Disabled Cruising 2017 Part 3: Cozumel and Jamaica

Why do Kim and I go on
elaborate, expensive vacations? Why does anyone? It can’t be that these
weeklong excursions make us happy only during the time we spend away, 2% of our
year. It must be that they have a lasting effect, or at least we believe them
to (is there a difference?). Midway through this cruise vacation, I lamented how this
is only fleeting. I can’t make it stick.
I can’t make it last. In just a few short days, it will be gone, and will it
have been worth it?
Then I ordered another margarita, watched the sun melt
into the ocean, and went back to living in the moment.

I can’t explain or justify why, in recent years, we’ve been
traipsing all over the Caribbean. I’m sure it has something to do with stress
reduction, mental health, living life to the fullest, etc. But for Kim and me, there may be another reason. We go
on vacation because we still can, and we want to show the world that we still
can, and we want to show one another that we still can. But most importantly, I
think, we do it because we still enjoy it. We do it to feel alive.

I am still alive.

Cozumel, Mexico

Kim and I had been to
this tourist mecca before, on our first cruise seven years earlier. We had a
blast that day, but we weren’t sure that the experience would be repeatable.
Back then, it was spur-of-the-moment kind of fun. So we didn’t recommend that
in 2017 the six of us walk into town and randomly bounce around bars until we
got drunk. Instead, we asked the concierge on the cruise for ideas. She
suggested a hotel within walking distance of the pier, which might be a fun
place to hang out for the day.

This time, Tom and
Andy volunteered to be the advance team. They found the hotel, confirmed it was
wheelchair accessible, and learned it would cost us the enormous sum of $20 per
person to hang out by their pool and on their Caribbean beach for the day. Oh,
did I mention that included a $12 credit toward lunch? Cozumel is so affordable and so fun.

On the walk from our
ship to the hotel, we encountered various vendors. One of them kept repeating
the same request to us and our fellow cruisers: “Don’t build that wall.” This is a serious issue to many people on both
sides of the border, but we couldn’t help laughing about it several times
during the day.

Jamaica

This was our third trip to the enchanted island of
Jamaica. Our ship docked at the relatively obscure port of Falmouth. This time,
Tom and Diane were the advance team. Kim had identified a highly-rated
restaurant on Trip Advisor where we could get authentic Jamaican jerk chicken.
Tom texted us around 8 o’clock to say that he had found the restaurant and it
was wheelchair accessible.

The city of Falmouth
has invested in upgrades to the cruise ship terminal. When we stepped off the
ship, we were greeted by an almost
Disney-like caricature of Jamaica. Modern shops, clean streets, friendly
proprietors, curb cuts, accessible public bathrooms, no scary people, no
police. We spent an hour or so walking around that area, then it was lunchtime.

When we left the
“Green Zone” we encountered the real
Jamaica. In their scouting run earlier in the day, Tom and Diane had enlisted
the services of a local to guide them through the craziness to the restaurant.
The same local approached the six of us as we emerged. For a handful of
greenbacks, he led us through the gauntlet of vendors — clothing, memorabilia,
drugs — toward the restaurant. I noticed that the seas parted ahead of him. He
was a man not to be messed with, and I wondered what he must have done to earn
that reputation.

Of course, I was in
balance mode in my iBOT, and the natives expressed their amazement. For the
first couple of blocks of our walk, there were police officers everywhere. I
couldn’t decide if that was more comforting or concerning. When we got further
from the port, and the police presence
dwindled, I didn’t feel unsafe. The scene can be intimidating in Jamaica, but
we were very much their guests, their guests with money to spend.

The restaurant was a
hole in the wall. Well, actually, there
was no wall. A collection of run down tables and chairs surrounded what looked
like an outdoor bar. We sidled up to one table and placed six orders for
Jamaican jerk chicken, and a round of RedStripe beer. The chicken was accompanied by local side dishes — rice and
vegetables — with optional hot sauce. It tasted amazing.

After devouring the
chicken, our guide led us back to Disney-Jamaica. We hung out at Margaritaville another hour, boarded the ship, and set sail for home.

To be continued…

For part 2, click here.

For part 4, click here.

Disabled Cruising 2017 Part 2: CocoCay

In the weeks and months leading
up to an elaborate vacation, I build visual models in my mind. Before this cruise, I imagined a virtual state
room, various parts of the ship, the ports of call, and more. Some of this
modeling was based on research and previous experience. The rest, I probably acquired from the same image store I shop at for my nocturnal dreams:

What can I get for you today, Mr. Sturgeon?

For my upcoming cruise, I need visions of typical Jamaican city streets, and don’t skimp on the olfactory sensations—need to keep it real, mon. I also need a cruise ship swimming pool, and a few hundred extras,
preferably good-looking ones, but I’ll take whatever you have in inventory.

And for tonight’s dreams, I need images of my father morphing into a grizzly bear and chasing me through the woods. Oh, and you might as well give me a replica of my 8th
grade classroom so I can realize in the middle of my math exam that I
am not wearing pants. 

That’s all?

Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be back for more.

Inevitably, when these
vacations begin, my newly formed memories overwrite the models I
constructed in my mind. The visions I spent so much time cultivating always disappear, except that one time I made a conscious effort to remember them, just as an experiment. The actual overwhelms
the anticipated, forever erasing these abstractions from the hard drive of my mind.

I’m certain that my brain
isn’t the only one that works this way. Right?

Please tell me I’m right.

First stop – CocoCay, Bahamas

At some ports of call,
the cruise ship ties up to a dock, and passengers walk onto shore. This was not
the case at CocoCay. Everyone going ashore had to board a tender boat, which
shuttled passengers from the cruise ship to the island. I decided to use my
iBot wheelchair on CocoCay, because I knew there would be a lot of sand to
navigate, and the iBot is the only wheelchair I have which can operate on sand.

We had reserved a
cabana on CocoCay. This would give the six of us a private spot with some shade
for the day. Tom and Diane, early risers that they are, took the first tender
to shore and claimed our cabana. Somehow Andy and I became separated from Kim
and Karen, and we each took separate tenders. Ship personnel arranged it so
that I got on the tender last and got off it first, which suited me fine. Below is a photo Tom took as my tender approached, and a zoom of the same photo. Note that Andy and I are on the open deck, and all the other passengers are stuffed into a lower or
upper compartment. I liked my spot.

As soon as I disembarked from the tender and headed for the cabana, an employee intervened to inform me that
power wheelchairs can’t operate on sand. I politely told him to stand aside and
watch. I left my signature all over the island.

We had a wonderful day
on CocoCay, and on our voyage back to the ship Andy went out of his way to again stand with me on the deck of the tender. I suggested that his gesture was 20%
brotherly love and 80% personal comfort. He didn’t deny it. Traveling with me
isn’t all bad.

To be continued…

For part one, click here.

For part three, click here.

More pictures from CocoCay:

Disabled Cruising 2017 Part 1: Getting to the Ship

Security

It began at 4:00 am at the
TSA checkpoint, Logan Airport, Boston. My brother, Andy, and his wife, Karen,
zipped through without a problem. Kim did too. A TSA agent shouted, “MALE
ASSIST, MALE ASSIST.” I waited a long while for the male assist.

He noticed I had my backpack hanging off my
wheelchair. To remove it, I explained, he would need to take off the headrest. Male assist dude couldn’t figure out how.

“My wife just went
through security. Go get her, and she’ll help you.”

After a few minutes,
Karen, not Kim, arrived and explained that Kim was in the bathroom. Karen couldn’t figure
out how to remove the headrest either.

As I sat there, the current of busy travelers
flowed around me like I was a boulder in the middle of a stream. Eventually, I spied
Kim. She and Karen changed places. Kim removed the headrest, placed the
backpack on the conveyor belt, and reinstalled the headrest.

Onward.

The male assist dude guided me to a spot where he could pat me down and inspect my
wheelchair. I soon discovered he was a mere trainee. Two senior personnel
directed his every move and criticized his numerous nonconformities. Several times, they made him go back and repeat steps until
he got them right. By the end, he was quite flustered, and so was I. When
I finally arrived at the gate, it was time for me to board, so my plans for a
leisurely breakfast never materialized.

Transfers

Wheelchair people use
the word transfer to describe the process
where we move from our wheelchair to something else or from something else to
our wheelchair or from something else to something else altogether. Transfer
is an appropriate word for the controlled manner I move from my wheelchair to
my bed at home, for example.

Transfer, however, was not an apt description of how I moved from seat to seat
when we flew to Fort Lauderdale last week. Better words would have been: dragged, stuffed, tossed, yanked, ejected,
eighty-sixed, or given the ‘ol heave ho
, in no particular order.

“Mitch, how many of
these transfers does it take to fly
from Boston to Fort Lauderdale?” I’m glad you asked. Let’s count…

  1. from my
    personal wheelchair to the Boston airport’s aisle chair*
  2. from aisle
    chair to airplane seat
  3. from airplane
    seat to Dulles’ aisle chair
  4. from Dulles’
    aisle chair to Dulles’ wheelchair
  5. from Dulles’
    wheelchair to aisle chair for second
    flight
  6. from aisle
    chair to airplane seat, second flight
  7. from airplane
    seat to aisle chair, Fort Lauderdale airport
  8. from aisle
    chair to my personal wheelchair, Fort Lauderdale airport

That’s right; it took eight transfers using a slide
board and brute strength. I had assigned Andy, Karen, and Kim specific duties during these transfers, and
they dispatched said duties with aplomb. Airport personnel helped too, but they
hadn’t attended my mandatory training sessions (worth 10 Continuing Education
Credits) and received my certificate of completion, suitable for framing, as
the others had.

Four Hundred and Forty Pounds

Transfers and TSA pat
downs weren’t the only problems. While our 737 sat on the tarmac at Logan
Airport on Sunday morning, one of the baggage handlers came down the aisle to
ask me a question. “How do you either fold down or remove the back of your
power wheelchair? It’s too tall to fit in the luggage door.”

I responded, “I don’t
think there is a way. You’ll have to lift the chair and turn it sideways, like
moving a sofa through an apartment door.”

“How much does that
chair weigh?” He asked.

“Four hundred and
forty pounds.”

He rolled his eyes and
said, “We’ll figure something out.”

Looking out the
airplane window, we watched a group of baggage handlers wrestling with the
wheelchair, and this made us a little queasy. After a time, the captain announced,
“We’re still loading the final pieces of luggage. It shouldn’t be long.” I
appreciated how he didn’t point out that I was the one holding up the entire
flight.

After a 20-minute
delay, we took off. At Dulles Airport, we exited the airplane without incident,
zipped down the terminal and were the first to board our connecting flight.
Once again, we looked out the window and saw baggage handlers examining my
wheelchair, pushing on the seatback, and
scratching their heads.

“Wait a minute!” I said
to Kim. “If we re-attach the joystick controller we can recline the seatback.
That should solve the problem.”

Kim rummaged through
her carry-on and found the controller we had removed from the wheelchair, for safekeeping, after I transferred to the aisle
chair in Boston. She swam upstream against the passengers still boarding and approached the flight attendants with this simple, elegant
solution.

“I’m sorry, but you
can’t go down there,” said one attendant.

“But all I need to do
is…”

“No. You absolutely
cannot do that,” said the other attendant, looking down his nose at Kim as if
speaking to a small child who had asked if she might sit on the pilot’s lap and
steer the plane.

How foolish of us.

Then we saw the
baggage handlers open a toolbox and begin operating on my wheelchair. Although
I couldn’t read their lips, I imagined them saying:

Scalpel…

… Scalpel

Clamp…

… Clamp

Suction…

… Suction

I think I’ve got it. There it is, success…

… You are such a brilliant surgeon

And you are such a lovely nurse. Now wait for me in the doctors’ lounge, and I’ll show you some of my other
skills.
(Perhaps I’ve been
watching too many hospital dramas over the years.)

Somehow, these baggage handlers lowered the seatback and
got the chair loaded into the airplane.

Champagne

When we arrived in
Fort Lauderdale, they brought the wheelchair
up to the mouth of the plane, and I transferred to it. Sure, the seatback was
too low, but we cared only about getting to the ship. Seating adjustments could
wait.

Less than an hour
afterward, the four of us joined my brother, Tom, and his wife, Diane, who had
wisely flown down a day earlier. We lounged on the deck of our stateroom on the Celebrity Silhouette, relieved
that the journey we had worried about for months was behind us. Although we
experienced some rough patches on the flights down, we made it in time and
intact. And, like a mother who endured unbelievable pain and discomfort
throughout childbirth, only to say a year later, “That wasn’t so bad. Let’s
have another,” we agreed that the trip from Boston to Fort Lauderdale had gone
well. Perhaps the rough edges were smoothed over by the chilled bottle of
champagne that greeted us in our cabin.

Things were about to
get much better.


For part 2, click here.

*An aisle chair is
a narrow wheelchair designed to fit down the aisle of an airplane, depicted in
the photo at the top of this post. Also note that I had
checked my iBot wheelchair at the ticket counter, all the way through to Fort
Lauderdale. I like to travel with two wheelchairs.