City Travel

Tuesday June 6th – Today we were off to the Melbourne central business district for some cane travel in the busiest area we could find. First we rode the train (light rail) into the CBD (city business district). Simone and I went under blindfold and had to locate the train door as well as manually open it. The older trains do not have automatically opening doors, instead there is a little knob that you have to locate and pull the doors apart. We managed to get on the train and rode to Flinders street station the main transfer station. We met Jhaneen there are she took us to the Bourke (pronounced Burk) Street mall. Jhaneen had picked out a couple of routes for us to learn and the goal was to quickly get good enough at them that we could solo within a day or two. This area was a bit trickier with not as many obvious tactile cues. My route went along the main sidewalk to a hallway placed mid block which led to some more shops and was a cut though to the next street. I was at a loss at first trying to figure out how I would detect when I got to the hall until I began using a two point touch. This technique is the "tapping" of the cane from side to side and I was surprised how easy it was to detect the difference in the sound of the tap when I got to my hallway. The hallway was tiled and echoed, making a noticeable difference in sound. Simone taught me for awhile then we swapped and I taught Simone her route, which was similar. We broke for lunch then went back to the grind of learning the new routes. We rode the train back and swapped who was under blindfold. We did have some challenge getting the right train and had to wait quite awhile to transfer trains at one point. It’s pretty cold here now and we were freezing by the time we got back to campus.
Sue and I spent the evening making more trip plans and beginning to pack. And tomorrow my hubby will be arriving!