It was 2010. I had been feeling a little restless. I felt like I had become too comfortable relying on the help of others.  As a young man, I used to go all over the place on my own, but having settled down in one place, made friends, gotten older, and gotten married, I increasingly relied on others to get me where I needed to go.  I recognized it as a wonderful blessing, but it started to bother me. I felt a little trapped.  I felt resentful of the limitations others seemingly placed on me.  The truth is they did nothing but help me. If I felt confined, it was my own fault.  I feared that I was forgetting how to manage on my own, and I couldn’t afford to let that happen.  One never knows what the future will hold.  I was grateful for the life I had, but circumstances change.  People move away, get sick, or just don’t’ have time anymore.  I need the exercise both physically and mentally of getting out and doing things for myself.

Thus it was that I began my little misadventure that day. Overall I enjoyed it.  I did make my destination and had a great time while there.  It was just the traveling that didn’t go so well.

I was headed for a meeting of Blind Ambitions Groups, a local support group that met once a month in various locations around the Dallas area. I don’t remember what made me try it on Google Maps.  It might have been simply the discovery that the service was better than DART’s own for plotting a trip by public transit. Walking directions had just been introduced. This was my first time to try them out.

The trip started out well enough.  I got on the same bus to the train station that I would take when going down town for work.  The driver saw my white cane and wanted to be sure I knew I didn’t have to pay the full fair.  I almost always paid full fair.  It was partly because I had not taken the time to go get the ID card that would officially qualify me, and partly because I have never liked to take handouts I don’t really need.  It is a reasonable argument that whatever I think about subsidies they do exist and my taxes are paying for them, but it didn’t feel right, and it would be several more years before I finally signed up for paratransit services.

Things started to go south when I made it to the train station.  Literally, I took the south bound train instead of the north bound train I needed to be on.  Don’t ask me why.  There is no confusion as to where to get on each train, so I can only blame myself for that one.  I realized my error as the doors closed behind me and the train pulled away from the station.  I had to get off at the next stop and wait for the one going back north, costing me a valuable ten minutes or more.  The north bound train was standing room only and the operator did not announce the stops as they are supposed to do when no automated system is in place.  Maybe he or she wasn’t aware that the system wasn’t working.  I made it to my stop without further incident, asking my fellow passengers for help.

Then I needed to get from the station to the church where the meeting was held.  That should be no problem, right?  I have my trusty Google Maps walking directions.  The trouble is that they were a little misleading.  They may have been technically accurate, but they left me the impression that one street would curve and become another when in fact what confronted me looked like a standard intersection.  Maybe there was a reasonable explanation, but I was confused.  In an instant my internal map was shredded and I didn’t know where to go.  I knew the general lay of the land and thought I knew where some of the major streets were, but I could not find most of the signs using my monocular. After a bit of wandering around and a conversation with a friendly apartment dweller, I made my way to the street where the church was located and got to the meeting about thirty minutes late.

I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting.  Amazingly or maybe not so amazingly listening to how the order process kept being interrupted by random conversation, the planned meal had not been ordered yet.  It was a very small group, but I like that.  The larger the group the more isolated I feel.  I made new friends and got to know another one a little better.

When the meeting was over, I had to get back home.  I had no problem getting back to the train station.  I got an earlier train than the one I planned for, so when I got off I thought I could walk the approximately two miles from the train station to my house before the next bus would get me there.

I suppose I might have learned from the first experience that relying on what Google told me might not be the best idea, especially since it was starting to get dark.  No, how hard can it be?  All I had to do was make it down to one street from the station and go over to the one my house is on.  There was a major highway between me and my destination, but I’ve handled that before.  I didn’t imagine any major difficulty in doing it that night. 

Maybe in the full light of day I might have seen the proper path to get across the on and off ramps to the expressway and continue my journey home, but what happened instead is that I made it under the bridge and then realized that I was in a very bad position.  There is a large area of concrete off the road where I was standing, but in the failing light it was hard to be certain that I wasn’t in the road.  Between me and safety was the off ramp to the highway and anyone making that turn would not have been able to see me and stop before hitting me.  I could not see around the concrete wall to attempt crossing the exit before a car would come flying down the ramp.  Getting into that situation wasn’t easy, and when I went back to see if I could retrace my steps to the bus station I realized I was in no better position on the other side.

After a couple of unnerving false starts, I saw that I was in trouble.  I just stood there looking around and hoping some kind soul would rescue me.  I started holding my cane up over my head, but I was not in a good place for anyone to stop if they were of a mind to.  They probably thought I was begging.  I finally managed to swallow my pride, and not knowing what else to do, I called 911.  I might have called my wife or other friends in the area, but I didn’t know if I could tell them how to safely get to me.  So it was that I finish my trek in a police car.  At least I wasn’t in the back.  Thank you Sergeant Holly.

So we’ve covered the blind ambition and the fast cards. What about walking on water? To cap off this fine evening, I entered my house to find that our water heater began leaking while I was out. My first clue was the squelching of soggy carpet as I walked down the hall. My wife had everything in hand, and I was just glad to be safely home.  My first thought was to rejoice, because the One who really walks on water reached out His hand and pulled us up.  I’d do it again, but now I prefer Uber.