Solo Travel!

Thursday May 18th – In the morning Susan and Laura completed their whole routes accompanied by myself and Simone as their instructors. They both did very well and we had a quick lunch before Jhaneen sent us all off on our very own to solo our routes. She staggered our start times so that no one would run into each other on the route then she drove to the final destination to wait for us. I volunteered to go first and headed out. I walked my residential part very quickly and the bus arrived within a few minutes of my arrival at the bus stop. The bus ride seemed REALLY long and began wondering if the driver had forgotten about me. Thank goodness he hadn’t and I hopped off and started my business portion. It was pretty crowded but I managed not to know anyone over. I did run into a grocery cart someone had left on the sidewalk and almost knocked over a bicycle someone had leaned against the wall but managed to make it to my final destination unscathed! The really fun part was to walk to route without my blindfold and see it for the first time. It looked so much simpler than it felt! Not what I expected at all. This photo is of “my” section of Smith Street. It reminds me of the Haight district in San Francisco, including the type of people who hang out there.

We all did very well, even poor Simone whose driver DID forget about her and drove past her stop with out telling her. Thankfully another passenger had overheard Simone say which stop she wanted and when the driver passed it she told Simone. Simone jumped up and asked the driver who then realized his mistake. Oops. He tells her, “I’ll just drop you at the next stop”. She freaked out a little and said she couldn’t do that. Thankfully the driver was at the intersection waiting for the light so he opened the door, got out to make sure traffic was clear, and dumped Simone out at the intersection. She managed to figure out where she was pretty easily and completed the rest of the route without incident.

Overall it was a great learning experience but I think we are all glad to be done with that part of the course!