Memor-able holidays
by Liz Carr : April 2006
I've just booked a holiday. I'm going to take a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles along the iconic Route 66. It'll be like Thelma and Louise ... well, Thelma and her PA, Louise.
It will be nothing like the holidays I endured as a child; while other families went to Spain or Florida, we rarely left the county we lived in, never mind the country. The worst of it, however, is that we would spend a fortnight each year in a Hi-de-Hi! style holiday camp.
By the age of eighteen, I could no longer cope with another knobbly knee, glamorous gran or children's entertainer. I was not a happy camper.
I decided then that I'd travel the world. Fifteen years later and I'm still on that journey.
When booking for Route 66, the travel agent said, "We're not a specialist tour company for the handicapped and, to be honest, it's a bit too much trouble to have to worry about all this access stuff so go travel with your own people". I may be paraphrasing, but I'm sure that's what they really mean when they say, "Why don't you contact a special company for special holidays for special people like you?"
I say that, "Yes, perhaps I would - if only the word 'accessible' didn't add an extra five hundred pounds to the cost of the trip".
Next comes the indignity of the interrogation from the medical screening line when booking travel insurance.
"What's wrong with you?" they ask. For my own amusement, I tell them I have Meusthronuskaputus. These seven syllables of Latin seem to satisfy their appetites for medical sustenance and they remain oblivious to the fact that it really means that my chair is buggered.
They then ask me, "Do you think you'll survive the flight?"
"Doesn't that really kind of depend on the pilot? I'm assuming he's passed his test?"
Finally, the ultimate question, "Do you have a terminal prognosis?"
"Don't we all?" I ask thoughtfully. I never realised booking holiday insurance was going to raise such existential questions.
They wheel my legs away at the airport check-in and replace them with what can only be described as a wheel-sofa. It's so big that both me and my PA can sit comfortably while the customer service Gestapo take control.
There's many an example of disabled people having their wheelchairs lost or broken on plane journeys, but I've never had any problems. I just destroy my wheelchair before I leave. That way I'm not disappointed, and I will be fully prepared when a cardboard box full of parts greets me as I arrive on foreign soil.
At security, after making the machine beep, I'm asked, "Do you have any metal objects on you?" I try to raise a smile, but they don't respond.
"Ehh, nothing obvious, no", I reply, and play the humourless game. The fact that my wheelchair cushion is stashed with contraband always gives me the last laugh.
Then the moment that justifies your existence as a disabled person arrives - you pass the Premiere Privilege Platinum Class passengers and board the plane before everyone else, even the ridiculously rich. It makes everything worthwhile.
This moment, however, is fleeting. Before long, a couple of bag-handlers will grab you and strap you onto the narrowest deck chair on wheels as they unceremoniously drag you to your seat. Forget being a trolley dolly, at this point you are just the trolley.
Take my advice, if there is a toilet with a wheelchair symbol on the door, don't be fooled. It just means that there is a hand rail out of reach inside the tiny cubicle. Forget any ambition you may have to join the Mile High Club. By the time they've wheeled you in on your trolley, the hoist is in place, the PA is present and your lover is at the ready, you'll no longer be in the mood. Trust me on this one.
As the plane finally takes off, I close my eyes and remember why I travel.
I remember when six saffron enrobed Buddhist monks raised me aloft from the pier to the ferry in Bangkok because the driver wouldn't stop for me. I remember when a fork lift truck lowered me from the aeroplane to the runway in the Australian Outback. I remember when I had to wee into a hole in the floor on a train to China, soaking my feet, and those of my PA, before realising that there was a normal sit down toilet next door.
I remember that sometimes in my travels, it has been the lack of access, the lack of normality and the lack of perfection which has made the experience truly perfect.
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