So do I fly from here?

On the weekend my spouse and I went exploring with my power wheelchair using the new Sky Train transit line. The stations, subway cars, and elevators are marvelous. A great deal of thought was put into the design, and it shows.

Unfortunately, when you get out of the station nearest Granville Island - the Olympic Village Station - the path to get to Granville Island is much less appealing.

The path down to the seawall is long and winding. The path we figured would be the shortest route went down a sidewalk that goes over train tracks (for the new, old, trying-to-revive-it-again street car to Granville Island). That was a first for me - I didn't know if the wheelchair would make it over the tracks - but the sidewalk paving was good, so it did fine. Then a short trip down a winding ramp let out into a parking lot. Carefully making our way out of the parking lot, crossing the road to get into the residential housing area between us and the seawall was a bit nerve racking.

From that point, it was relatively easy to get to the seawall, but the seawall between there and Granville Island is paved with paving stones. Large rocks with lots of thick grout lines between them. It looks very nice, and is probably very good for drainage, but the vibrations it caused for the wheelchair were numbing.

On the way back to the Sky Train station we decided to try the road that leads fairly directly to it. The sidewalks along this road were not the most wheelchair friendly. The bushes in several areas were encroaching on the sidewalk space, and some of those bushes were raspberry canes - read OUCH, those have thorns! Thankfully, it's January and not the summer when they are growing!

So taking the Sky Train to get out of downtown and most of the way to Granville Island looks good on paper... but do I need to put wings on the wheelchair and fly from the station to the island?

I've likened the joy-stick I use to drive the wheelchair to a controller for a video game. The control is pretty much the same. We've been playing Rabbids Go Home on the Wii quite a bit in the last month. I drive the shopping cart in the game, and my spouse shoots a rabbid out to collect stuff to put in the shopping cart. If you steer that shopping cart in a circle quickly it generates sparks, and then if you press the right button you can boost the shopping cart and drive up walls... so if I do the same when I'm in the wheelchair... hmmmm