MAY 20, TUESDAY

WHEEL CHAIR SERVICE

It was my friend Hasmukh Patel who told me that if I wanted to get an aisle seat on an eight our flight in order to get to the lavatory easily that I should ask for a wheel chair. It is easier to get a handicapped person into an aisle seat. But a transition to asking for a wheel chair was difficult for me to make, mostly because of my self conscious pride. Sitting in a wheel chair was an obvious indication that I was an old man and a claim that I was unable to walk on my own. It was like getting a handicapped placard for your car.

But people have only to look at me to see that I am an old man, and I don’t have to prove that I can’t walk on my own, which I can do, enough to get through any airport. Being obviously old allows me to get a wheel chair without demonstrating why, which a spry 40 year old couldn’t do.

But particularly on this trip I have learned that the reason to sign up for a wheel chair isn’t to get an aisle seat (which I got once on this trip and once didn’t). The reason for signing up for a wheel chair, if you can get away with it, is for reasons that I had not even thought about.

Many of my older friends in their 80’s have given up travel overseas or overnight. They claim it is too uncomfortable, “riding in a cattle car.” But another reason is that traveling alone in your 80’s seems too difficult and too confusing with a good chance of something going wrong. But being transported by wheel chair makes long distance travel much easier.

It is true that riding in a wheel chair or on one of these beeping carts is much less tiring in a huge airport. But more than that, it is much, much quicker with much less chance you will miss your connection in a transfer from one flight to another or even in a transfer from one airport to another. I may be able to walk across an airport perfectly well, but I walk slowly. A wheel chair pushed by a twenty year old is much faster and one of those carts even faster. But, equally important, whenever you come to a giant airport line snaking through a maze of back and forth lanes, if you are in a wheelchair, there is another very short line for you. You cut to the front of every line with only two or three wheel chairs in front of you. Security lines don’t hold you up nor does showing your passport when you cross a border. You zip right through.

But equally important to speeding you up when you are running late is knowing where you are going and how to get there quickly. Three things happened on this trip the revealed that to me. The first was being whisked off the plane and guided by wheel chair through La Guardia and through door after door and deposited at the bus stop of the Q70 free shuttle from LaGuardia to JFK. I didn’t have to follow intructions on how to do this, I couldn’t get lost in the big city crowds, I didn’t have to do anything, I just leaned back and was suddenly there.

The second example was in Amsterdam where I didn’t have a boarding pass for the onward flight to Hanover because I had been told in New York that I would have to go to German airlines to get a boarding pass, a task that I didn’t know how to accomplish. But in Amsterdam I was in the hands of a network of wheel chair operators connected by special devices. I was first deposited in a wheel chair center where I could sit quietly for an hour eating tiny Dutch pancakes with syrup and drinking coffee, breakfast for me on Swannanoa time, 3 p.m. in Amsterdam time.

Then when I went back to pick up my next ride, not giving a thought to German Airlines or getting a boarding pass, there was a delay and a lot of talk in Dutch, as I waited patiently. It turns out that by not getting a boarding pass in New York I was not even booked on the next flight, which was clear full and all of the talk was about getting me on, which they did with a huge smile. My wheel chair was raced there, with assurances that I would make the flight. The plane was already loaded, the gate was closed and the long tunnel to the plane had been pulled back. The departure time had passed. We were met by another wheel chair person trying to make the flight, rolled into a square container, driven out to the plane, raised up twenty feet to the door of the plane which was then opened and we were rolled in, having to walk the last fifty feet. If I had been on my own trudging through the airport I would certainly have missed the flight, it was the wheel chair network that saved me.

The third time having a wheel chair was very useful was when I got off the flight in Hannover. I was the last one off the plane when loaded into a wheel chair, but skipped the line for customs control, showed my passport and was through. Olav, who was giving me a ride to Winsen was there, but it turned out that my blue and yellow bag which the agent in New York had promised me when I checked it at the gate that it would certainly get to Hanover before me, wasn’t there. At that point I wouldn’t have known what to do and would have circled around or given up and hoped it would get to me. But the wheel chair pusher knew exactly what to do. Even when the office for lost baggage was closed he found a flat screen off to one side with directions in German. He entered all my information and off we went to Winsen with the bag arriving the next morning at 10 a.m..

So the moral of this story is that if you are 80 years old and afraid to travel because things might go wrong, just sign up for a wheel chair and put yourself in the hands of the wheel chair operator and everything will turn out all right.