I am coming to the close of my second week here at the Colorado Center for the Blind. It’s amazing how quickly the newness of it all is wearing off and becoming routine. I had a brief instant of panic one day while standing at the bus stop, thinking I had dropped my sleep shades on the short walk from my apartment. It took a second to realize that I was wearing them. I guess I’m taking to complete blindness a lot more easily than I anticipated.
Most of my classes are going very well. In travel, I have begun exploring the neighborhood, crossing major thoroughfares and getting to know the bus and light rail systems. In Braille class, I’ve learned most of the alphabet and basic punctuation marks, and am now learning to use a stylus and slate to write. In tech class, I’m getting more and more comfortable with JAWS, the screen reading software that allows blind people to use Windows.
I say “most” classes are going well because, predictably, home management has been a struggle. It’s too early to say definitively, but there is a chance I am the black angel of death when it comes to the kitchen. Even when mishaps are not my fault – like when someone gave me the wrong can and I dutifully dumped pumpkin puree into our greenbean casserole instead of cream of mushroom soup – trouble seems to follow me. Still, I am gaining confidence and am laying a solid foundation of basics to build on.
One thing I’ve been pleasantly surprised by is how accessible the Denver metro area is. Between the bus and the rapidly expanding light rail system, much of the city is easy to get to on public transportation. Moreover, the address system is extremely logical and offers a lot of clues if you know how to read it. The hundreds (and thousands, and ten thousands) place in a street address tells you how far you are from the central north-south (Broadway) and east-west (Ellsworth) streets at the heart of Denver. The tens place gives you a general idea of how far down a given block an address might be, since most blocks in the Denver area contain 100 address numbers. And the ones place, when combined with the cardinal direction every street includes, will tell you which side of the street a given address is on.
For example, I can tell from my apartment’s address of 5871 S. Lowell Blvd. that:
(1) I am 58 blocks south of Ellsworth;
(2) My apartment is a little over 2/3 of the way down the block if approaching from the north
(3) Thanks to the mnemonic NOW SEE (North Odd West, South Even East), I can use the odd number in the ones place to determine that I am on the west side of the north-south street I live on.
I’ve already begun exploring the Denver area, and I must say – the ubiquity of the public transportation system and the logic of the address system makes navigating pretty painless. I look forward to getting to know the area better in the months ahead.
Friday, October 28, 2016
Momentarily Lost At Sea
There is a frequently-used technique in cane travel known as “shorelining,” which is essentially using your cane to follow a curb, wall, grass sidewalk, or other perimeter. The vaguely aquatic metaphor is an apt one. In fact, I’ve been finding that navigating with a cane and a blindfold is almost as much like swimming as it is walking. Shorelining is like clinging to the side of the pool when you’re first learning to swim: eventually, there comes a time when you have to let go of the wall and venture into the deep end.
My “deep end” moment came last Friday, at the end of my first week of training at the Colorado Center for the Blind, when my travel instructor sent me on my first “independent” – an unsupervised trek to a nearby coffee shop I had never been to. Much of the route was familiar to me, as the coffee shop is close to the area where the bus to and from my apartment stops every day. However, where I normally go left to pick up my bus, I now had to instead go straight across a wide expanse of concrete, knowing only vaguely what I was looking for and having no way to tell whether I was really on the right track.
There was a moment where I stopped shorelining the curb, paused to try and orient myself, and then struck out in the direction where I thought I was supposed to go. And for that brief moment, I felt completely adrift – suddenly disoriented, with no nearby curb or other marker to tell me where I was. Floating, as it were.
The moment of indecision was a brief one. I could tell from the feel of the sun on my shoulder that I was headed roughly north, and the sound of nearby traffic helped me fine-tune the direction I was going. I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. While prudence and caution are critical for a cane traveler, so, too are confidence and decisiveness.
Over the past week, I’ve had several more successful travel adventures – longer trips, crossing busy streets, exploring the local light rail system, etc. But that moment of feeling myself adrift and then making an educated guess on direction and plowing ahead was definitely a turning point.
My “deep end” moment came last Friday, at the end of my first week of training at the Colorado Center for the Blind, when my travel instructor sent me on my first “independent” – an unsupervised trek to a nearby coffee shop I had never been to. Much of the route was familiar to me, as the coffee shop is close to the area where the bus to and from my apartment stops every day. However, where I normally go left to pick up my bus, I now had to instead go straight across a wide expanse of concrete, knowing only vaguely what I was looking for and having no way to tell whether I was really on the right track.
There was a moment where I stopped shorelining the curb, paused to try and orient myself, and then struck out in the direction where I thought I was supposed to go. And for that brief moment, I felt completely adrift – suddenly disoriented, with no nearby curb or other marker to tell me where I was. Floating, as it were.
The moment of indecision was a brief one. I could tell from the feel of the sun on my shoulder that I was headed roughly north, and the sound of nearby traffic helped me fine-tune the direction I was going. I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. While prudence and caution are critical for a cane traveler, so, too are confidence and decisiveness.
Over the past week, I’ve had several more successful travel adventures – longer trips, crossing busy streets, exploring the local light rail system, etc. But that moment of feeling myself adrift and then making an educated guess on direction and plowing ahead was definitely a turning point.
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Well! I have now completed my first week of classes at the Colorado Center for the Blind. As many people have asked me about what I'll be doing in my program there, I figured I'd start this blog to keep y'all updated.
The first thing you should know is that every student at the Center is required to wear sleep shades that block out all light. This policy is in effect from 8 AM, when we assemble for morning announcements, until 4:30 PM, when our last class of the day ends and we scatter to the winds. Although my sight is obviously very limited, I still rely on it a great deal in my daily life; so leaving it behind poses any number of new challenges.
The first trick is simply getting around the Center. The building is a converted YMCA, so the floorplan isn't exactly a logical grid. I've spent the past few days trying to commit the layout to memory, noting specific landmarks and building an image in my mind. I'm at the point now where I can more or less find my classrooms, but I still get disoriented easily if I deviate from the paths I'm familiar with.
As for classes, I have four of them: Travel (learning how to navigate around the Center, the neighborhood, and, eventually, the Denver metro area); Home Managemet (cooking and cleaning -- which, I might add, were the biggest draws for me entering a program like this); Braille; and Tech (learning how to use computers and smartphones without sight). Diving into all four subjects without the aid of sight has been quite the challenge this week, but thankfully, I like challenges and have been very excited with the progress I've made:
TRAVEL -- I completed my first "independent" yesterday, locating and returning from a coffee shop that's maybe 12-15 minutes from the Center through a residential area.
HOME MANAGEMENT -- unsurprisingly, this is my worst subject, so they're taking it easy on me; but I've been doing some basic stuff and feel a huge sense of relief that I'll soon be quite proficient in this department. One of my graduation requirements is to cook a meal for 65 people, so expect some kitchen ninja skills next time you see me.
BRAILLE -- I've learned about 2/3 of the alphabet and various punctuation signs, and am slowly pawing my way through some short sentences.
TECH -- I've been learning the Windows-based software known as JAWS, which allows blind people to use their computers vision-free (in fact, the computers in the Tech classrooms have no monitors). It's a lot of memorization of keyboard shortcuts, but I'm getting the hang of basic Outlook and Word functions and look forward to becoming a more fluent user.
It has been an exhausting week -- not being able to rely on sight at all means an awful lot of memorization, listening for cues, and taxing my brain in ways it's not used to -- but I'm thrilled to be here in Littleton, learning skills that will allow me to take more control of my life. I'll keep ya posted...
The first thing you should know is that every student at the Center is required to wear sleep shades that block out all light. This policy is in effect from 8 AM, when we assemble for morning announcements, until 4:30 PM, when our last class of the day ends and we scatter to the winds. Although my sight is obviously very limited, I still rely on it a great deal in my daily life; so leaving it behind poses any number of new challenges.
The first trick is simply getting around the Center. The building is a converted YMCA, so the floorplan isn't exactly a logical grid. I've spent the past few days trying to commit the layout to memory, noting specific landmarks and building an image in my mind. I'm at the point now where I can more or less find my classrooms, but I still get disoriented easily if I deviate from the paths I'm familiar with.
As for classes, I have four of them: Travel (learning how to navigate around the Center, the neighborhood, and, eventually, the Denver metro area); Home Managemet (cooking and cleaning -- which, I might add, were the biggest draws for me entering a program like this); Braille; and Tech (learning how to use computers and smartphones without sight). Diving into all four subjects without the aid of sight has been quite the challenge this week, but thankfully, I like challenges and have been very excited with the progress I've made:
TRAVEL -- I completed my first "independent" yesterday, locating and returning from a coffee shop that's maybe 12-15 minutes from the Center through a residential area.
HOME MANAGEMENT -- unsurprisingly, this is my worst subject, so they're taking it easy on me; but I've been doing some basic stuff and feel a huge sense of relief that I'll soon be quite proficient in this department. One of my graduation requirements is to cook a meal for 65 people, so expect some kitchen ninja skills next time you see me.
BRAILLE -- I've learned about 2/3 of the alphabet and various punctuation signs, and am slowly pawing my way through some short sentences.
TECH -- I've been learning the Windows-based software known as JAWS, which allows blind people to use their computers vision-free (in fact, the computers in the Tech classrooms have no monitors). It's a lot of memorization of keyboard shortcuts, but I'm getting the hang of basic Outlook and Word functions and look forward to becoming a more fluent user.
It has been an exhausting week -- not being able to rely on sight at all means an awful lot of memorization, listening for cues, and taxing my brain in ways it's not used to -- but I'm thrilled to be here in Littleton, learning skills that will allow me to take more control of my life. I'll keep ya posted...
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