Living in Wonderland

The new wheelchair van needs some tweaking. I took it over to Berkeley to have a companion seat installed so that when there is a third person in the car that person can sit next to Maggie and suction her trach, as needed, which is all the time. Right now Maggie’s wheelchair rolls into the van behind the front passenger seat. There is nothing else in the middle and a bench seat in the back.
We have been wavering about whether the extra seat is a good idea or not, but the decision was made on our recent road trip to Mendocino. That trip was our first car trip over 30 minutes since Maggie got the trach placed 18 months ago and it clarified the need for the seat. Steve was driving the curvy coast roads and I would have to undo my seatbelt and turn my body around on the front seat to reach her with the suction machine. Dangerous for all concerned. Time for the companion seat. At least I can ease up on my Olympic gymnast training to help Maggie when she needs it.
The place that works on the van is in Berkeley. It is about 30 minutes from here. However, of course once I left the car there I had to get back via public transportation. That was 90 minutes. But what an adventure. The shop is in the flats of Berkeley, a completely different part of town than the University. It is rather … seedy, at least in the industrial part I was in. Last time I tried to get a cab to pick me up there and they would not come. Does that explain it? The guy was p.o’d about work I needed done, even though I had scheduled it four separate times with his office. I figured asking for a ride to the BART station was probably not a good idea, so I just started walking.
BART – or Bay Area Rapid Transit – is a wonderful transit system for me, the occasional user. (Regular riders often have different opinions.) It goes through a tube right under the San Francisco Bay and deposits you in downtown San Francisco. Of course it was about a two-mile walk through a fairly rough area of Berkeley/Oakland to get there, but I just started hoofing is. I talked to my sister on the phone while I walked and the neighborhood got a little better with each passing block. There were a lot fewer gated windows and “Dangerous Dog” signs. Train came immediately and when we arrived in SF, I came up onto Market Street to hear a woman SCREAMING at the top of her lungs in Chinese. She may have been preaching. I do not speak Chinese so I am not sure. The best part was no one was paying any attention to her.
I still had a bus ride to get to my house and I can take any one of four bus lines. The #5 was coming, which is an electric bus, so that is what I took. The bus had a slight breakdown when the overhead electric wire came off and the driver had to get out and put it back. I was thinking I would not want his job to work with the electrical connection behind a bus stopped on the upward slope of a steep hill. The Japanese woman behind me pulled out her camera and took pictures of the driver through the back window of the bus as he replaced the connection. That was a first for me, and judging from the look on the driver’s face, a first for him as well. The man next to me conversed with his wife in Portuguese and both were getting more and more agitated about missing their stop. I gave them directions, which I’m not sure they understood, and disembarked. Steve was home with a roofer who was Latino speaking perfect English with an accent.
It was an international trek, an adventure in my own backyard. You might think it was a once in a lifetime set of circumstances, but I have to go back on Thursday to get the van. And it will probably be the same thing. I hope that Portuguese couple is not still on the bus.