Reflections And More Travel Stories

[chelseajmunoz]

I've been forgetting to mention that sometime last week I'd mentioned LCB to one of my friends. In the conversation I was having with said friend I'd mentioned someone who'd been a student at LCB at the same time I was a student at LCB. I'd mentioned to my friend that I wasn't exactly close to this fellow LCB student but the fellow LCB student was special to me nonetheless. So the day after I'd had that conversation with my friend I reached out to Pam (LCB's Director) through email and asked her about the fellow LCB student who'd been on my mind lately. She emailed me back the same day I'd emailed her and told me that Forrest had passed away a few years ago due to health complications. I write about this now because when I'd received that email from Pam about Forrest's passing, the news of his passing hit me hard. I hate to say it but before reading Pam's email last week it didn't even occur to me that Forrest may not even be alive. It was kind of weird that that thought didn't even cross my mind though because personally, on a daily basis I think about the reality that any day could be my time to die. Even now it's a little awkward to write that truth because I've only spoken that truth aloud to one person in my life. Yet it's a truth of mine and I'm working hard to embrace my truths no matter how hard those truths may sometimes be to speak about or write about. So anyway I was sad for the entire day that I'd read Pam's email informing me that Forrest was no longer with us. Hearing about his passing really showed me that every day I want to be the kind of person who doesn't forget to tell those in her life how she feels about them because none of us knows when it may be our time to leave this earth. So to my blog readers, whether I know you personally or not I hope you live the life you want to live. I hope you know that you are a valuable and valued human being. To Forrest, I'm sorry that I never told you how special you were to me. I regret not hanging out with you while we were LCB students. I hope that each day I'm still here on Earth your memory will live on through me and that your passing will help me tell people how I feel about them rather than keeping my feelings inside and assuming that people just know how I feel about him or her because I interact with him or her. In other news, Sunday evening was my last day in the different state. I left the train station on an Amtrak train at 10:00 Sunday evening and I was on the train until early this morning. When my ticket to my vacation spot was originally booked though my friend made sure to tell the Amtrak agent he'd spoken with that I was visually impaired. At that time the Amtrak agent he'd spoken with assured him that I'd have assistance by Amtrak staff getting on the train from San Antonio and getting off the train at my vacation spot. Then a few days before I'd left my vacation spot Sunday evening I called Amtrak to verify the time my train would arrive back into San Antonio early this morning. The Amtrak agent I'd spoken with assured me that things were set up so that I'd receive help from Amtrak personnel to get on the train from my vacation spot and getting off the train in San Antonio. However when I'd gotten to the train station at my vacation spot I was told by Amtrak personnel that there was no lower-level seating on the train that I could take advantage of. I couldn't believe what I was hearing because both times my friend and I'd spoken with Amtrak agents, each Amtrak agent had told my friend and I that things had also been set up for me to sit in Amtrak's lower-level seating area. My friend then showed the Amtrak personnel the tickets that Amtrak had emailed me (both for the trip to my vacation spot and from my vacation spot back to San Antonio). Even so though the Amtrak personnel didn't have any suggestions about how this situation could be rectified. So I then asked the Amtrak personnel if there were restrooms on the upper-level seating areas of the train. I was told by Amtrak personnel that all the restrooms were on the lower-level seating areas of the train so I kindly asked Amtrak personnel if they'd please let me know when a lower-level seat became available. Because as it was I had difficulty climbing the stairs to get to the upper-level seating area of the train and given that I was traveling alone I knew that I wouldn't be able to get to a restroom easily. Fortunately though Amtrak personnel came through and I was switched to a lower-level seat an hour or so after I'd gotten onto the train from my vacation spot. Fortunately I had two lower-level seats all to myself for awhile. Once the train had stopped at one of its station stops in Texas though a Spanish-speaking husband and wife got onto the train. Neither the husband or the wife spoke much English so they argued in Spanish with an English-speaking Amtrak employee about the fact that they wanted to sit together. That was interesting to watch because neither the Spanish-speaking couple or the English-speaking Amtrak employee really understood what the other person was saying. After a few minutes though the English-speaking Amtrak employee told the couple that at that time they couldn't sit together because the majority of us had already been on the train for hours. The English-speaking Amtrak employee assured the Spanish-speaking couple though that when the train stopped in San Antonio in the morning they'd be able to sit together because my seat would become free. The Spanish-speaking couple continued to talk amongst themselves about the fact that they wanted to sit together as if they were little kids. I very quickly got what I think was a stress-related headache because of the couple's griping so I decided to get up from where I was sitting. That way the couple could have their way and sit together and the rest of the train passengers wouldn't have to hear the couple's bitching anymore. I ended up sitting with a lady I learned was accident-prone. First this lady spilled water all over my left leg which got the left leg brace I wear wet. I asked her to please get some paper towels because my leg braces were not supposed to get wet or stay wet. Fortunately I was able to catch the wetness of my leg brace in time that nothing damaging happened to it. Then an hour or so after the lady had spilled water on my left leg she and I fell asleep. Not long after I'd fallen asleep though I woke up because I realized that my legs were causing me extreme pain. I was still half asleep though, even though I was also partially awake. So when I asked the lady I was sitting with if she'd scoot over I didn't get a response from her. By that point I was fully awake and it was then that I realized that this lady's entire body was on me except for her legs and feet. I tried asking her if she'd get off of me but I received no response from her. Fortunately one of the other ladies who was also a passenger on the train was still awake. So I asked her for help waking up the lady that was sitting with me. So the second lady walked over to where the first lady and I were sitting and tried several times to wake her up. After several tries of the second lady shaking the first lady awake, the first lady finally woke up. Once the lady I was sitting with was fully awake, the second lady and I told her that she'd fallen asleep on me. After the lady I was sitting with fell asleep on me I told her I was going to move seats because I couldn't afford for her to keep doing such crazy things to me even unintentional as those things were. Before I had a chance to move seats though the lady spilled water all over my left leg again. I could not believe it! I know these stories probably sound like they're coming out of a movie but I promise you dear blog readers, I can't make this sort of stuff up. Once I'd switched seats though the rest of my train ride was enjoyable. Although by the time the third accident had happened to me by the first lady we were already in San Antonio or near San Antonio at that point. So needless to say I was eager to get off the train. LOL. Once I'd gotten off the train though knowing where my suitcase was, was a mystery to me because no one had told me where my suitcase had been put. However I told the Amtrak personnel that I'd initially been seated in an upper-level train car. Fortunately after a few minutes of Amtrak personnel looking for my suitcase and me describing what my suitcase looked like to Amtrak personnel, an Amtrak employee successfully located my suitcase. Apparently though the train wasn't exactly stopped at the train station because the train station was just a hub. So an Amtrak employee drove me to the actual train station in a cart. Once he'd stopped at where the actual train station was located one of my friends was waiting for me. Interestingly though another of my friends was also at the train station to pick me up. On one hand I felt bad that two of my friends had shown up at the train station to pick me up. However it was also a good feeling to know that I was so cared about that two people had my back. Once I'd gotten into one of my friend's cars I received a phone call from the other friend who'd showed up at the train station to pick me up. So I answered my phone to make that friend aware of what had happened and after things had gotten cleared up, the friend I was with took me to Whataburger (a fast food place that I love) to get something to eat. So while that friend and I ate our Whataburger food we caught up on how my trip was. I told my friend that going to a new state for the first time was so much fun, especially since the particular state I went to was very accessible for people with disabilities. I feel very fortunate to have such great friends who don't hesitate to help me out when they know I could truly use the help I'm asking him or her for. I bring this up because when I was out-of-town one of my friends was kind enough to regularly check my mail for me and make sure that I didn't miss anything important while I was away. Checking a person's mail is such a seemingly small gesture but to me it was a tremendous help because I was able to keep up with everything here in San Antonio even though I wasn't physically here in San Antonio. Shortly after I'd gotten back to my apartment early this morning I texted a few people I'm close to to let them know I'd arrived to San Antonio safely. I then went to sleep for several hours because I was exhausted from over a day's train ride. Once I'd woken up after my nap I made a few phone calls to start getting things settled in again where my assistant is concerned because where cooking is concerned I'm unable to cook things on the stove at this time, given that it's hard for me to stand up for a long period of time. So I usually have an assistant who cooks meals for me since i don't have any tools that would make it possible for me to cook for myself. Since my assistant has other things going on in her life besides working for me though I knew it would take some time to get back into a routine with her.