So Long, Jeets

I’ve never really been a baseball fan. When I grew up the Brewers were bad. Starting in 4th grade I got caught up in the Minnesota Twins’ 1987 World Series championship hoopla, since Minneapolis was so close to Eau Claire. Though I proudly wore the two championship sweatshirts that my Uncle Ron gave me once a week for the rest of that year, my Twins support was fleeting. I’ve certainly rarely cheered for the New York Yankees: aka The Evil Empire with bottomless pockets to spend on players. I’ve always found that aspect of MLB baseball unfair. But I have always enjoyed Derek Jeter. Just a classy, clutch player. That’s why, like many, I found Jeter’s last at bat in the last home game of his illustrious career pretty compelling. Spoiler alert: he hit a walk off single to win the game. In the big picture it was meaningless because the win had zero impact on the standings, as the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs weeks ago. But it was a pretty awesome moment that epitomized Jeets over the years.

Anyway, as Jeter’s career came to a close and the MLB playoffs got into full swing I couldn’t help but think about the first time I heard of him. It was October 1996 and the New York Yankees were in a tight World Series battle with the Atlanta Braves. That fall I made the difficult decision to move from post-SCI rehab at the local hospital in Eau Claire, WI that was close to my family to a much more aggressive rehab institution – Craig Hospital in Denver. It was one of the most lonely and challenging two months of my life, but in retrospect the best thing that I could have done at the time because I probably wouldn’t be near as independent a quad as I am now without it.

When I wasn’t in therapy sessions I passed most of my time laying in my hospital bed watching TV on a six in TV set on a swinging arm that could reposition itself to be within view regardless of which side that patients laid on. Huge chunks of my evenings were spent watching the 1996 World Series, which was dripping with national intrigue. On one side you had the dynasty that never was: the Braves, a perennially stacked baseball team that, despite having three of the all-time best pitchers in the same starting rotation, only managed to win one ring. On the other side was the Yankees: the team that had won the most World Series trophies in the history of the game, but hadn’t won a championship in almost two decades in a city starving for another one. But the most standout thing about that World Series to me was all the buzz surrounding the rookie phenom Derek Jeter, who was playing beyond his years.

As I watched Jeter over the years I couldn’t help but share a bond with him because of that, even if he did play for the baseball team that I liked seeing lose the most. Now all these years later I had my 18th anniversary of my SCI as Jeter retired from baseball. But as he made such an epic walk-off single to win that game as he closed out his baseball career, I couldn’t help but think, “Wouldn’t it be nice if my SCI ‘career’ came to such a mesmerizing end right now as well?”

One Man's Annoying / Aggravating / Funny / Interesting Access Picture

I haven’t written a post on this blog since May, so I thought that I would start working my way back into writing more frequent posts again with a new entry to my picture series – which  incidentally, I haven’t done since early 2013. Regardless, from a wheelchair-user’s perspective when I see a picture like this, where a path goes from completely accessible to not in an instant, I think “Ok, what next?” I’ve never experienced anything quite this extreme, but have come close. A few years ago I had to deal with both a sidewalk and road creating quite the dead end challenge on the way to a doctor appointment. 

The most convoluted re-route I had to take was on the way back from a bachelor party in downtown Minneapolis about 5 years ago. We started out by the Target Center and on the way from one spot to another I had to roll over part of a sidewalk that had a board covering it due to construction. The board only covered about 3/4 of the of the sidewalk and it was the corner that was left exposed, leaving a gap that my chair’s wheels could get stuck in. On the way to the spot I had a group of guys to help me out, but on my way back I was alone and didn’t dare try rolling over the board without help in case I got stuck late at night. I tried to take a detour around the block but ran into stairs one way and no sidewalk curb cut out the other way. At a certain point I got so twisted around that I wasn’t sure where I was. And my chair’s battery power was running low to boot. Uh oh. Ultimately, I found door to a building that had and elevator that went up to the skyway system and instinctually started heading in the direction of the parking ramp my van was parked in. Thankfully, my instinct was correct, because at that time at night with minimal battery power there wasn’t a lot of room to not find my way on the first try. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to get home that night!

New EasyStand Blog post: Triple Feature Update

Forgive me for sounding like a broken record for starting this post in a similar way that I started a post on this blog last July, but I couldn’t believe that just like that almost 4 months have gone by between posts on this blog. Time sure flies. Once upon a time I was a pretty prolific writer on this blog, but the difference between then and now is that I was mostly unemployed during this blog’s first handful of years, and seemingly had endless time to develop content. But over the past year I’ve, finally, had consistent and stable full-time employment. Throw in the fact that I switched my every other day long morning personal care routine to the evenings to accommodate the stricter 8:30-5 nature of my work schedule—which essentially cuts out hours of my after work free time every other night—that work has been busy, my nonprofit has been demanding much more of my time (which is great, honestly), and that I’m spending a lot of spare time on maintaining a relationship, my writing time has suffered considerably.

So therefore, I’m doing a triple feature update on my last three EasyStand Blog posts, which is only the writing I’ve had time to do lately:

1) “Humor: The Key to a Successful PCA Relationship”: In this post I broke down the importance that humor plays in working with my PCAs.

2) “Battling Handicapped Parking Abuse”: In this post I wrote about one of the many instances of rampant handicapped parking abuse that I’ve witnessed first hand and offered up some suggestions about how we could battle back.

3) “Winter Parking and Bonus Accommodations”: This one is bittersweet. This is a post about how nice it is when people offer me a nice accessibility accommodation before I ask for one (i.e. a bonus accommodation). When I submitted my final draft to the blog it was just a shade over 1000 words and offered up a lot of background and context that lead up to my discussion about the bonus accommodation. But between posting my final draft and it going live on the site the title got changed, 400 words were cut, and a few other sentences were changed to phrase things in ways that I wouldn’t. To say that I was frustrated would be a huge understatement. We had a back and forth and I don’t agree with their reasoning for making such significant edits. But in the end, 60% of the post that went live on the site is still over 90% mine, so I’m not going to be a pouty pants and not share it.

MNSCIA Chapter Check-In

I don’t write about the nonprofit I co-founded, the Minnesota Spinal Cord Injury Association, on this blog as much as I should. Last fall we did a handful of things that were very cool and unique. So much so that they ended up catching the attention of our colleague chapters in the NSCIA. Coincidentally, the NSCIA and United Spinal Association’s magazine “Life in Action” reached out to us about writing an article about the things that we’ve done to kick off their new “Chapter Check-In” feature. I was tapped to write that article, which most people think turned out really well. Not only was it cool to have my name in an article in a national magazine, but much more importantly it brought the MNSCIA some great national attention. You can read the digital version that’s in the magazine here or just the article here.
Follow along on our Facebook page for updates or go to our website to become a member.