Worth the effort: Why I blog on travel by people with disabilities

 The learning started the very first time we tried to travel with our son and his wheelchair.

 My wife, Karen, went in to register at the motel in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. We’d specified, when making the reservation, that we needed a first floor room. But that’s not what they had for us. It was just a two-story motel; no need for an elevator for most people. But for us, the second floor with only stairs for access was as good as putting us on the roof.

When Karen returned to the car, and told me about the mix-up, I remember that we considered carrying Marcus and his chair up the stairs. Then we realized that was impractical bordering on the insane. We sighed, and went back in and demanded a first floor room, like our reservation called for. And we got it.

So started our education in traveling with someone with physical disabilities.

Since then we’ve learned plenty. Like sometimes you get lucky with accessibility. But if you want to have the best chance of having your travel experience be pleasant, you need to do some planning. This hit us in small doses as we started traveling with a wheelchair user. We did get lucky a few times. But we found ourselves doing more and more research to try to improve our luck.

But we love to travel. For our family, it is a bonding experience like no other. It is the one time of year that we don’t have a schedule. We aren’t splitting up to get one child to a clarinet lesson and another to gymnastics. We’re together and we get to know each other better once again. We spend time talking in the car or on the beach or at the scenic overlook. In short, travel is rewarding and it’s worth the work.

Traveling with a disabled family member is undoubtedly more work. There are a hundred new considerations. There's extra equipment to carry often times. You can’t always count on the world being fully ADA compliant. It takes more planning.

But that benefit we were talking about – family time. That’s the same and the pay-off is just as good. In fact, maybe it’s even a little better knowing that we have overcome some obstacles to enjoy the time away.

Somewhere along the way, I got interested in travel by people with disabilities in general -- not just for our own family interests -- and started reading more about it. With my training as a journalist, sharing what I found with others seemed a natural move. And luckily blogging came about at around the same time, to provide a convenient and economical outlet.

 I've been blogging on news about travel by people with disabilities since 2004 at two different sites of my own. Now I'm excited about writing some more developed pieces here at Disaboom. I hope you'll find them interesting, relateable and worthwhile.