Upon graduating from MIT, I began working full-time for a company in the Boston area. One of the coolest perks of the job was the annual summer outing. Since I started working there in September, I missed the summer outing by just a few weeks. But, I planned to attend the summer outing the following year. I was beyond excited when I received the email saying that the summer outing would be a harbor cruise. As you can probably tell from the pictures on this site, I absolutely love the ocean! The one thing I love more than being by the water is being on the water!
However, I had never been on a harbor cruise before and wasn’t sure if the boat was wheelchair accessible. So, I zipped down the hallway of my company’s office building to ask our vice-president about the boat’s accessibility. She said that the cruise operator assured her the boat was fully wheelchair accessible. That was all I needed to hear… I proceeded to levitate from pure excitement all the way back to my office.
A few days later, I asked my friend, Taylor, if he wanted to come with me on the harbor cruise. He said ‘yes’ and told me about a cruise he had been on with the same cruise company a year earlier. My cruise was still approximately six weeks away, but it was all Taylor and I discussed for just about all of those six weeks. I asked him so many questions about the cruise he had been on: “What did you see?” “What was the food like?” “What was the boat like?”
While I asked tons of questions, what I was most excited for, and thus talked about the most, was being outside on the boat and feeling the ocean air on my face as we traversed the water! At the end of every conversation about the cruise, I talked about how great it will be to be on the open deck of the boat.
The morning of the cruise, Taylor drove us over to the dock. We followed my colleagues to the entrance of the boat. Once we arrived at the boat’s entrance, I stopped Taylor who was pushing me in my wheelchair. We both just stared at the “fully wheelchair accessible” entrance for a moment. I’m not saying it wasn’t accessible; all I will say is perhaps the cruise operator uses a different definition of “fully wheelchair accessible” from, well, every single wheelchair user I have ever met in my life.
Getting onto the boat required going up an extremely steep “ramp” with large bumps dispersed randomly on the surface of the ramp. Once you got to the top of the ramp, you had to go down a gargantuan step to get onto the boat. As we began to make our way up the ramp, I wondered if this was how it felt to climb Mt. Everest(minus the howling winds and sub-zero temperatures, of course). I was very glad that I am petite and that Taylor is strong. It took Taylor and 2 cruise personnel to get me onto the boat safely.
Once on the boat, I was ready to relax and have a beautiful afternoon. As more of my co-workers arrived, the chit chatting, laughing and meeting of significant others commenced. After a while, though, I realized that the part of the boat we were on was completely enclosed with windows. I looked around and noticed that the open part of the boat was upstairs. From what I saw of the entrance, I was pretty certain that there was no elevator on this boat… only steps. So, I asked Taylor to scope out the stairs to see if it’d be possible to lift me up the steps.
While Taylor was on his stair-scoping mission, one of my colleagues and I started conversing. After completing his mission, Taylor, seeing that I was in the middle of a conversation, came over to me and … What did Taylor do? Did he start dancing the merengue 🕺🏾? Tune in next month to find out. Love, hugs and blessings to all!
