Traveling in a Wheelchair

This summer, we have traveled across this great country of ours and I have learned a few things. Ohio is a long drive, I can’t wait till I get a chance to gawk at downtown St. Louis again, and working legs make travel easier.

We have some good friends that live in Ohio. Our Family spent the last year planning and saving for this trip. We looked at several different options for travel: We could fly - now there's an option - from Phoenix to Columbus is $2300 for the four of us, which was just slightly more than we had to spend on the whole trip. Not only that, but I have never been on a plane since I became paralyzed. I had been on a plane some years earlier and the aisles are small - how would a bigger wheelchair fit? So we decided to drive the 1800 miles (one way).

Now my friend had made the trip from there to here in two legs. They stopped in Oklahoma City for the night, which is about half way. We have always had a great rivalry, which has been fun on both sides. I had to beat his record and drive it straight through. We left here on a Saturday afternoon and pulled in at their house around 11 pm on Sunday night. Now I don't want to make it sound like I always get the best of him. Just the opposite - he is much better than me in many things (a real idol for me). However, I have got in some good licks from time to time. We became friends because of the women we have chosen to share our lives with, they having been life-long friends.

St. Louis was the first place that we stopped to do any site seeing. We saw the arch from the freeway and took a detour. What a place the arch was awesome; while the family walked around the arch I took a drive around downtown that was so cool. Looking at the architecture of the oldest city I have ever been in was an awing experience.

Back to my subject of wheelchair travel, we have been to many hotels that claim to be wheelchair accessible, which could be true, ADA guidelines state what the door size needs to be and how to make the bathroom accommodating. I doubt any of the policy makers ever spent a day in a wheelchair in their life. The guidelines do not share the information that is needed for wheelers. Things like how much furniture and where to place it never come in to play and are never thought of. Why would they, most people don’t think of these things till they are face-to-face with a problem. However, I have never been to a hotel or restaurant that didn't do all they could do to accommodate us.