{"id":90,"date":"2014-08-13T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2015-03-06T16:39:05","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T16:39:05","slug":"ive-got-rhythm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/ive-got-rhythm\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Got Rhythm…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, I\u2019m eight miles closer to my goals.\u00a0\u00a0 Eight miles, 2400 feet and three doorways that seem a little more open than they did just one week ago.<\/p>\n

The first doorway is technological. I continue to be amazed by how many technological advances have been made in the last eleven\u00a0years. When I first traded in my driver\u2019s license for a transit pass, there were certainly many useful tools that helped the blind and visually impaired do more with their lives then sit on a street corner with a can of pencils, but the comparison between now and 2003 is staggering. A lot of it has to do with size and chipset power. There have been optical character recognition scanners for years, for example, but the idea that you can plug a miniature camera into the USB port on my laptop, snap a picture of a piece of paper and have it read it to you less than five seconds later seems, to me, well within the boundaries of science fiction. I\u2019ve been learning Braille, mostly for the convenience of adding labels to items in my pantry and so as not to have to ask anyone for an assist when it comes to elevators and such, but the invention of a digital pen that you can touch to a label, speak the contents of what you\u2019re labeling into the pen, and come back later to identify the label by touching the pen to it and hearing what you previously recorded based on which label you\u2019re touching\u2026 this is powerful technology.<\/p>\n

I met with a representative from a company called Adaptive Technology Services this past week, and what struck me most of all was the pervasive attitude in their corporate culture that somewhere, there is a technology that can be used to assist any disability or handicap. These are people who hear the words \u201cblind video editor\u201d and they don\u2019t think \u201coxymoron.\u201d They think \u201cpossibility.\u201d I like that. I\u2019ve already said that I intend to use every last rod and cone that my retina is willing to give me to tell interesting stories the way I want to tell them, and these are the people who can help make that happen.<\/p>\n

The second doorway has to do with my own attitude. I\u2019ve been doing more cane training, because the refresher course I took in May is not nearly enough. The need for this training put me in mind of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few weeks ago. He was talking about a comment he heard that went something like this: if you keep running into jerks all day, you have to at least consider the possibility that you\u2019re the jerk. I cleaned it up a bit, but that\u2019s the general idea, and it occurred to me that there\u2019s a message to be applied to my own life. I\u2019ve written about how I continually seem to be coming across people with skewed perceptions and low expectations, and it seems I have to at least consider the possibility that if I keep running into these people, then perhaps I\u2019m the one who isn\u2019t inspiring confidence.<\/p>\n

So when my application for continued mobility training was accepted, I was more than ready to go. I have to say\u2026 it\u2019s not easy. Nobody wakes up with the idea that it\u2019s going to be a party and a half to be the guy with the cane, parting the crowds on the sidewalk like Moses on the banks of the Red Sea, but the alternative of either turning oneself into a shut-in to avoid those crowds or not using the cane at all and tripping on every curb or staircase on a route is much worse. So, cane training it is.<\/p>\n

Once again, the clich\u00e9 is wrong. Turns out\u2026 you do have to sweat the small stuff. Holding the cane with your index finger on the side of the grip in order to get a good sweep. Keeping your hand and forearm relaxed instead of thrust out in front of you. Not jerking your head from side to side like a frightened jackrabbit, but using more relaxed motions to see whatever what\u2019s left of your vision will allow you to pick up and\u2026 whether you like it or not, accepting that vision is the secondary means of evaluating your surroundings, or\u2026 at best\u2026 a tie for first. These are all subtle actions and habits that convey to others the impression you know what you\u2019re doing. I\u2019m very anxious to see if it helps, but my sense after these first few days of incorporating these techniques is that they are indeed making a difference. I think there will always be people on one side of the bell curve of expectations who assume that the label \u201cdisabled,\u201d is synonymous with \u201chelpless.\u201d I think, though, there will also always be people on the other end of that curve\u2026 the ones who assume the highest possible outcome for anyone willing to make the effort.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what leads me to the third doorway, the one that opens into the world of physical accomplishment.\u00a0\u00a0 My friend Loren and I hit the trail again this past weekend, and we took the obligatory selfie at the top of the hike up Montero, just south of Pacifica. The third member of this most recent trek is the incorrigible Miss B\u2026. short for Miss Behaving, of course, and she does a pretty good job of living up to her name, but I think she was as excited as I was to successfully reach the summit, enshrouded in fog or not.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a><\/p>\n

The hike was a great way to gauge\u00a0my progress after a month\u2019s worth of shorter hikes, and I\u2019m more convinced than ever that my goal of seeing the world while I still have some sight left to see it can indeed happen. The hike was a great combination of challenges. The fire trail to the top was steep \u2013 roughly eight hundred feet of elevation gain per mile \u2013 great training for endurance, and not just for me. Loren was using the hike as training for a trip to Montana later this month that\u2019s part of a larger highpointing expedition and tackled the trail with a full pack. There was also more than enough single track trail to give me a run for my money. I\u2019ve been trying to become more proficient in using trekking poles in place of a cane for navigation in the backcountry, and it\u2019s finally starting to feel comfortable, with fewer missteps along the way. I\u2019m finding that Leki poles are very reliable when it comes to both weight bearing strength and for their comfortable grips. I may still experiment with the REI brand but it looks like Leki is going to be the way to go for the technique I\u2019m developing \u2013 left pole\/right foot, right pole\/left foot, each successive foot landing exactly where the same side pole had been a moment before. It\u2019s a rhythm that is working well, at least on trails that are more than shoulder width. It\u2019s several degrees more difficult when the trail is very narrow, and I\u2019m not sure if one method I\u2019m trying \u2013 placing one pole in the center of my gait followed by one foot, then one step forward with the pole and another step with the other foot, is going to work. At least the penalty for mistakes this week was only a shallow gulley and not a tumble off a ridgeline. Room for improvement, but it\u2019s coming along.<\/p>\n

\"Finding<\/a><\/p>\n

It really does seem to be about finding a good rhythm, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m finding to be true about so much of this little escapade, both on the streets of San Francisco as well asin what\u2019s remaining of my career and what I\u2019m starting to think of as \u201cmy previous life,\u201d and now the entire journey that\u2019s starting to involve, at last, more and more people and partners. There\u2019s something about the confidence bestowed by rhythm. This idea that if the next step is like the last, you get places, and you get there with style. I can\u2019t say for sure that I look like the most confident person on the trail, or in what I sometimes call \u201creal life,\u201d by which I mean everything that happens off the trail. Still, I think that a good rhythm is the foundation for everything worth doing \u2013 that if you master the basic beats and steps of whatever it is you\u2019re trying to learn, you can riff from that point on. This comes back to the old adage that you have to know what the rules are before you can break them, and I think it\u2019s a good adage to keep in mind. Right now, I\u2019m learning some new rhythms that are helping me play some old tunes. It\u2019s a great pleasure to see the two fitting together so well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, I\u2019m eight miles closer to my goals.\u00a0\u00a0 Eight miles, 2400 feet and three doorways that seem a little more open than they did just one week ago. The first doorway is technological. I continue to be amazed by how many technological advances have been made in the last eleven\u00a0years. When I first traded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hiking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Rim5-1s","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}