I have rehearsals Tuesdays and Thursdays, on the university campus; the previous forms of transportation I have used are not available, so I had Epic Bus Adventures.
... if I routinely use bus transport, it is, somewhat ironically, the county bus, not the city bus, that I will be using; they share a physical stop, and the county bus would get me there half an hour early, whereas the city bus would either get me there an hour early or please-let-it-not-run-late just barely on time, and they tend to run late.
Btu for today, I took the city bus, the hour early one, because I still needed to get the music. The chorus is not only affiliated with the university, but is technically a class, and the music is the coursebooks. And I figured the bookstore would be a bit crowded, given that it's the beginning of the quarter, so I should allow time.
So. I go to the bus stop, which is just down the street from me, and wait for the bus, and it comes. It is the sort of bus with three steps up, and there's a platform lift that lives underneath the steps that can come out, and then raise up to bus level, for the purpose of wheelchairs or really anyone who can't do stairs.
The driver has evidently been trained, because he does all this with the manner of someone who has done it before. (He also did not ask me for a disabled pass. Funny, that.) I have my choice of sides, so I go to the right side, which has better visibility since there isn't the whole driver partition in front of you, and he makes sure my chair wheels lock (they do), and then goes to dock the lift again.
... it goes down, and jams against the sidewalk.
He tries again. Same thing.
The driver is in radio contact with the base, going omgwtf. I, meanwhile, realize that I am sitting on the sidewalk side, and the weight of the wheelchair may be contributing to this fun event. (True story: when
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jmtorres was here, there was one time where we parked, and the ramp jammed against the edge of the sidewalk, and I moved to the other side of the minivan -- seriously, it was only a matter of backing up a foot or two -- and told her to try again, and it worked.) So I go over to the left side of the bus, just in case.
The driver tries again. Still nothing.
Hi. I have
broken the bus.
(well, not really, but. I wonder how many of the people on there were wishing I hadn't gotten on. *wry grin*)
... anyway, he does eventually get it to work, and we are on our merry way. Which leads me to my second adventure: navigating the university bookstore.
This should probably go in
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accessibility_fail.
Point the first: textbooks are downstairs. And I do mean down *stairs*. There is no elevator in the bookstore proper. There is one kind of adjacent, that leads to the games area, through which one can get to the bookstore's textbook area.
I should have taken a picture of the elevator controls; I had never noticed before just how bad they are. There are three, in a triangle, one on top and two on bottom. The one on top has "1" on the button, and "G" as a label next to it. The bottom left has, I believe, "B" on the button and "LL" as a label next to it. The bottom right has "2" on the button and "L" as a label next to it.
The top button is for ground level, and is fairly straightforward if you know that. You can enter from either side. The two bottom buttons lead to the games area on the floor below; the slightly higher left-door level (for an arbitrarily chosen left) has arcade type games, as well as bookstore access, and the slightly lower rear-door level leads circuitously to the bowling lanes. There are steps between the two levels, but, I believe, not a ramp.
I can
never remember which is which.For the record, in case any of you are curious, the "2" button leads to the slightly higher floor-below level.
(I at least remembered which door should be opening, so that when I did the wrong one first, I didn't have to leave the elevator to know it was wrong.)
There are, you may gather, no actual signs. Anywhere.
So I get myself to the games area. There are, structurally, two routes into the bookstore. One was the (massively crowded) checkout line, which was in a sort of storage room auxiliary to where the books physicially were. The other, which actually would have led to books, was an EMERGENCY EXIT ALARMS WILL SOUND ZOMG door.
... I go to one of the bookstore employees stationed at the door (I suppose to make sure people don't sneak out without paying) and say, "Um, how do I get to the books?"
I can kind of see the "You want to go into the main bookstore, which is upstairs, and then come down through there" thing flash through her brain, followed by the ".......well, shit" thing, and she helps me navigate upstream through the checkout area to the books.
I get the music with no problems, and also end up getting an adorable little notebook because I cannot resist office supplies, and I check out, and I go back to the games area.
I
cannot see the fucking elevator. Anywhere.
I navigate by vague place-memory back to where it is, and find it, and discover that, due to the placement of a nearby trash can and recycling bin, I can not physically get to the elevator buttons. There is a gap of about six inches, not enough for my chair to pull up alongside, and I can't reach that far forward, even with the pokey stick I have for poking things.
...
...I, um.
I do not like the campus bookstore very much.
(and then I got to choir and we skated through the Bruckner Te Deum, at the end of which the sopranos have about eight measures of sustained F#, and then about eight measures of sustained G#, and then about eight measures of sustained A -- all of which is above the clef, mind you, and without a break -- and then about three measures of sustained B. And, on the next page, a fucking high C. Okay, yes, we're sopranos, but this being a college choir, there tends to be some cringing at Gs and As...)