Observations

Here are some observations I’ve made at the center in the last four months.

When I’m out with the gang and there is a sign for a restaurant or some other business I can’t ask the students who are with me, “Hey, what’s that sign say?” That’s the same with t-shirts with logos on as well. If the logo is big enough I sometime can read them, but usually I can’t unless I get real close and then the person thinks what the hell are you doing?

Once there were four of us watching TV and a funny scene flashed on the screen. I looked at the person on my right and asked what was the scene about and he looked to the person on his right, and that person was clueless. Then I asked the person on my left and she just shrugged. No one picked it up. I think we all laughed at the scene even though we didn’t know what it was all about.

Sometimes you can tell who a person is by the way they are tapping with their cane. Some tap, tap and others brush the floor more than tap. Whatever their method it should be in the shape of an arc. The cane should go out three or four inches wider than your shoulders and about an inch off the ground.

Voices are pretty individualized. Most people have a unique voice, probably like fingerprints, although some sound pretty similar to each other.
More later.

Ledges part II

After my third dismissal of offered help I stretched to the second to the last block. I started to lean toward the road, over compensated too much to the right and toward the runoff pool and s*@*, I was falling into the water! My left leg stayed on the edge of the road but the rest of me fell to the pool of water. I landed on my rear, with the left leg following in about 3 feet of water. Water was up to my neck. It took my breath away. After I had regained my footing and stood up I reached for a couple of helping hands. No way could they pull my sodden body and clothes, which included blue jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, out from the pool. I finally climbed out on the road after two or three unsuccessful attempts to free myself from the freezing water.

I was a bit embarrassed, but mostly angry at myself for not accepting the help from my teacher. We still had about a mile of walking ahead of us until we reached the shelter we were going to eat lunch at. When we finally got there my knee started to swell and hurt. I did not have to go to the doctor for my knee, and it is doing much better.

Nest time a teacher offers me some help, I'm sure I will take it.

Trip to Ledges State Park

On Tuesday the school went to Ledges State Park near Boone, Iowa. It was supposed to be a walk in the park but ended in a soggy mess.

Once a month the school plans a group activity for the students and staff. For the month of September a field trip was scheduled for Ledges State Park. We were to walk some trails, eat a picnic lunch and play some group games.

It all started out fine with a beautiful walk on a couple of trails. We were all sleep-shaded (wearing our blindfolds) as we navigated along rocky trails that traversed up and down and around the park. Our canes came in very handy on the stone steps. The steps had varying degrees of width and steepness.

After walking about one hour we came across a rocky ledge called table rock. At that time our trail leader (who was totally blind) told us we could take off our shades. It was a beautiful view with breath taking descent to the road down below us.

I had heard a few cars on the park road and also heard the cars splashing through some unseen water.

After trekking down to the road I could hear running water across the road. When our group encountered the water we had two options: walk through the two inch water flowing across the road or try to walk along the edge, half skipping and half jumping from one cement block to another block. These blocks were about 18 to 24 inches long and about 8 inches wide. The distance between each cement block was approximately two feet from each other.

While being sleep-shaded the step from one block to the other block was anything but easy. If you slipped off one of the blocks you had two directions you could fall. One way was back on the road and step into the two inch water. The other direction was to plop into three feet of water that flowed to the river. You can probably guess which direction I took.

I had already crossed over one set of blocks without too much trouble. It was very exhilarating stretching from one block to the other. After successfully finishing the challenge, I gave a war cry and thought the water crossings were over. Not so. Up came the second water crossing.

It seemed to be a little deeper on the road as the cars made bigger splashes. Well, I knew if I chose the walk on the road I’d have wet feet for the rest of the day and I had just completed my first trek over the water.

I started over the water with a seemingly longer stretch than my first block bridge I conquered. Mark, my travel instructor, was there and asked me if I needed a hand. Three times he asked and three times I declined his offer. Sort of like Peter did in the Bible.

To be continued…

Funnel and Sieve

A couple of weeks ago two other students, our supervisor Dave, and I traveled to Kansas City to visit Missouri's version of our orientation center. It's called Alphapointe. It is much different than ours. It's different physically and philosophically.

The building itself is only seven years old, and still smells new, where ours is ... well, a hell of a lot older. Alphapointe is all on one floor, where our orientation center has six floors, seven if you count the basement and we do use the basement. Alphapointe is located out in what seemed to me to be an office park-like area. Away from the city. In Des Moines we're located smack dab in the middle of the city.

In my opinion the most important difference is between the philosophies of each orientation center. While Alphapointe has an environment of a sheltered workshop where workers assemble writing pens for the federal government and manufacture plastic bottles for VA hospitals, it seems like they funnel their clients in that direction. It seems to me that they teach their clients specific skills to reach their goal of employing them.

The goal at the Iowa center, in contrast to Alphapointe, is to give the students tools they need to be competitive and independent in their daily living. Don't get me wrong, we work hard at the center and we earn the tools we have when we leave the school. Since we have the tools to cope in the day to day activities it takes to secure a job and hold onto any career that we choose, I believe we have a stronger center than other states do.

As I've noted in this writing the Kansas City center tries to funnel their students toward a certain type of employment. The Iowa center is like a sieve, students venturing out to do whatever career they are interested in. Now, everyone isn't successful, but everyone has the green light to try out what they are interested in. I think we are pretty capable of doing anything, except drive a cab, or fly a plane, although with the computers on board, piloting a plane may be more realistic than driving a car.

In short, we are given the tools to achieve whatever we want to achieve. It's like teaching a person to fish, not just feeding him the fish.

Pound cake

I'm at home for the next week and a half and wanted to try out my culinary skills. I've been cooking with shades on at the orientation center for the last three months and wanted to see what it was like to cook AND see. It was pretty easy, but not as easy as I thought cooking without shades would be.

We got a new mixer so I looked at the recipes that came with the manual to see if any of the recipes tripped my trigger. I really wanted to try out the new mixer. Well, the double chocolate pound cake looked pretty damn delectable.

The recipe called for a lot of the good stuff that bakers use. Flour. Now that's taking my cooking to new heights. Sugar. I didn't mix up the flour and sugar, nor did I toss the flour into the garbage can. Baking powder, milk, REAL butter and few other ingredients that raised the carb count for each slice of cake.

I cooked the cake on Wednesday and added a drizzle of chocolate glaze Thursday morning. The verdict: well, I'd give it a B. I thought it would be a bit more moist. The flavor is excellent though and I won't have much trouble getting rid of the cake to friends and family. A scoop of ice cream would be a fine addition to the cake.

The mixer worked great and I would be negligent if I didn't mention that my wife helped me most of the way. Comments like, "You don't have throw the ingredients into the bowl, just let them drip." Or, "How did cocoa powder get into the utensil drawer?" Really, Chris was a big help and I don't think the cake would have turned out as good as it did without her help. More later.

Questions and answers

I received an email from a friend, Kelli, who commented about my blog and had a few questions for me. I'll answer those questions here as I'm sure you will find that they pertain to my blog.

First question, "How do I operate the oven?" Well the controls all have Braille labels next to them and I try to read them, but really have memorized which controls are where. To regulate the temperature the oven always starts at 350 and every time you push the button it beeps and increases or decreases by 5 degrees. You have to pay at least a little attention to the beeps to know what degree your oven is at.

Next question. "Do I plan to have any adaptions in my house?" Yes. I plan on labeling some things in Braille, especially in the kitchen. I already have puffy, brightly colored stickers on the microwave and stove. Chris marked the washer and dryer too, with markings to help me know the controls on those appliances. Having the Braille labels will help me remember the Braille code and reinforce what I have learned at the center.

Last question. "To read emails, is there a computer audio function that reads it aloud or how does that work?" Yes, there is a function, both at home and the center. Those programs are called screen readers. I use a Mac at home and there is a program called VoiceOver that reads the text on the screen. I also use Zoom which magnifies the screen image. At school I use the PC program JAWS which is the only way I can read email or for that matter do anything at all on the computer. Listening to the computer is much quicker than reading magnified text. The larger the text the slower you read.

Both programs, JAWS and VoiceOver are nice. JAWS is more powerful, but not by too much anymore, and one important thing to remember, VoiceOver comes FREE with the Mac. JAWS costs about a thousand bucks.

Thanks Kelli for the email and continue to have fun working in Colorado. Since I was the one usually falling off my bike, it's much safer having one of my friends piloting the tandem than me riding solo.

More later.

Graduation

Hello again from Des Moines. After two days of rain it looks like the rain is finally over. Today will be my last day here for two weeks, as we will be having our summer break/vacation. It's a sad day for me as one of my good buddies has completed his stay here at the center. Jim is graduating today and will return home.

He was my walking buddy and we did a lot of other things together. Along with another buddy, Terry, we would go out to eat breakfast and dinner together. At night we would all sit down and talk about the day's events. They would drink coffee and I would drink a diet pop. I will truly miss my buddy Jim.

Along with Jim there were two other students leaving as well. RJ graduated and John will take off to attend college in Illinois.

More later.