Very often, the way we live our lives and go about our daily business, as commonplace as it may seem to us, speaks volumes and increases awareness in ways that are more profound and more effective than in deliberately planned speeches, huge conferences, or billboards and advertisements. I can illustrate this with two examples of my recent airport travels (racing wheelchair in tow). For pictures of what my racing chair looks like, please see the home page of this site and/or the photo gallery. Essentially, it’s a long, awkward hunk of aluminum and titanium on wheels. Usually when I travel domestically, I push it with me in the airport, take it to the gate, and gate-check as you would a stroller. This means that I have it with me from the time I hit the door of the airport, through security, through the terminal, parked outside the bathroom, parked outside the news stand, parked outside the Peet’s coffee (at least at the San Francisco airport!), and next to me as I type away on my laptop while waiting for the flight.

Last week when I checked in at San Francisco international, I pulled up to the ticket counter to check a few larger bags. As I approached the counter with my racing wheelchair, bags, and purse/carry-on, the ticket agent greeted me with a friendly smile and a “hello mam, and where are you headed today?” She seemed very relaxed, which is often NOT the case. Usually the sight of my racing chair incites an abnormal amount of stress in most ticket agents who see it and instantaneously think “holy *$#&, what am I going to do with that thing!?” Clearly, the reason she could remain calm was because she had actually done this before – many times!

As I put my larger bags onto the scale, she asked “and are you planning to gate check your racing chair?”

“Really!?” I thought. “She’s not going to make me argue about gate-checking this? She’s not going to make me defend the fact that it’s not a bike? And most impressively – she knew that we call these things racing chairs?”

That, my friends, is progress. For years now, I’ve been going through this subconscious airport prep routine in which I either have to meditate for ½ hour to relax enough to deal with crabby ticket agents who refuse to take my racing chair or have a triple espresso in my preparation to go into battle. That this day went so smoothly, that I was treated so respectfully as an athlete, and that the ticket agent clearly knew about the sport of wheelchair racing, was monumental.

A few days later, I was with the racing chair, again in an airport terminal, when I was approached by an elderly couple. They were the type that was clearly a hip pair of folks…probably on their way to or from vacation…probably in their 70’s…and clearly having lived a worldly, rather cool life.

“Well – what do you have there? That is quite a gizmo.”

Gizmo…gizmo… Wow! Gizmo!

Racing chair, gizmo, blue lightening, hunk of junk, whatever you want to call it, that piece of equipment is doing its job. Awkward hunk of aluminum and titanium on wheels...or...insta-disability rights awareness-raising tool. Really it's just the thing that allows me to go really fast and have fun. Ultimately that's really what it's all about.