sides of the seats all the way down to row 10. I think I learned a new word in Turkish when the assistance crew member trapped his hand between the aisle chair and the seat.
They didn’t do a security demonstration on this flight. Now how will I know how to unbuckle my safety belt?
And more importantly, why am I in such a snarky mood this morning?
Continue Reading »
Sep
29
2008
6:11 am. Time to get up. If my body even thinks about protesting at the earliness of the hour, I’ll remind it that before Lufthansa opened the Dusseldorf-Wroclaw connection, I had to get up at 3:15 to catch a flight out of Dortmund when I wanted to visit my second home. For now, I’m lying in bed, letting myself have a moment to properly wake up, and wondering why I didn’t put both brakes on when I was getting out of my wheelchair into bed. The left brake is dodgy, and I can only put it on when I’m in the chair, so now I have a half-braked chair that’s going to be more difficult to get into, and I wouldn’t mind so much, but this is the third time this week.
6:14 am. Done, in the chair, didn’t fall on the floor. Time to get moving.
6:55 am. I’ve never lived in a better situation for getting to an airport: Continue Reading »
Sep
28
2008
This coming week, I will be in Wroclaw, Poland, where I lived for 11 years, and which I still consider home in many ways. It’s a beautiful and rapidly developing city with a lot to offer tourists. Rather than doing an analysis of the city in my usual style, I will be doing a trip diary, posting as I go, and I’ll see if I can rediscover what it’s like to be a tourist in Wroclaw.
I’m not yet finished with posts about London, so don’t worry if you feel I’ve left out something major. There’s so much I could write about London that it’d be difficult to cover in a month, let alone ten days. I decided to focus on getting there and getting around to start with, and will return to more touristy posts at a later date.
I may think I know the places I’ve been very well, but there’s always something new to learn. For example, while posting about London, I discovered that I’ve been spelling Stansted incorrectly for years. Now I know it’s StanstEd, not StanstEAd.
On Tuesday September 30th, the Darius Goes West crew are at the Lee Hall Auditorium of Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, and Sunday October 5th, they’re in Neptune Park, St. Simon’s Island, GA. More details here at their web site. The crew also cut together a light-hearted new video to celebrate getting The Vehicle featured on You Tube. Congratulations to the lads on the feature, and on the tour, which is apparently going really well.
I hope you’ve all had a great weekend. Join me tomorrow for the first part of my trip diary; till then, all the best!
Derek.
Sep
27
2008
In the first few parts of this series (1, 2 and 3), I dealt with the wheel options for a manual wheelchair. Today, I’d like to talk about a minor but nonetheless important part of the chair: the handles. As mentioned, you should always choose wheelchair parts primarily according to your physical and medical situation, and then according to your lifestyle. Provided your body can cope with the choices you make, you are free to mix and match any number of parts to assemble your perfect wheelchair, but there is no part that can be chosen without some thought about your physical requirements: from the wheels all the way to the handles, you need to consider each part carefully.
On my last two wheelchairs, I chose not to have handles. Many of my friends would say this is further evidence of how stubborn I am: I much prefer getting around under my own steam, and you can’t push a wheelchair that has no handles. Well, you can, but it’s more difficult, because there’s nothing to grab onto, especially on a low-back wheelchair of the type I prefer. However, that is not the reason I chose not to have handles.
Continue Reading »
Sep
25
2008
When I first went to London with my wheelchair, I discovered that the Tube was no longer a viable option for me. For a brief time, I thought getting around was going to be very awkward and slow, involving complicated bus routes with several changes of bus, not to mention a little stressful, as I was sure I would have to spend the whole time with my eye on the street signs to make sure I didn’t miss my stop. However, while the buses are slow because of the city’s traffic congestion, the routes were more straightforward than I thought, and the drivers are very good about announcing stops that have been requested. Not only that, all but two of the city’s bus routes are fully accessible, and free of charge to wheelchair users. Even better yet, my friends Tom and Eric found a bus route so perfect for my needs in the city, it was like I’d planned it out myself. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the number 23.
Besides being perfect for my needs, I believe the 23 is a great bus for any tourist who wants to plan a day seeing a good chunk of the city’s tourist attractions. Of course there are many things to see in London that aren’t on this route, but it has enough to plan a great day out around.
Continue Reading »
Sep
24
2008
This week’s anecdote picks up from last week’s.
By the time the plane landed at Gatwick, I had composed several letters of complaint to British Airways, Euro Atlantic, and the management of Tampa International Airport, each more venomous than the last. To say I was annoyed is an understatement. Tired, sore, cramped and in need of a toilet, shower and bed, all I wanted was to be off the plane and on my way. That I had another flight to catch in 4 hours was not improving my mood any.
As usual, I sat and waited as the rest of the passengers got off the plane. The people who’d been sitting around me and had offered to help said goodbye, and repeated how shocked they were by the whole thing, in tones ranging from sympathetic to rabble-rousing. I would find out later that some of them would lodge complaints on my behalf. Once they were all gone, I waited for the assistance crew to arrive and get me off the plane.
And waited. Continue Reading »
Sep
20
2008
Imagine you’re taking a trip from Los Angeles to Cracow, and you’re trying to work out the best price. You have found some good deals for LAX to London Heathrow, but from there to Cracow seems expensive. However, you’ve found a low-cost airline running a flight there from London Stansted that leaves 5 hours after you land, and flying that route would be a significant saving. The two airports are both London airports, but could you make it from one to the other in time? 5 hours seems like a lot of time, and there is a coach that is supposed to get from Heathrow to Stansted in just 90 minutes: surely that would be a feasible option.
Well, much as it sounds like you could make it, you might want to think again, especially if you’re a wheelchair user. Continue Reading »
