[gps-talkusers] report on WayFun 2005 Maine
- From: Michael May <mikemay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "GPS-talkusers-freelists.org" <GPS-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 10:04:50 -0700
I returned home in the wee hours this morning
from a fantastic adventure in Maine with a bunch
of other blind folks. You can read the daily Blog
at http://www.senderogroup.com/blog.htm
The last day is not posted yet. I'll paste one of
the entries from a new BrailleNote GPS user from
Wake Forest University in North Carolina below.
Over 20 of our group rode a charter bus from
Portland to Bar Harbor and you should have heard
all the synthesizers chattering. Charles took
this opportunity with this captive user audience
to ask for feature suggestions. This opened the
flood gates and we got a bunch of ideas for
future versions. It was really amazing being
emersed in GPS for five days. We learned a lot in
many ways. Read the blog and see.
Mike
Friday, September 16, 2005
Day 2, WayFun 2005, Maine
?It is better to travel hopefully than to
arrive.? This has been the motto of Way Fun 2005
and on this, our third day together; I think I truly began to
understand something of what those words mean.
For me, the day began with the perfect next step
in the progression of learning to master travel
with a GPS. As a novice user, I had the advantage of beginner?s
luck on Wednesday and Thursday and was, on those
days, able to locate destinations and follow
routes without any major complications. This morning, however,
I decided to add the additional complexity of
carrying an iced mocha from Starbucks in one hand
while still trying to work a dog in the other and simultaneously
operate my BrailleNote GPS. To add to what was
already a ?challenging? situation, a technical
difficulty which prevented my BrailleNote from seeing my
Bluetooth GPS receiver threatened to get me
started on the wrong foot. Fortunately, some
personal time with GPS Jedi Mike May fixed the technological snag
and I had no more problems during the day. If
anything, the hold-up was a blessing in disguise
as it allowed me to concentrate on my coffee without worrying
about typing any keystrokes.
If our primary aim for the week is to travel
hopefully, then a secondary goal clearly
demonstrated today was to share that hope with others. We spent our
morning at the Iris Centera local blindness
organizationin Portland where, after a brief
overview of GPS technology from Mike, the entire Way Fun group
had the opportunity to share our experiences and
our equipment with eager orientation and mobility
instructors and blind men and women from the surrounding
area. It was an incredible experience not only to
hear the passionate testimonies of current GPS
users, but also to witness the enthusiastic responses
of those who were seeing for the first time the
possibility of greater independence and mobility.
It reiterated to me once again how for so many blind
people, a GPS or other piece of adaptive
equipment is not just a convenience or a fun gadget, but a new lease on life.
The group inside the Iris Center
The dog owners in front of the Iris Center
Before leaving the Iris Center, we also managed
to wrangle our way onto local TV news and to pose
for a few pictures. My personal favorite is the line up
of all the Way Fun dog guide teams, eleven of us, in all.
After a relaxed lunch and a few final hours in
Portland, most of the group loaded onto a bus
headed for the city that will host us for the remainder of
our adventure, Bar Harbor, and some of the State?s most beautiful coastline.
Way Fun group at Delorme, pointing the worlds largest rotating globe
On the way, the gang stopped for another quick
picture at the head quarters of DeLorme, the
company that produces the GPS receivers that many of us use.
The background of the picturea giant globeseems
somewhat symbolic. Not only does it represent the
world-wide scope of the satellites? eye, but it also
serves as a reminder of the international
contributions that have led to the creation of
the technology we are all using this week: a technology created
by one man from the Western United States and
another from Canada, now coupled with the
products of a company born in New Zealand, and utilized by blind
people from California to the Netherlands.
The Seeing Eye Group
I actually did not ride along with the rest of
the group. Instead I tagged along in a van with
one of the many staff members from the Seeing Eye which allowed
me to put the vehicular route capabilities of my
GPS unit to the test. Looking back, it strikes me
that our car, too, illustrated some of what has made
the technology and independence revolution for
blind people possible. Among us, there was a
sighted woman born and bred in New England who had dedicated
her life to enhancing the travel skills of blind
people by training Seeing Eye dogs, a young
blind, black professional woman raised in Arkansas and now
transplanted to Washington, D.C. where she works
for NASA, and me, a Midwestern turned southern
grad student just trying to absorb the diversity in experience
and knowledge of our group. We are all very
different in terms of training, background, and
geography, yet we have a common drive that pushes us towards
the same goal of greater freedom for ourselves
and other visually-impaired people.
Perhaps an alternate theme for our trip could be,
?Not everything worth finding can be tracked by
GPS.? This is certainly one point that has been especially
relevant for me. Once in Bar Harbor, for example,
we were able to easily locate a nearby restaurant
and travel to it using our equipment. However, it was
what we found inside the restaurant that made the
greatest impression on me. More important than
any Point of Interest cataloged in the GPS software, I
had the fortunate occasion to sit and enjoy the
company of successful and accomplished blind
people who have been blessed with incredible vision. Their
experiences and reputations speak volumes, and
their patience to sit and listen as I vented my
frustrations and theories demonstrated the extent of their
wisdom. It is the people that make Way Fun
worthwhile, and GPS techniques and commands are
only a few of the important lessons they have shared with me
this week.
Jamie Dean, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem North Carolina
Other related posts:
