By Bethany A. Hoppe
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mobileWOMEN contributor, Bethany Hoppe |
In the middle of winter this past year, my friend Unita and I started up a fabulous conversation about summer vacations. She and her husband, who works at the same university as I do, usually do a trip each summer. So, we decided to plan a trip together. It didn’t take long for our vacation daydreaming to take us to the beach, which of course led to chattering about our shared love for dolphins, which led to our shared wish to have a dolphin encounter, or at least go view them from a sailboat.
Ironically, while I love the water, I don’t really swim. I am in awe of the ocean’s energy, vibe, and force – yet know that it isn’t the safety of a swimming pool with umbrella drinks. A lot of my mixed emotions about the awesomeness of the ocean’s shore, and the rush of dealing with waves and wildlife, is wrapped up in logistics.
Wheelchairs are not a fan of sand, or salt water no matter how much this Rolling Diva wants to play in the ocean and tan on the beach!
Rolling on the beach may sound romantic, but it isn’t the picturesque stroll hand in hand with your man when you’re battling every victorious foot of progress in soft sand, sea foam, and shells. I found very quickly that if I stopped for a moment, I sunk into a rut that reminded me of getting stuck in the deep snow of Northwestern Pennsylvania.
If I wasn’t cleared out of the way enough for incoming surf, I would get dizzy with the gravitational tidal pulls that shifted the soaking sand under my wheels, relocating and sinking me into a new spot with zero hope of backing out of the current or next rolling curl of water.
When you’re not a strong swimmer, and you weigh in about the same as a Jellyfish…diving into the surf isn’t the brightest idea. But despite this, I craved adventure! I wanted to be on the water. I wanted to be at the water. I wanted to be in the water. I wanted to encounter the life force of the ocean.
My husband and I traveled with our friends to Cocoa Beach, FL for the vacation Unita and I had begun talking about back when there were no leaves on the trees of Tennessee, and the forecast was a constant gray drizzle and chill in the air.
With help from Tyson, I got a quick carry-her-across-the-threshold, and then go-back-and-get-her-chair style of getting onto the beach. Soon we discovered a strip of beach between the soft sinking sand, and the wet tide sand that basically acted like a sidewalk. If I tipped back slightly off my casters, we were able to manage quite a romantic stroll along the beach. Occasionally, tides came in closer than expected, and I would get a little stranded momentarily. I have made a mental note that next time I take a beach vacation…plan ahead to rent a beach wheelchair. It will be worth the fees and the freedom of joy-riding a bit more.
Even though I didn’t have a beach chair, I still enjoyed the beach. The more I rolled around, the more physically fit I began to feel and become in a very short amount of time. I quickly learned a few new ways of pushing my chair, and bumping up and down small steps of the resort. But more than that…I learned something about my own physical integrity.