A Real Expedition in the Concrete Jungle - November 23, 2010

Success, or failure…I guess it’s like the whole glass half empty/half full conundrum, but at least it turned out OK.  See, any time a blind person (or maybe it’s just me) goes exploring in a city where her internal mapping system (i.e. the automaticly imprinted mental image of the topography of an area that I visualize in my minds eye and navigate from) has faded from years of little use, one never quite knows how things will turn out, or where she’ll end up.  Sometimes everything goes smoothly and exactly according to plan, other times, well…go something like this one.

            

So, on my second day in NYC, I decided to go exploring in Riverside park.  I headed south this time since yesterday I had wandered north for  a bit.  At one point we came upon a bunch of stairs, and since my guidedog, for whatever reason, loves going down stairs (and ramps and hills) down them we went, actually a series of them along a twisted winding path.  After the steps my dog and I found ourselves on a path running alongside what had to be a lake.  I didn’t recall hearing about a lake in Riverside Park during the short time I lived in Manhattan or on any of my many subsequent visits, but I was heading south and a body of lapping water was on my left, so cool, there’s a lake. 

            

It was at this point that I realized I needed to pee.  So I made the logical choice to continue on around the lake back towards Riverside Drive, which would be the most direct route back, rather than trying to retrace the circuitous route we had come.  Right?

            

Well…the lake kept going on…and on…and on.  Sometimes we were right alongside the oncoming traffic on the Westside highway, and at other points we passed large, grassy areas with people playing what I think was tennis and other sports.  For awhile there were lots of joggers and bicyclists sharing the path, but eventually the path narrowed, continuing for a very long stretch as part of the highway, with very fewother occupants.

            

Eventually I decided I was going to have to ask someone how I could get off this path, ‘cause obviously I was missing something.  Unfortunately there weren’t many people to ask anymore, plus the noise from the highway made it difficult for me to hear anyone coming until they’d pretty much passed me.  I kept trying to get my dog to find a turnoff (some way off this endless path to nowhere), but alas, nothing.  What was I to do accept trek along until finally I heard a jogger’s footsteps approaching. 

            

“Excuse me.  Can you tell me where I can get off this path?”  And would you believe it, he actually stopped to help.  “yes, your next exit is about three quarters of a mile further on, at 125^th street.”  After thanking him, I continued on, with the immediate dawning of two very different realizations at once.  One, was that I wasn’t heading south along a lake at all, I was heading north along the Hudson River (no wonder there was no end whatsoever).  Considering I had started south from 86^th Street, I had made it quite a ways.  It’s totally disorienting when I’m picturing one thing in my head, and it turns out to be something entirely different (especially since that doesn’t happen to me very often, thank God).

            

The other realization was more of a validation of exactly why I love New York  and New Yorkers.  Contrary to the whole country’s beliefs – maybe even the world’s – in my experience, New Yorkers aren’t mean and/or rude (usually).  I find them to be extremely helpful, direct (which San Franciscans are most definitely not), and socially adept, because they’re used to living in close proximity to so many others.  The man stopping as soon as I tried to get his attention, just reconfirmed all my beliefs.  In no other city have I experienced people immediately stopping when I try to ask them something.  Often (and I can’t be sure why because I can’t see them), people don’t respond to me.  There are tons of possibilities why not (they don’t realize I’m talking to them, they didn’t hear me, they don’t speak English, etc), but it usually takes a few uncertain tries for me to get someone to respond; and when they do, there is often a slight delay, an anxious pause while I wait to find out if the person is going to answer.  The man’s immediate response on my first try was, well, inspiring…maybe there are more like him.

            

And there are!  At what felt like it could have been three quarters of a mile, I stopped the next person I came across, so I wouldn’t miss the escape.  A biker going the other direction pulled over as soon as I called to her (announced by the squeal of her breaks).  She got off her bike and walked with me to the crossing, which was back the way she had just come.  She waited to let me know when to cross (it was a very confusing crossing for me), and even offered to continue on with me to the next street.  I assured her I’d be OK, and crossed over to a tunnel under the Westside Highway.

            

On the other side, however, the streets were not the easy grid I imagined, and after a feudal attempt to get my bareings, I was thoroughly confused. After a particularly bad street crossing, a truly sexy Brooklyn accented, male voice called (or rather shouted) from a car window, “Can you hear me?”  “Yeah I can hear you,” I said, thinking, I’m blind, not deaf!  He was a very nice guy though, informing me that this was the ramp to the Westside Highway, and told me where I needed to go. 

            

However, his directions took me into an overgrown field with no obvious path, so I figured he must have had his directions switched, because this couldn’t be where I was supposed to be.  So back the other way I went, until that landed me in a very industrial feeling area under the highway.  So basically, after assistance from a truck driver, then a construction worker, and finally a woman going to the pedestrian ramp that served as riverside Drive for a block, I made it back to the precious, precious grid of Manhattan streets.  The very nice native Manhattanite insisted on walking with me over to Broadway, which I wasn’t about to refuse at this point.  She even found me a bathroom, which by then was a total blessing, and quite a miraculous feit in this city. 

            

So, once I hit Broadway I was good to go.  I even opted to walk the more than 35 blocks back to the apartment.  I just hoped it wouldn’t be too much on my unaccustomed feet, because I was meeting a friend in Columbus Circle in just two hours, gonna hang out in the Park (Central Park, of course), and then over to check out the holiday windows (all walking of course).  I prayed there would be some drinking in there at some point, any point, please.  I definitely was going to catch the subway to and from though (mildly anxiety provoking since I hadn’t ridden the NY subway in over a year, didn’t really remember the layout of the system, and never really rode it by myself in the past), and forgo the walking, as much as I love it in a city like this.