Touch and Go

I use four main tools when I travel:

1. Maps. Usually looked at ahead of time because I can't see printed maps that I carry around.
2. My cane. This lets me detect obstacles in short range that I don't see, such as curbs. It also lets those around me know that I can't see well.
3. My monocular. This is a mini telescope that lets me see at a distance, though even with it I can't see as far or clearly as someone with 20/20 vision, and it also has a very narrow field of view.
4. People. Whether by phone or stopping a stranger, a large part of why I get where I'm going is asking for help.

* * *

"Does this bus go to UBC?"

"Sure does."

I climb on. "Can you let me know when we get there?"

"Sure."

Folding my cane I sit up near the driver so that my presence can serve as a reminder to call the stop. I fish my MP3 player out of my purse and plug in, but keep the volume low enough that I could hear if the driver called my stop.

About twenty-five minutes into the ride I'm getting nervous. I don't remember the last trip up to campus taking this long. This is only my second time up there, and I don't yet have a sense of how long the bus ride is.

Just as I'm about to get up and ask the driver whether we've passed my stop, the urban skyline outisde the window suddenly shifts to trees. This is good! The UBC campus entrance has a long stretch of forested area. That part I at least remember.

Five minutes later we pull into the bus loop. I thank the driver.

Climbing off, I pull my monocular from my pocket and scan the landscape. Trees, buses, buildings, roads ... none of it is familar. I know how to get to the Disability Resource Centre from my previous trip, but the rest of the sprawling campus is completely unfamiliar.

Today, I'm on a quest to find the bookstore. Classes start on Monday and I don't have any textbooks for either of the two courses I'm enrolled in.

I stuied an online map in detail yesterday, as best I could with its small, blurry font. I had a vague idea that the bookstore is behind me and to the left. But I'm not totally sure. People rush around me, getting on and off buses, and I decide I can't stand there all day. So, taking a chance that I'm going the right way, I head off into oblivian.

For me, travelling with low vision, it's a small world. I can see buildings fairly far away—dozens of meters. But smaller details—crosswalks, stairs, signs, trees, I can't see until I am a few meters away from them. So, shortly after setting off I come to the end of the bus loop island and, looking around, spot a crosswalk. As luck has it, it's leading in the direction I suspect the bookstore is in. I know from the map, though, that it's still several buildings away, and I have no idea whether I can cut through the swath of concrete and steel to get to it.

Crossing the street, I have no idea which way to walk once I get to the other side. What looks like construction fences are set up, and construction is bad news for anyone who's visually impaired. Something as simple as "going around" a construction site isn't so simple when you don't know which way "around" is.

Thankfully, students pass. Students, on a university campus, know all. (Hopefully, soon, when I was an official student, I will as well!) So I stop one and ask where the bookstore is.

"Uhh ..."

He turns and stops a passing group of girls. "Do you know where the bookstore is? I think it's over there ..."

The girls gladly give rather good directions, although they do include the vaguities of "over there" and "that way" which are difficult to understand when you can only see vaguely in which direction they are pointing. Nonethelsess, I'm reassured that I'm at least heading in the right direction. So I contineued on ...

Down a path ... up some stairs ... past a building. Past a pool. Past a larger pool. I deduce that I must be near the aquatic centre, which I remember seeing on the map in the general vicintiy of the bookstore. This is good.

All the while it's getting steadily darker. With darkness comes less clues, less landmarks, less vision. But for now, I pick up my monocular and scan ahead. I see a street, or maybe a parking lot (something with cars on it, anyway), and then what I decide to be the construction site judging from all the noise it's making. And after that, more buildings and trees. Lovely.

I continue walking. I am suddenly in an open area with stairways going down and paths jutting off to either side. I pick the stairs which point towards the noise of the construction site, where I know from the helpful girls the bookstore is just beyond. Then I come to a road. I can hear the construction site on the other side of the street somewhere, but not close enough to see. Which way to go around?

Again, people. Where there are people, there are directions, and where there are directions I am not lost. I stop a random stranger and ask her where the bookstore is.

"It's across the street, there's construction, and over there are some construction trucks and a parking lot, if you cross that it's kiddy corner to it."

Uhh, sure. I know what all that means. But I at least know it's across the street. I walk up the sidewalk a bit until I find a crosswalk, wait till there's no cars and cross, and then meet a fence. I follow the fence up until I see trucks. Trucks! At least I'm going in the right direction. Past the trucks, through a windy path in a grassy area. She didn't mention that part ... Nonetheless, I continue on. A parking lot.

And then an intersection. I can't quite figure out how the intersection is related to the parking lot. It seems to span the entire two blocks. So what is "kiddy corner" to that parking lot? I cross the street.

And now I know I'm close. Very close. Probably standing in front of it, or across the street from it. I take out my monocular and scan. Signs ... signs ... where does this university put its bloody signs?! I can't find any. A drawback of the monocular is that although it magnifies allowing me to see more distant objects, it does so at the cost of a very narrow field of vision. Now, finally, when I'm probably a few feet away from my destination, I am lost.

Luckily, a jogger spots me. He's probably a kind professor (or so I like to think). He sees me standing there and stops to ask if I need help. I tell him I'm looking for the bookstore.

"Oh, you're really close. It's right—"

"—over there?" I ask, pointing in the direction I think, but am entirely uncertain, that the store is.

"Yes!" I don't understand why he's so happy, but I'm happy to have found that bookstore. "You've got it!"

I thank him and watch briefly as he jogs off. Then, I cross the street.

On the other side I meet an enormous building. Stairs lead up to an upper level, and there is also a lower level. I decide that the entrance must be on the lower level. I continue toward it—

My cane whacks something on the pavement. The sun has long since sunk below the horizon, and features such as pavement and grass are becoming hard to distinguish in the low light. I make to step up, but next my cane drops off the edge of something. Utterly confused I stop so as not to trip over whatever this is. After probing a bit I figure out that this is a set of one of those offset staircases, with stairs coming out of a sloped surface so that they start jaggedly, one starting before another. And for some reason these ones also have a ledge running along the top.

Way to injure someone, I think. Sometimes I really don't get architecture. I go slowly down the stairs. Scan one more time with the monocular for a sign. Momentary excitement when I think I've found one, only to realize that the glowing box is a Coke machine. But I see books through the window.

Enter the bookstore. And at this point I realize that the entire building is a bookstore. This is no small place. The difference between a medium-sized and large university must be really big! I wander among the shelves for a while until I find the area that looks like it's selling textbooks as opposed to sweatshirts or books by university authors. I hear a staff member talking and head towards it, coming to a counter.

I ask the lady to help me find my textbooks. She gets my courses and then runs off to get the books. While she's gone I do another scan with my monocular. INFORMATION is spelled out above the counter, low-contrast blue letters on a grey background. In a few moments she's back. Do I want the study guide for the statistics textbook? I think I'll pass on that until I see how scary the text looks, I'm spending too much money as it is.

To the sound of cashiers. Waiting in line. Someone nips in front of me to go to an empty teller. I step closer so as not to miss the next one. It's so nice when they actually tell me that one is free. I pay for my books and leave.

Outside. Out into the darkness. I'm good at finding my way once I've been somewhere. I'm good at spotting visual landmarks and remembering how things look. I frequently know I'm at the right pole at a bus loop by the way the horizon and trees look against that pole, from a certain angle. It's not conventional orientation and mobility, but it works for me and ensures that I can find my way once I've been somewhere once, at least until I get more concrete landmarks to go by such as counting poles or doors.

But that's in the daytime. At night all that disappears. At night, lights from buildings and streetlamps make things look different. Grass and pavement and steps are indistinguishable until I step on them. Smaller landmarks like poles and garbage cans disappear. My monocular is all but useless.

But again, I know in general which way I need to be headed. I head towards the road. I find the sidewalk and follow it back, around the parking lot. Through a grassy area which doesn't seem the same as before, making me wonder if I've gotten turned around. But then I come to the road with the fence. I follow that back up, cross the road, and come to the wide open space with stairs and paths branching off.

I know I came downstairs, but I have no idea which stiarcase I came down. I thought it had been directly in front of the road but there is no staircase there, so I pick one that seems close.

Walking ... walking. No pool. No larger pool. Little poles with lights that I don't remember seeing—except in the daytime they could have been just little poles that I didn't pay any attention to, and they wouldn't have been lit up.

Walking ... Wondering now if I really am headed the wrong way.

Then: A whiff of chlorine.

Aquatic centre!

I'm going the right way. But where are those pools?

A few seconds later I've somehow ended up in the middle of a parking lot. I try to keep to the side as cars drive by. I can hear buses now beyond this parking lot. Within a few minutes I find another sidewalk and step onto it, continue in the direction of the buses.

I come to a crosswalk, and beyond that an island. I use my monocular to check bus numbers and walk up to one that has 99 glowing beside its door. I wait. Finally the driver opens the door and lets me on.

The bus moves. I wonder why it's completely empty other than me.

As he opens the doors to let everyone else on, he informs me that this is where the bus pole is, a good ten meters away from where I was waiting. And then it's a half hour bus ride to familiar territory. I've asked the driver to call out the stop, but this one I'll be able to recognize on my own by the SkyTrain and bright floodlights of the station.

* * *

An odd thought occured to me today, while semi-lost, that the way I travel is a lot like diabetes management.