#7 "The Truth about Mobility"

It IS everything it's cracked up to be! Getting from point A to point B is a huge part of life. Most people don't really think about it at all (unless you're 92 and someone is threatening to take your license away from you). But for the rest of us, it's just a question of which transportation to use.
Feet: great for your heart, cheap, no need to find the keys, easy to daydream or browse along the way, really good for getting around your house and yard or over to the neighbor's for whatever.
Bike: fun, also cheap, refreshing if it's a nice day, good for the environment.
Car: Ok admit it. Everyone should own a car. (Ok ok. Maybe not in NYC or SanFran but just about everywhere else.) Go to work, pick up the dry cleaning, groceries, meet friends for..., and maybe best of all--shop! "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping."

So when my feet wouldn't take me, the bike tipped over and the State wouldn't renew my license, I developed a serious case of stay at home blues. One day, at an MS Society annual meeting, a woman sitting at my table stood, stepped on her Segway, and in a flash left the room. EUREKA, I thought. I gotta have one of those things! And I will be forever in Wendy's debt for showing it to me. Everyone with MS should have one! This is AWESOME! Three short weeks later I was proudly zooming around my neighborhood on my "man-magnet."

Advice to all women (physically challenged or not): Want to attract male attention? Buy a Segway. Guys are drawn to them like big flat-screen TVs.

For more than 5 years it has taken me on all sorts of adventures including to the mountains in Mexico where I bumped along narrow sidewalks or cobblestone streets to the astonishment of onlookers (including the local police who took several days to decide it did not belong on sidewalks and banished me to the streets.)

But being a trail blazer has challenges. Many officials in gov't and business prefer the status quo. So within weeks of discovering the segway, I also discovered the slimy underbelly of discrimination.

"Discrimination. Discrimination is the active denial of desired goals from a category of persons. A category can be based on sex, ethnicity, nationality, religion, language, or class. More recently, disadvantaged groups now also include those based on gender, age, and physical disabilities."

Who would have thought!?

Wouldn't everyone be happy to see a disabled person cleverly disguised as able-bodied? Happily going about their business? Hmmmm. Maybe not.

More pics from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico--
beautiful but not too accessible. Some days I stayed behind in our gorgeous rented house while the rest went out exploring. Even with the Segway, hills and cobblestones can be a bit tiring--but oh so much fun and oh so worth the trip!

#1 On the beach in the 90s-"we've got time"

The thing about MS--at least for me--is that it is so slow and subtle (not like 9/11 at all) that I didn't really notice how fast it was changing my life. That is one of the main reasons I am writing this blog. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was on my beach bike riding furiously down New Smyrna Beach with friends in an attempt to beat the thunderstorm and lightening boltsclosing in behind us. This was a regular weekend afternoon activity because we always stayed for "just one more cold brew" at the beachfront bar before heading down the beach to the condo for an afternoon snooze--"the black clouds aren't coming THAT fast--we've got plenty of time"

Or do we? It wasn't really that long ago...it was the '90s...and it is only 2009--just one decade. Well to be fair, a decade and a half.

It was sitting in the hot sun on the patio at Tony & Joes beach bar that I first noticed that one leg felt a bit weaker than the other. Not a lot. But I remember asking a friend to test it by pushing on my shin--first one leg, then the other. He agreed. My left leg--and I'm left handed--was weaker. Hmmmm, I thought, that's weird... and then went back to my beer. I had better things to think about.