Solo (sort of)

Today I went traveling and had two firsts. I walked alone for awhile, and I went up and down an escalator. During traveling class today the teacher and I walked in the Des Moines skywalk. We went to buy a corsage for a retiring teacher and then traveled up an escalator to a food court. To get on the escalator I had to feel around at the bottom of it, searching for the bottom step. I found it and grabbed hold of the railing to make sure it was the up escalator and positioned my foot on the bottom step. I held on to the railing all the way up, with my white cane about two steps in front of me. It didn't seem very weird; as a matter of fact it felt fairly safe holding on to the moving railing. At the top of the escalator the cane moved ahead of me until it stopped, and I knew that was the top of the escalator and I stepped off. Then we went to the food court and I got a diet coke and sat around talking to the teacher for a few minutes.

Then we had to go down the escalator. Going up kind of reminded me of a pilot taking off in an airplane, and taking the down escalator reminded me of a pilot landing the plane. It was a little scarier going down. My first step off the down escalator had to be more precise than the up escalator so I wouldn't lose my balance.

We started retracing our steps and the teacher told me that he had to get a retirement card for the same teacher we got the corsage for. He was going to go to the store by himself, so he told me to go back to the school by myself. I got a little nervous when he left and I had to navigate the skywalk solo. Everything went almost perfect. I used people's voices and footfalls to know when and where to turn. I used the sound of some stores to tell me where I was in the skywalk, and I pretty much shorelined all the corridors. "Shorelining" means you are close to one side and you kind of tap the wall. The only trouble I had was I went too far and missed the door to the street level. I was very close and went back twice but just couldn't locate the door. Lucky for me the teacher bought the first card he saw and he must have hurried back to join me and catch me in my dilemma. Maybe he was more nervous with me walking by myself than I was! After he directed me to the door, I had no problem descending the steps and then walking back on the sidewalk to the school. I'm ready to solo again. More later.