A Train to Portland

This fall we are planning a trip to Eastern Europe. We are not planning to rent a car since the car would be of little use in most European cities and are planning to be dependent on public transportation. Public transportation is much better in Eastern Europe than it is in much of the United States although it is unclear how much of their public transportation will be wheelchair accessible. We decided to test how easy it was to get around with nothing but public transportation by planning a trip to Portland Oregon. The plan was to park at the local park and ride, take the bus to the train station, take the train to Portland and then use the Portland light rail to get around Portland.

We plan to do this with another couple. The man we're going with suffered a spinal injury at roughly the  same time that I did and has a similar level of injury so we expected to encounter relatively similar problems. Verna and I drove to the local park-and-ride and waited for the bus. After the bus was a half hour late and it looked like there was some danger of missing the train, we decided to abandon the first leg of our public transportation journey and to simply drive to the train station.

We met our friends at the station and were offered a special line to board the train and also the opportunity to board before other passengers. Amtrak has a ramp to allow wheelchairs to get on the train. It is a little steep at the end and I asked for help because I was a little afraid of becoming unstable in the steep portion like getting up was no real difficulty. they put us in a compartment where seats were removed in one area allowing wheelchairs to be parked. The area was a little bit small and I simply transferred into a train seat and stow the wheelchair for the rest of the journey allowing my friend to have the entire space.

To train the Portland is gorgeous running along Puget Sound for much of its length and then toward the end of along the Columbia River. The Portland station is in the middle of downtown and less than two blocks away there is a light rail station which can take you too much of Portland. An added bonus is that in downtown Portland the light rail is free. Light rail stations are elevated a couple of feet so that the station and the floor of the train are at the same level. There is a small ramp which bridges the gap between the train and station allowing a handicapped person to roll into the train. The hotel was only a couple of stops from the train station and we discovered, fortuitously, a nice food court at the tram stop allowing us to pick up lunch on the way to the hotel. We stayed at the Marriott in a room labeled as a handicap room although, other than some bars in the bathroom, I could not see much difference from a regular hotel. The door was heavy and difficult but not impossible to open from a wheelchair. out

After a nap we visited the Portland Saturday market, a collection largely craft stalls in a park and neighborhood on the Columbia River. The one stroll that I really remember was one which offered to sculpt a garden gnome in your shape.

That evening we went to a nice restaurant and came back to the hotel.

The next day we visited Portland Chinese garden. They have laid out has so that people in wheelchairs can get to much of the garden which has many interesting plants and a giant Koi pond.

One of the things that we learned on the trip was not to unbalance the wheelchair. On the way down I had a piece of luggage strapped to the front of the wheelchair on luggage carriers. The carriers worked well but the luggage, while small, was also that's happiest thing that we carried and coming down a steep ramp off of the train the wheelchair fell forward until I caught it with my arm. There was at least one other occasion when all of that weight on the front of the chair made life difficult. The conclusion was that we might carry less weight on the wheelchair but the weight that we carry should be balanced.