Another Curmudgeon Moment
 

In keeping with the theme of approaching curmudgeon-hood I find that often it's the little things that are irksome............

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...879c98a370.jpg

Good thought, but HORRIBLE implementation.

Worse than construction signs that routinely are put in bike lanes and on road shoulders.

That is probably worth a call to your city.

It is no worse than the car parked in the bike lane further up the road.

That is hailarious. Send it to the city ... but also sell it to the local paper ... maybe with a note about the sign, the car, and the fact that cyclists really want to cooperate to keep out of the way of drivers ... but most of us are still corporeal.

When did North Carolina start driving on the left side of the road?

Somewhere in my archives I have a photo of a similar construction warning sign in a hospital district, warning drivers to slow down for pedestrians crossing the street between hospital complex buildings.

The warn sign was blocking the only wheelchair accessible ramp.

I reported it and waited for the crew to move the sign. It would have forced people in wheelchairs into traffic or, possibly worse, to attempt to go around the sign on the inside, which was a grassy slope. A wheelchair could easily slide down that grassy slope and topple over or trap a disabled person against a building or fence.

Anyone or any committee who plan access for cyclists, disabled folks and pedestrians need to spend at least a week riding a bike, walking or using a wheelchair in the areas where planners intend to modify existing infrastructure. Or -- and here's a radical idea -- include disabled folks, cyclists and pedestrians on the planning committees.

It's an Australian shot. Not unusual occurrence, unfortunately, in terms of bike lanes being taken up with stuff.

Fixed, for American audiences:

No, it's not NC. It's the internet, a pic submitted for your perusal and amusement.

not the first time this has occurred.

From this page. (some of the other photos must be fakes, right? And the writer doesn't understand sharrows.)

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f3dc80cc4f.jpg

Not all that unusual. A utility repair crew decided to make it safe for their workers by installing four foot high concrete barrier along a local street which is 4 lanes wide and with a 45 mph speed limit. They installed it right across a crosswalk serving a major bike path and within a short walk from a high school. They completely blocked all access for many hundreds of feet in both directions. The east end required people to cross next to an interstate overpass that severely limited driver's ability to see anyone crossing the road. A call to the Regional Transportation Commission who controls the bike path had workers out there removing the barriers within a couple of hours. They took the entire barrier down. It pays to complain.

I thought handicap accessible laws were a joke until I spent six weeks on crutches.

The straw which broke the camels back was an ice machine blocking a handicap ramp at the local convenience store - I could not get up the curb to get a cup of coffee. It angered me so much that I stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh.


-Tim-

Wait, what?

When i worked at a grocery store i got to see the almist full spectrum of people. One of the curious things to see was when someone was injured with a broken leg, arm, or ankle was they wanted special treatment. However people who were born handicap, No leg, No arm etc they didnt want any help at all.
I say that to say its probably just par for the course for them to see miused handicap areas

I understood the Rush Limbaugh reference. I listened to him daily back in the 1990s and even watched his short-lived TV show. Back then he was an often humorous critic of government and social hypocrisies. But over time he morphed into a mean-spirited, paranoid ghost of his former self, akin to the decline of humorist Jean Shepherd, as described by Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen in an article for Slate in 2008.

I realized later Rush had become a junkie, addicted to oxycontin, which finally came to a head when he'd coerced his housekeeper into becoming his dope buyer. At the same time Rush was supposedly going deaf. His marriage to his former fitness coach was failing. Rush was spiraling down the drain and taking out his failures and insecurities on the world around him.

Turns out Limbaugh's "deafness" was caused by his oxycontin addiction. Common side effects of opiate addiction include hearing loss, painful constipation unless the drug usage is accompanied by stool softeners and laxatives to compensate for the poor diet and hydration as addicts lose their appetites.

When Rush kicked his addiction his hearing returned, but his tone-deafness remained. He was never a funny satirist again. He became mean-spirited, mocking things he didn't understand -- such as equal access for disabled folks -- and ridiculing people on a much more personal level, something he hadn't done before to anyone other than politicians and celebrities. But he began verbally attacking ordinary people who were unfortunate enough to stray into his skewed radar.

Personally, I turned off Rush when he mocked the death of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. Garcia was never particularly political, he was just a typical pop musician who lived life on his own terms, was a seemingly tireless entertainer for his fans, and tried not to hurt anyone other than himself. Garcia died from a combination of ill health due to diabetes and drug addiction.

IOW, Jerry Garcia and Rush Limbaugh had a lot in common as libertarians and libertines, overeaters and substance abusers, prolific entertainers in their own niches, with devoted fans known as Deadheads and Dittoheads. The irony struck me. I never listened to Rush again, although it's impossible not to know about his occasional newsworthy gaffes. He had nothing more to say. And he soon became irrelevant as the genre of political/culture war based talk radio devolved into an increasingly angry, shrill and delusional mess with successors to Limbaugh's legacy. He's barely relevant in his own genre anymore.

Whatever our differences we have more in common than not. Whether commanded by our spiritual belief systems or common sense derived through nurture and objective observation of the world, it seems sensible to interpret a little more generously the references in the Constitution to the general welfare, and to the concept of the commonwealth, not as free money or money for nothing, but as investments in the people of the nation as being of importance equal to investments in infrastructure and organizations.

But that philosophy won't sell ads for Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram or Ann Coulter. And you couldn't sell an ad for the anarchist fringe media sites I follow out of curiosity, because they'd need a clue just to understand how an economy works in the real world, and they wouldn't even recognize a clue if it were a bookmark in their copies of Das Kapital and Wealth of Nations, the latter underlined so heavily the pages are torn through. There should be a common ground between the two extremes but nowadays it's unpopular to be a moderate or to suggest compromise.

/curmudgeon rant off

Aside from the occasional abuse of empathy by a tiny handful of people, there is a difference between someone with a lifelong disability and someone newly limited by an injury that requires a cast, sling, etc. Many of the former with longterm disabilities have had time and mentoring to adapt. The latter with recent injuries may still be in pain and shock, depending on the injury, and haven't figured out yet how to adapt. I know I'm still coping only awkwardly with my busted up shoulder from being hit by a car in May. I still drop things and struggle to open and close doors when I forget the right arm is still injured. I don't like to ask for help and it makes me grumpy.

While riding the bus to the VA clinic last week the driver stopped for someone who was in a standard manual push wheelchair and also had an arm in a new cast. The wheelchair was of the type with smaller wheels, intended to be pushed along by a caregiver or attendant. It wasn't designed for traveling by the person in the wheelchair. Because of the impoverished neighborhood where the person was waiting I'm assuming it's all he could get.

He struggled to get up the bus ramp, but with only one good arm it was hopeless. I started to get up to help and realized I was useless -- my right shoulder is still broken and dislocated and I can barely lift a coffee cup, even months after the injury. The bus driver reluctantly got out to help push the wheelchair up the ramp.

The regular city bus drivers don't normally assist disabled people on and off the bus. Those folks are supposed to have caregivers or use the special buses for people with mobility impairments. But many disabled folks retain a lot of independence and persist in trying to use the regular city buses. In fact, years ago there was a scandal when several disabled folks, including my mom, fell off the buses and were simply abandoned by city bus drivers, left lying in the street or curbside. My mom was rescued by a passing family in a large vehicle who helped her up and to her apartment -- mom couldn't even thank them properly because they spoke only Spanish and she spoke mostly English, although mom's Spanish is better than mine. After that I took over as mom's caregiver because her in-home aides should have been accompanying her on those bus trip expeditions to shopping, but the aides would all bug out early. And mom soon after qualified for the city bus service's mobility impaired transit service, which has proper mechanized lifts for wheelchairs, and drivers who are trained specifically to assist disabled folks.

Worked several years with some handicapped folks and they were fiercely independent. Wanted help from no one, and did not want special treatment. They accepted their disabilities, but did not accept their status as handicapped. Earned my respect for sure. One of my friends insisted of climbing up the steps to my house in the dead of winter when we could have easily carried him in his chair. Perhaps he was crazy, but he knew we respected him for his tenacious clinging to being normal.

Helping someone who is injured and asks for help is compassion, not "special treatment."

It is incredibly humbling to be injured, not used to a handicapped, and having to ask for help. No one wants to lose use of an arm or leg and some just need some help, that's all.


-Tim-

:love:

Yeah. In law school I dated a woman in a chair. We had to be mindful of things like going to new bars and restaurants in case there were access/restroom issues. Sometimes we would call ahead to check. People also say/do things that can sound insensitive, though not intentionally. One day we were on an elevator at a mall. And old woman said to the GF :"You're so beautiful, it's a shame you can't walk." She used to drive herself to school using hand controls. One day we went grocery shopping. I was driving. The chair was in the back of her Volvo station wagon. I pulled into a handicapped spot and got out to get the chair out of the back. A woman walking by banged on the hood of the car and yelled at us for parking there. She was most embarrassed when she saw me come around from the back of the car with the chair. One amusing incident happened the day after I got out of the hospital after having my aortic valve replaced with a mechanical one. I had the surgery done in Pittsburgh, where we went to school. The GF drove me to the train station so I could go back to Philly rest before the new school year. When we got to the train an Amtrak employee on the platform assumed she was the one who needed assistance. She told him she was fine and that I was the one who needed help with my bag.

6 years ago I broke the neck of my femur and had it repaired. For a month or two afterward I had to use a walker. Negotiating one stair step with a walker is easy. Two steps is almost impossible so I had a carpenter build a step extension so that I could get into and out of my front door. Within a week I received a letter from the condo association telling me that I had a "non-approved exterior modification". That's why we need ADA laws.