Post #1155813

Good morning, friends. I promised stories, so here's one. Strap in, this is long, thank god for my character limit. First of all, I want to say that Saturday was a whole experience. I haven't traveled with a big group of blind folks in a really long time, and blind folks who knew what they were doing, at that. There is a distinction for my non blind kind that follow me. Trust me. There are also things that are part of an experience that the average able-bodied person doesn't understand, even my mother was confused. There was planning; a lot of it, trying to figure out midway points for everyone in the group to meet so that bank accounts weren't crying because uber isn't cheap, then the usual timing things: What time do you want to meet. Then there was another layer. Service dogs. In our group there were two cane users and two dog users, both of them big dogs, one shepherd and one collie, and one of the dog users had her bird in his bird backpack along for the day which was awesome. I had my electronics bag as well. Yall there was a lot going on but the organized chaos was glorious! Anyway for the story. One of our friends left for work so there was only one dog user at the time of this story. The plan was to go to another friend's place for tater tot casserole and flan. The three of us, plus our feathered friend walked out of my friend's apartment to meet the Lyft. The moment we did, the dreaded words were spoken. "no dog." I had a little of the Colorado green stuff, I was not letting a denial ruin my day. I placed myself in the car, half in, half out. I wasn't putting my service dog-using friend in harm's way, but I also wasn't going to let there be a denial. Not today. Not when lunch had been so perfect. My other friend and I started in, "it's the law, you can't deny her." you know, the usual thing. I'm used to doing this, I had a dog myself at one time. Admittedly I was a bit more direct than usual, but I wasn't going to have this, not when the day had been so amazing already. The woman let slip that she didn't speak English and I thanked the powers upstairs for my rusty but useful high school spanish. My friend with the dog had her camera out and was filming and I told the driver so. With that, the situation changed. This woman took her IPhone out and loaded the translate app. Just like that, she was able to communicate. She told us the didn't have a problem with dogs, but she didn't realize that lyft would make her take "real." dogs, whatever that meant, and that she didn't want the dog in her car. I told her again, thank you translate, that it was the law, the dog was well-groomed, and that she would be on the floor the whole time. She understood and finally, after maybe 15 minutes let us in and we were off for our food which was fantastic, by the way. I'm so amazed at the power of tech these days. This situation could have ended very very badly. I honestly was nervous that she would drive with me half in the car like I was, I've heard the stories, but that went better than I hoped. Man technology even with all the bullshit is so cool.