A pain in the neck: The odyssey for decent, comfortable IMAX ADA seats

Last week my friends and I went to the show. When the movie let out, the lobby was swamped with people. They were lined up everywhere. At five in the afternoon, on a Monday. It took a while to pick our way through to the exit.

All these folks had turned out to see two of summer’s biggest blockbusters, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. Both are screening in IMAX. The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan encouraged viewers to catch his new movie in IMAX to get the full effect of his work. He’d worked with engineers to come up with better, lighter cameras allowed him to shoot his entire 3-hour feature film in IMAX format, which was about impossible to do before. Add to this that there are only 25 theater-screens in the country that can project in the ultimate experience, IMAX 70 millimeter, and the only one in Chicagoland, which is this theater we attended — so moviegoers are making the trek across the metro area and the state of Illinois and even from other states to this one theater, and to this one theater’s lobby. But here is one of history’s biggest stories, shot in a huge way by a huge director, so people are there in search of a unique, unforgettable experience.

How my neck felt after my first IMAX movie.

Unless you’re a wheelchair user, that is. Because if you are, then this could be an unforgettable experience for how utterly disappointing it was. In some IMAX theaters, the patrons who use wheelchairs were an afterthought, which was my own and only IMAX experience, long ago. These are the IMAX theaters where the ADA seats are right in front of the towering screen, or like mine, crammed in at one side or the other. I remember less about the movie shown and more about my neck craning the entire time. In a situation like that you are not even able to take in the whole picture, and you’re literally not in any position to enjoy it. The poor seating made the movie uncomfortable and uninteresting, as in I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Still, if possible I really wanted to see this flick with the special IMAX sauce, so at the website I checked the seating diagram. I wasn’t confident about what I was seeing. The thing to do at this point would be to call the manager and arrange a look-see before buying tickets. But no, I’m jumping through extra hoops every day of the week because that’s what we’ve got to do, right, but enough already. It’s show time and I’m damned hooped out. So, I reserved for the standard format screening with guaranteed midhouse ADA seating for me.

If it helps anyone out there, Copilot AI suggested we might find better ADA seating at IMAX theaters built in 2015 or later, and at theaters advertising “IMAX with laser,” both of which offer more mindful, more equitable design. It sounds like the earlier generation of theaters may be the spine-bending offenders. Useful information to know, if Nolan’s IMAX cameras take off in the industry, in search of The Odyssey-like box office riches.

In the end, it didn’t matter what format I chose, I was disappointed in The Odyssey. The Nolan movies I’ve seen I liked, ranging from adrenaline-stoking thrill-rides to spine-tingling weirdness. This one had none of those qualities. To me, it was just crap storytelling: boring, confusing and ponderous. Which is a shame because Homer was literally a storyteller, not a writer. He recited stories to others, like a bard, and a disabled bard at that.

 

The Parking Placard (Black n') Blues

or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the ADA, Which Just Turned 35

Thanks to the Underground Bookshelf for awarding this the winner of its Disability Pride contest. It will be featured on their website next month.

It’s an epiphany when you realize for the first time that the white stick-figure on the blue parking sign is you. That's you. Now you can park in that fat sirloin of a spot. Now you are “the disabled.”

For me, this leap to disabilityhood was as every bit as much a mental process as a physical one. And I fought the knowledge, down the line, tooth and nail. I always did, with every new adaptation or assistive device, fight, fight, fight. To some that sounds courageous, but really it’s ridiculous. But I was young, I was always healthy, and I was a guy. I didn't need no stinking hot parking placard: that's for other people. I didn't need nothing. 

I had a thick head. 

So what changed my mind? I can’t remember the moment I decided to pick up a disability parking application. It must have been some watershed event, perhaps my 1,000th fall, the one that rattles your very teeth. Falling itself was no big deal by then, and I might do it a half dozen times in a day (at least that's how it felt). After a while, my body looked like Keith Richards’ after a bender, but cry-cry, I dusted myself off and got back in the game – because you've got to, nobody's going to pay your rent. But maybe that 1,000th time was the one to slosh my brain in its comfy bath of cerebrospinal fluid: Wake up, you green-gray piece of fat!

I used a walker then. An aluminum walker, to go along with the studs of my biker jacket. I would drag the thing to the grocery store for a few items, forgetting half of them by the time I reached the aisles. No browsing, no price-shopping, just throwing things in a shopping bag, and teetering back to the checkout while I fished for cash. Then I dragged my Frankenstein feet out to the parking lot again, cars politely navigating around me   the occasional Einstein would honk, not that I could turn around to see him, not that I could reach around to flick him off.

As my legs exhausted themselves, my steps grew smaller, smaller, until my energy exhausted itself and my limbs locked into jointless boards due to muscle tone. In the middle of the parking lot, I stood stock still, like performance art, like the Tin Woodsman before Dorothy Gale came along. 

The walker had wheels on the front legs so I could push it along instead of lifting and planting it with every step. But once fatigued, I lost the power to hold the walker in place, and the wheels took on a more insidious role, creeping forward slowly. As they gained momentum, I thought, 'No, no, not again.' Unable to lift my feet, my upright posture deteriorated into a letter A, opening wider and wider as the walker rolled away. I couldn’t let go   my hands were locked   so at the fateful moment I'd take a deep breath and bail, thinking: Don't land on the Chef Boyardee!

This happened once on a cold winter's night, after my friend and I attended a wake and, on the way home, stopped for a nightcap. The tavern parking lot was a thin, solid sheet of ice. I straggled back to my car, up a slight incline of drainage built into the black asphalt. Along the way I stopped to rest, talking to my patiently shivering friend while we waited for my legs to unlock.

I detected motion. Yep, I was sliding backward over the ice, in the direction of the drain. I was unable to move or resist; like a Gemini astronaut, I was only along for the ride. At the time I had no idea where I was going: I wasn't even facing where I was headed.

My buddy circled around nervously. “Hey, Fred Astaire, what do I do?”

I was picking up speed. So I had to be honest with the guy. “I got nothing."

Jim dug in behind to brace me, but honestly, in our leather-soled dress shoes, we might as well have been wearing ice skates. At this point he's pushing back simply to save his own hide. But there was nothing he could do; there was nothing anyone could do. We were a runaway train, and I was taking him down with me. Sometimes you're the slowly rolling bowling ball, and sometimes you're the pin. He was the pin.

I could imagine what it was like for someone sitting in the warmth of their car, watching us gliiiide across that parking lot. Floating, gracefully rotating in space. Maybe the Blue Danube Waltz was playing on their radio, while we skated from one side of their windshield, all the way to the other. … Faster and faster… Have you watched curling in the winter Olympics?… On and on and on…

What would become of our intrepid lads?

That’s when I started laughing. When things are out of your control, you do well to laugh. In Chicago when freezing your behinds off we often laugh it off with friends. Because it's better to freeze your heart behinds off together and be laughing, than it is to freeze your behinds off with a straight face. And that's the science behind that.

Also, convulsive laughter is helpful in defeating spasticity. In an instant, we were a giggling heap of metal and man sprawled across the dark ice. In our slick shoes, we'd be stranded on that parking lot a long time. For the life of me, I can't figure out how we ever got up again.

Lucky were the times when there was a friend around and frictionless ice to fall on. More often, it was a sidewalk or a bathroom or a busy street crosswalk, hopefully with one or more gallant onlookers there to drag me out of danger and stuff me into my car. After rebuffing their offers for medical assistance, I would fall asleep on the front seat, sometimes more than an hour, sometimes with the engine running.

Somewhere in there happened magic No. 1000, the one to knock some sense in my noggin, the one to make my noggin scream, “Get the blue placard, already!”

Before then, I clung to a weird, outmoded notion of what independence was. But once I crossed into that thin blue sign, what I found waiting for me was a Technicolor world of fuller independence, of accessible services, jobs, housing, education and protected rights, medicines and tech and yes, even decent curb cutouts and primo parking spaces   a whole societal push to involve everyone, including me, and bring everybody to the decision-making table, even hardheaded fools who happened to fall upon the right decision one day, after he fell absolutely every other place first.

Viva the ADA. Let's get riled up and make sure it lasts another 35 years and another hundred after that.

Now how did I get into this one?

I rolled onto my side for pressure relief. I have the laptop in bed next to me — I change the screen orientation to portrait so that it’s sideways, and this works pretty well. But as I’m working, I notice the craziest thing. There’s an arrowhead sticking out underneath my nipple, the bottom half of it anyway. Not a typical arrowhead, but a smooth plastic one, almost like a guitar pick. It even has a purplish composite pattern similar to a guitar pick. But it’s sticking out of my skin.

What the hell did I do now? It doesn’t really hurt and I didn’t even notice it going in, but Mab is going to blow her stack over this. I mean, how did I even do this? Because I’m always getting into bonkers crap by accident. Pulling the cantilever table off of the wall. Plunging into a ditch getting the mail. Rolling over a floor-mounted art installation. Ramming into my desk while trying to sidle up for a sip of water and finding out I sliced back a layer of skin on my forearm. My chair ought to come with safety cones because I’m a rolling disaster.

To make things worse, the arrowhead is a good ways in, and angled so that it’s disappearing under my skin … almost like my otherwise healthy skin is pulling back into position and bringing the arrowhead with it. No blood yet but I’ve got to work fast before things get sloppy. Mab has forceps that would be perfect for this but by the time she gets here it’s going to be lost under the skin and then it’s a trip to the ER and all of that. So, I didn’t have much extra fingernail but I try pinching the small corner of arrowhead before it disappears, before it turns into a UN incident.

It’s while I’m pinching at the thing — unsuccessfully, because it keeps sliding further under my nipple — that I realize that I haven’t been able to move my hand this much in years, so either this is such an emergency that my body is pumping miraculous amounts of adrenaline into my hand (something like this has happened before, but that’s another story),

Or I must be dreaming.

Postscript. It was very comfortable lying in a new position like that. When I awoke, my nipple was not pointy. I was not in trouble with Mab. I don’t take naps, but that was a helluva good one.

It ain’t pretty but it sure is beautiful: ADA accommodations like a concrete pad can be pretty cheap

We have needed new gravel on our driveway for a couple of years now. Dry sandy soil, thick tree roots exposed by erosion, and bumps left from heavy work equipment: All have made getting around our place more and more difficult. Actually for the past few months it’s caused me to go out less and stick to the porch instead. With every year and every gully washer of a storm, the problem has grown worse. We’ve invited contractors who seem interested in the job, but then don’t hear from them again. I’m guessing that our job is too small to warrant their time, but who knows?

Then last week, I got stuck at the base of the ramp in front of the house. I was chasing a rare patch of winter sunshine, being careful not to stray too far, but on that day, even 3 feet out was too far. When I turned to go back up the ramp, my wheelchair tire started spinning in the dirt. I called Mab over to help eye up the situation, and together we buried that tire down even deeper.

They say good guys wear white hats. Well, the good guy in my story drives a white pickup. And the first thing I saw when I lifted my eyes from the buried tire was that white pickup passing by on the street. It was my buddy Gary coming home from work.

“Siri, call Gary.”

A few short minutes later, the cavalry had arrived: The white pickup pulled up right there in front of us and out piled Gary. He’s a big guy, and even though his hip was ailing, he wasn’t content to just help with pushing. Instead, he lifted the rear of the wheelchair right out of the dirt. I skedaddled a retreat up the ramp before I could land in any more trouble, but Gary didn’t leave right away — here-around you’ve got to “visit” first. All the while, he scratched his head, looking at the derned problem-spot at the foot of the ramp.

It was a couple days later, a Saturday, when he showed up again. In the bed of his vehicle he’d loaded five bags of gravel and two more of concrete mix. He raked the rock into a hook shape, curving away from the ramp. Then he spread the powdered concrete over the gravel. Mab brought the water hose and the two of them worked the concrete into the rock. I was in bed, healing from a saddle sore, during all this. But by the time I laid eyes on it a couple days later, here’s what I saw:

Not good pics, but I've gotta get this posted already.

Behold $83 of materials, 700 pounds of material, less than two hours’ work, and a whole heck of a lot of friendship. The “pad” is about 3.5 feet wide and extends out some 9 feet before curving back around like the tail of comma, giving me a good start up the driveway. For now, this gets me through. To harden a couple of remaining loose patches of gravel, Gary brought one more bag of concrete to add over the top. So now it comes to about $90.

As has been stressed over and over by the Department of Justice and many others since introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, access accommodations needn’t be expensive — they only take a willingness to do them. Praise be for good friends who make life a joy. Meanwhile, I’ve found another contact for gravel, and we’ll see how it goes.

“A living hell”: Disabled People Are Rising From Their Wheelchairs … and They’re Not Happy About It (Satire)

                EPONYMOUS, COLORADO — “Shhh!” says 39-year-old Cy Chevsky, crouching by candlelight with his ear to his front entry door. With wild eyes and wilder hair, he listens for noises from outside. “They’re still there. Yesterday it was Maury Povich.”

“Maury Povich!” I say in surprise.

“Shhh!” Chevsky says, but it’s too late: The paparazzi begin shouting and banging on the storm door. Chevsky covers his ears and yells. “My life now is a living hell.”

A frame d photo on the foyer wall above shows a complete contrast: Chevsky smiling and stylish, sitting arm-in-arm with a beaming young woman and a gray poodle both seated on his lap. His wheelchair from the photo now sits empty in a far corner of the room, no longer needed since the day last April when Chevsky suddenly and unexpectedly rose out of it, never to return.

“It was the BEEP-BEEP-iest day of my life,” he says. “It ruined me.”

Doctors were as baffled as Chevsky was, so he began his own search for the cause of what the Internet was calling a “miracle.” But in the meantime his girlfriend left him over trust issues, his friends became unreachable, and traffic to his websites and social media accounts cratered when he was denounced as a fake.

“I worked for years after my spinal cord injury to build myself back up,” he says, “and while I did, I also built up a brand as a disability influencer. I put in so many hours. I believed in what I was doing — helping others — and it was a revenue stream for us. Now they call me a grifter.” Even his old dog, Muffin, who had cataracts, would growl whenever he stood up. Eventually she ended up spinning around and around in one spot until animal welfare could cart her away for her own safety.

Bewildered, Chevsky flailed around for answers until he was contacted by Dr. Victor Petroculus of Palm Beach, Florida. Petroculus took a particular interest in the outraged headlines coming from the tabloid press, because the same thing had happened to him 15 years earlier. His career as a premier ballet dancer had been cut short by a spinal cord injury he sustained while skiing, but he had successfully pivoted to a second life as a sought-after fundraiser and motivational speaker. Then, like Chevsky, Petroculus, for no known medical reason, spontaneously rose from his wheelchair. “I lost one career to the accident,” he said, “and another when I stood from that miserable chair. … I remember thinking, I have to get the remote.” In a template for what would happen to Chevsky, Petroculus met with rage and ruin. And like Chevsky, he’s none too happy about it. “Worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Petroculus says, “bar none.”

Petroculus used his contacts from the fundraising world to gather information and look into similar cases he found. He consulted with medical experts and others over five continents. It led to his founding The Research Center for Unwanted Healings, operating in a state-of-the-art ADA-accessible cardboard box in Palm Beach. “We’ve got Wi-Fi,” he says. Work at the center reveals a startling phenomenon: Globally, one to three people with disabilities are healed spontaneously and inexplicably every year. And the cause? “Our best knowledge in the field says it’s from old prayers by third parties. There must be millions of them up there, swirling around like moths.

“Just as well-meaning bystanders sometimes give unwanted help without asking — or too much help,” Petroculus says, “so it’s common for people with disabilities to be prayed over even when it’s not wanted. We’re finding that a small but devastating number of these virulent prayers are circulating for years, decades, maybe even centuries. And occasionally one will find home even after its been long forgotten.” The results, he points out, are devastating.

Mothy prayer says, "I'm coming for you."

In Chevsky’s case, the devastation comes with a frozen Gofundme account, the loss of his disability-based remote job for a government agency, and vandalism on his home, where neighbors did a surprise home-makeover accessibility renovation 13 years before. He may lose his Medicaid benefits too, and that agency further warned in a letter that it could claw back benefits already paid.

Even worse, he says, is his loss of identity. “I don’t know how to do anything,” he says. “So much of my life’s work was oriented toward dealing with my disability. In that realm I was an ace.”

In his darkened home, Chevsky says, “Even my dog left me.” He admits that sometimes, he curls up at night in his old wheelchair. But his whisperings are interrupted by more sharp banging directly on the front door. Chevsky jumps, as intense shards of light penetrate his home from around the edges of the door.

“Cy Chevsky! Mr. Chevsky, I know you’re in there,” says a voice booming through the door. “Mr. Chevsky, it’s Maury Povich! Come on my program, submit to a lie detector test. I’ll make it worth your while. I won’t go away without an answer, Mr. Chevsky. Mr. Chevsky!”

 

The Lawyer in His Lair: Lincoln, Springfield, and Honestly Laid-Back Camping

  Take I-55 North from St. Louis and after a while you start seeing a lot of stuff named after a local lawyer. Lincoln is his name, and Springfield, Illinois, was his hometown in the years before he hopped a train to Washington to helm an absolute headache of a job. The State of Illinois dubbed itself the Land of said Lawyer, and Springfield, 90 miles northeast of St. Louis, is its capital. With museums, capitol-related tours, Route 66 hangouts, lake recreation and loads of Lincolnalia everywhere, Springfield is definitely worth a day-visit, weekend or even more. We had both been there before, but now we had only one day and I wanted my gal to at least see the lawyer's house, which still stands proudly and is maintained as a national historic site, and maybe we could fit in the fantastic hologram-powered presidential museum, another must-see.

Did I say we only had a day? We had a short day. This was a rough trip. We've been doing this for almost four years now, and it was bound to happen. We were headed north for the summer, and packing for six months away is difficult on her, plus the rainy weather made things sloppy and stressful -- at one point the right rear tire got buried in the mud -- and the accommodations were difficult when one of the RV campground operators shoehorned us into a soggy, inaccessible spot even though I had reserved an accessible spot weeks in advance. For every all the angels I've met in this bumpy ride called life, there are some devils thrown in too. Just like they'll screw over the elderly, some will prey on the disabled. Simply by not listening and being greedy, Jerry at Southgate RV Campground in Fayetteville, Arkansas, really ****ed us over. Watch out for the Jerrys out there.

Not everything was terrible. We got to see our nephew's Little League game on a beautiful evening in Waco, and in Fayetteville, Arkansas, reunited with friends whom we hadn't seen in 20 years! I hadn't realized it had been that long until we sat and reminisced, and of course like true friends tend to do, we gabbed away like no time had passed at all. Dick was a biker and Itera was a nun. They met and got married a week later, and that was over 50 years ago. Back when we lived across the street from each other, Dick was a Dean at DeVry Institute of Technology and loved using his know-how to come up with accessibility devices for me and my progressive condition: an adaptive, locking door-latch and adaptive wheelchair controller -- both beautifully machined -- as well as an adaptive spoon and a refrigerator door-opener, which you had to see to believe ... but it worked! Itera has the giving heart of a saint and was learning how to do energy work, so she would come over and spend hours working with me, in peaceful sessions that would leave us both blissed out. Today they are as welcoming and generous as ever, and these were more great times together. It's turned out to be one of the real jewels of traveling in our little trailer is actually visiting and spending time with loved ones instead of always saying we're going to, but never doing it. This visit meant a lot to us.

But arriving in Illinois was its own relaxing reward, with its comfortable weather and gentle green farming landscape. We went to call on said lawyer at his home. Dude was not around. I figured it was cool to stretch out in his backyard for a few, and catch some rays. I knew there was a tour going inside the home, and what if they came out the back door and were like, "Hey you, shoo, shoo!" But in my shades I was too cool to think about it, busy basking in the power of Lincoln rays.

The Lincoln Home National Historic Site surrounds the home for two square blocks, and is made up of crisscrossing Eighth and Jackson streets lined with two dozen restored homes and out-structures. The area is closed to traffic, so you can go along on the packed gravel streets or on the plankboard sidewalks, both in good shape for easy wheeling in a power chair at least. In a manual chair ...?

        From a wheelchair-accessibility perspective, you'll have to decide which you will do, streets or sidewalks, because it's one or the other: Apparently there were no curb cut-outs in the Great Emancipator's day, right? If you're on a sidewalk or on a street, the only way to cross over into the other is by going to the end of the block. You'll want to do both levels.

Now the home itself is only partially accessible. The Lincolns lived there for 17 years and they added on a second floor, which is not accessible to wheelchairs. The first floor is accessible to manual chairs only: No power wheelchairs or scooters. I'd seen it already in my other, walking life, and my queen was taking a pass that day. There are workarounds, but it's always a bummer to see or hear the word, "NO." From our experience, National Park Service usually does a good job with accessibility. My accessibility questions were answered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources like so: 

"Most power wheelchairs are unfortunately unable to go inside the Lincoln Home due to their weight and their width. If you have a particularly light (65 pounds or less) and narrower power chair, it may be able to fit. (You can send me the specifications of the chair to check, if you would like.) As many of the structural components of the Lincoln Home are original, including the doorways, this unfortunately affects what devices can be used inside the home. Manual wheelchairs, as long as they can fit inside the Lincoln Home doorways, can go inside the home. We have a measurement device at our visitor center we use to check if a guest's manual wheelchair can fit through the doorways. If their wheelchair cannot fit, we also have manual wheelchairs guests can check out free of charge to use.

"When using a wheelchair on the Lincoln Home tour, the individual using the wheelchair (and another individual in their party, if desired/applicable) will receive their own tour guide for the duration of the tour. The rest of the tour group who are not using wheelchairs will go with another tour guide and enter the home using the steps that lead up to the front door. The party that includes the individual in the wheelchair will enter the house through a different entrance, one which uses a wheelchair lift to lift the individuals to the house's first floor level. (The house is raised and on a slight hill.) The first floor of the home tour will be given, and then the tour guide can offer showing pictures of the second floor with narration, to any individuals who choose not to go upstairs.

"Please just inform the person at the Visitor Center front desk that there is an individual in your group that cannot go up and down stairs, and they will communicate with the appropriate staff to prepare the lift. ...The maximum length, I have been told, that wheelchairs can be to fit is 29.5 inches. ...

"We may be able to make it work with 2 individuals in wheelchairs, but any more than that really cannot fit on one tour due to the size of the rooms and the room partitions. ... If this applies to your party, please let me know and we can discuss potential options."

Tall tales be spoken here: the Railsplitter's porch. (Shhh, I'm creeping in the backyard.)

Jennifer Caldwell of Illinois DNR adds more:

"The courtyard and the main level of the house can be accessed by wheelchair. The wheelchair accessible entrance is through the carriage house, which is at the back of the property near the railroad tracks.  The narrowest of the doors/gates along the path is 32 inches wide.

"There is a lift on the north side of the house for guests unable to use the stairs. It is 32 inches wide by 48 inches deep and can accommodate up to 750 pounds.  The lift provides access to the main floor of the house.  Our staff are happy to help direct guests to the lift and assist with lift operation.

"Due to the varying elevations throughout the home, only the main level is accessible by wheelchair.  This includes the reception/fountain area, mother's bedroom, dining room, Victorian room, living room, kitchen and conservatory hall.  For other areas that are not accessible, we can provide live virtual access to those parts of the tour via iPad. (We will provide the iPad and other necessary equipment for this.)"

Contact her with your questions at jennifer.a.caldwell@illinois.gov or 217-685-9554.

Around the historic site, two of the houses are wheelchair accessible and in the cleverest way (see photos). 

I've never seen anything like them — literally, I could not see these lifts until my wife pointed out that they were there. Covered in matching board-work and swinging gates, I love these lifts.

        The houses have exhibits inside, and by the time we poked around the nooks and crannies, gardens and backyards of the tiny village area, the Butterball turkey timer in my head popped out, meaning, "Museummed out. Find another available brain." It usually takes a couple of hours to reach that point, but it was fun and I was done.

The afternoon was getting late and we walked around town. About five blocks away, we stumbled unto the Illinois State Police Memorial Park, at 722 S. Sixth St. It's on the corner of two reasonably busy streets, but set far enough off to be dignified and peaceful. It included enough human elements to make it quite touching, and when the evening bell started tolling at the nearby Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, I found myself very moved by it all. There is also an Illinois Police Officers Memorial not far away, at 840 S. Spring St., beside the Illinois State Museum.

Another few blocks and we reached Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana-Thomas House (phone 217-782-6776), now a state historic site, at 301 E. Lawrence Ave. Built in 1904, it was interesting seeing a museum-piece home -- oooh, it's Frank Lloyd Wright -- set within a neighborhood that's historic but a little worse for wear. I wheeled around the thing is much as I could, even around the back, to see all the different angles it presents. Unfortunately we were there after hours. From the website, the interiors look amazing although completely inaccessible. No response to my inquiry, so I'm guessing my conclusion is right.

Four blocks away, we came to the Illinois State Capitol building, at 401 S. Second St. At 361 feet, the Illinois State Capitol is the taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Its central dome and towers are finished with a layer of zinc that provide its trademark silvery sheen which does not weather. On dreary, bad-weather days the dome looks heavy and leaden, or ironclad and oppressive -- which probably lies in the eye of the beholder depending on what the legislature inside has been up to lately, eh? But it was a bright, sunny day, which squares up with what I've seen coming out of there lately, and those towers were gleaming. Check out the features of the accessible tour here. A couple blocks away a Pride concert was blasting loud. It was a groovy, gorgeous day and folks were out enjoying it.

Camp A While, 1779 1250th Ave, Lincoln, IL 62656. 217-732-8840.

Thirty-five miles northeast of Springfield along I-55 lies a fantastic overnight spot, and it's the owners that make it so. It's a tiny place, maybe a dozen sites in all, very clean, quiet and well-maintained, ringed by trees and farmers' fields. It's a quarter-mile off the expressway, and with a historic pedigree as a traditional stopover spot along old Route 66 just a third of a mile away. Camp A While has been around for decades and was listed in all the old guidebooks. Full hookups, back-in spots of shallow gravel. The owners are hands-on and customer-service-oriented. You call them 15 minutes before arriving -- they insist on it in order to manage the available space, but it's well worth the call because they back you into the spot and see that you are set up with everything you need.

They are completely attentive to accessibility. After hearing my questions on the phone, they arranged a spot with a concrete pad where we could drop the wheelchair ramp, and checked that the gravel was OK with us beforehand. Sites are mostly level, with 15 feet of grass between them, fine for the wheelchair to get around, and there's always many empty spaces around so that the overall atmosphere is relaxed and quiet, never even close to crammed feeling. They get a lot of overnights to and from Florida, and workers. Last but not least, Wrigley, the camp dog, comes around to greet you, and if he likes you, maybe share one of his stuffed toys. He's a smooth operator, and he and my Queen are fast friends.

When we unloaded, two hot-air balloons drifted across the farmers field across the road, which kind of captured the cheerful mood after our short-but-sweet day. One of them had a likeness of the lawyer. While you're there in the town of Lincoln, you can drive through town on Route 66 to see the world's largest covered wagon. Guess who that wagon is driven by? It ain't Wrigley.