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Transportation Trouble

Sue LaBar Yohey's avatar image

By Sue LaBar Yohey

2 min read

Where there is a will, there is a way. However, ever since I became legally blind, the way has been anything but straightforward!

The high school reunion

Case in point: our 50th high school reunion. It is only 90 miles away. Should be easy peasy, right? A 90-minute drive and I am there.

Au container, mon frere. After the planning I have put into this one, I could be a logistics expert. Can’t get there from here? Let me work on it!

I was just texting my friend in Colorado about this. We are friends for a reason. She is a tenacious, insane planner as well.

Did I ask around people I know? Yep. No one I know is free to drive me on Saturday and come back for me Sunday after I spend the evening after the event with “the girls”. People have lives; damnit.

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Possible transportation options

Limo

Could I get a limo service? Well, yeah. It is within my capacity…if I want to be ridiculously extravagant about this. The car service I get to go to my eye appointments is $575 a round trip. (Don’t worry. They pay...and we wonder about the cost of drug prices???) Do I really want to spend that kind of money on a three-hour event? I would have to be considerate of the driver. Leave the ball precisely at the stroke of midnight while everyone else is still dancing. Does that sound like fun to you? Not me, either, and if he came back for me the next day, it would pretty much double my expense. Probably not a viable plan.

Bus

How about a bus? In regular times - that is pre-COVID - our little burg is on a milk-run line. Every little town between here and there is a stop. Some of the towns are layover stops. As advertised - and who would actually want to admit to this? - the 90-mile trip home is 12 hours!

Ok. Pick up your jaw from the floor. This is not pre-COVID America. Now, you cannot get there from here at all. They won’t even slow up enough so I could jump! Nope. As I was told, the only way I can get there from here is to go into New York City, an hour and a half past my destination, and then backtrack. Good grief.

Determined to find a solution

Give up? Not exactly. I have a long history of being rock-hard bullheaded. When I was a kid, my mother would tell me to go ahead and do what I wanted to do because I would do it anyway. Too true, so here is the devious, diabolical plan:

  • Bus into Manhattan Thursday morning
  • Reservation at a hotel a few football field lengths from Port Authority.
  • Tickets for a Broadway show right around the corner
  • The next morning and early afternoon in, perhaps, Times Square
  • Commuter bus to the old stompin’ grounds where I get a hotel a mile away
  • Saturday and Sunday morning with friends
  • Friend brings me home with a short detour on her way to the airport.

Nuts? Oh, yeah, but desperate times require desperate measures. And desperate measures can yield some rewards. You know, I always enjoyed Manhattan…

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