Windward

Why do disabled people love to travel? They do, you know. The web is full of advice for wheelchair travelers. And the most obvious recommendation is nowhere to be seen: stay home.

At home you are less likely to slide out of control down a cobblestone street, get stuck at the top of 1000 marble steps or break your wheelchair axle a continent away from the nearest dealer. So, why do we travel? I was wondering this while at an airport waiting for a bus. There should have been no wait at all. The driver of the #20 bus assured me that I should catch the #19 bus behind him. And the #19, its operator said, was very much the wrong one, and did the #20 guy really tell me to wait for him? With that, both buses departed. And I had a good half an hour to consider the general merits of, and rationale for, disabled travel.

It was a good half an hour, because I went to all the bad places. These include blaming myself for whatever goes wrong in my life. And going to the bad place is the good thing about travel. The bad places are always the most instructive. And they do have a way of bracing the spirit and inspiring action. I resolved that the next bus, whatever its number, would be my bus. I would take it. The driver could say whatever he wished, but I was boarding. And so it came to pass that the #20 stopped, the wheelchair lift extended, and I rose like a deus ex machina into the maw of the Waikiki Downtown Express. The bus's interior was deeply air-conditioned, the refrigeration bringing into stark contrast the abundant tropical warmth, airport kerosene and diesel fumes notwithstanding.

The driver refused my fare. The same happens to me in San Francisco and in the suburbs to the south, now here in Hawaii, so this must be part of the universal disabled experience. What does it mean? That being disabled automatically inspires sympathy? That most disabled people are financially strapped? Who can say? I can say one thing. My vibes on boarding the #20 Waikiki are not the strongest. I am very aware of the precariousness of my disabled state. My journey depends entirely on the mechanical fortitude of a wheelchair, the only lifeline to the outside world my mobile phone. Yet, as the #20 rumbles along a street named Nimitz, the adventure of disabled travel begins to manifest. Who in Honolulu takes a bus? This old guy and his apparent wife, he with a U.S. Army cap and she with a sour expression. This middle-aged woman, loose and fleshy in her capacious muumuu, carrying a shopping bag. A family, 45-ish guy with twentysomething kids, all somehow the same age. Until, the bus's recorded announcement tells us that this is King Street and Aleimena, transfer point for the windward buses.

Traveling, being down on the ground, where the difference between catching and missing a bus is tangible, one pricks up the ears at "windward." This is how Hawaiians express geography. There is, apparently, wind on one side of the islands, less on the other, and it pays to know the difference if you want to get anywhere. Just as it pays to listen to a London cab driver when he tells you not to request the east side of Queens Park  -- 'don't give me any compass, mate' -- but to say it's near the Duke of York, the neighborhood pub.

So, now I'm in central Honolulu, looking up at a high-rise bank, and waiting with other hapless souls for the #55 Windward. I perch my throbbing, swelling, paralyzed leg on a marble ledge and twice within a few minutes someone from the bank comes outside to sponge the rainwater off the bench. The first person appears to be a sort of bank porter, and the second is a bona fide janitor. Both smile at me. This is what they do, post-rain marble drying. Both are doubtless from the Philippines. Thus, Hawaii. I am in what could be called a nice part of town. This, I theorize, underlies the difference of opinion between bus drivers. This route, the longer one, involves a change of buses here. The other, who knows?

At last the #55 rolls up and we roll away. I am relieved, feeling more confident now about man and his future. My wife is slowly dying. We both say this now. And my confidence in everything is, well, different. More than ever, I am learning to take things as they come. And they're coming at me right now, as the #55 climbs a small hill and heads away from the center of Honolulu. A native Hawaiian, about my age, has befriended a 30ish guy beside him. The younger man explains that he is a schoolteacher, here in Hawaii to interview for a job in an intermediate school. And on his modest income, he appreciates this $2 transit ride along the northern edge of the island of Oahu. I appreciate it too. The older Hawaiian native can't stop talking. There is this bus and that bus and the other, and the schoolteacher would be wise to take them all. What's that? The schoolteacher is asking about a sign to the Punch Bowl something or other. This, I know, is a famous military cemetery. The older Hawaiian knows it too and expresses himself this way: 'oh, that's where the service guys who have been in the military they give them the graves so the soldiers can be buried there with the veterans' when they die.' There is something authentically Hawaiian in this circumlocution, and I find it pleasing. The bus accelerates, slipping into the fast road over the Pali, the volcanic ridge where Hawaiian kings famously threw human sacrifices over the edge. I doze ever so briefly, perhaps absorbing the knowledge that my ride aboard the #55 will stretch to approximately two hours.

We descend into Kaneohe, which might be called a suburb of Honolulu, but really shouldn't. The island is too small for that sort of thing. Kaneohe is its own separate town. My in-laws live here, and my wife and I will visit here shortly, so the look of the place is not unfamiliar. The volcanic mountains in the background make it a spectacular place. The complete absence of hotels makes this a remarkably un-touristy part of a tourist island. Puddles gleam everywhere, and the grass at the edge of the road ripples like a green meadow. This place has had a lot of rain. At one bus stop, ten high school kids climb aboard. At the next, a black woman, perhaps late 30s, and a hobbling white guy about ten years older. One or both reek of alcohol. The woman carries a passel of bags. One, a plastic shopping bag, is full of aluminum cans, empty and half crushed. The look on her face, also empty and half crushed, lies beyond sadness. She sits at the end of a bench closest to me. Instinctively, I pull back, look away. Perhaps she will talk to me, demand my attention, ask me for money. Even if she asks only for pity, my coffers are empty.

We pass the main Kaneohe shopping mall, with Sears and Starbucks and Barnes & Noble. People get on, people get off. And just at the edge of town, before the highway slips into an authentic mangrove swamp, the black woman and her limping companion get off with all their bags. I often forget that I live in the soft world and that most of the world is hard. The road now leads somewhere between the two. We are now a country bus, passing the Hygienic Store, its name probably dating from the era of sugar plantations. Further on, the highway arcs along a true tropical lagoon, palm trees in a circle along a bay. Bali hi. Waves lap at the road. The houses set along it are built on stilts, raised high above the frequent floods. At the local branch of Brigham Young University, a beautiful young woman gets off. At the next stop, an aging beach bum slips from bus to forest.

The quadriplegic species does not survive because it is the fittest. In Darwinian terms, I should have succumbed long ago. I survive because I have, in the splendid words of Tennessee Williams, always relied on the kindness of strangers. What else can one call it but kindness or generosity or, yes, charity? My existence is fragile, and I can feel this more immediately bouncing west on the #55. Here is one of the lessons of travel, the interdependence of human beings. In the US, where self-reliance, self starting, self everything, is so highly prized, the lesson of disabled travel always comes down to this: we are all on a journey. So don't sneer at the black woman with the recycled cans, the beach bum who is too old to be bumming. We all owe each other something. What it is, and how and when we repay, life will tell us.

Now we are passing the shrimp farms. These are unprepossessing ponds, murky and muddy, each square and lined with reeds. Their harvest is for sale from the vans and shacks along the highway. Island's best shrimp. Legendary shrimp van. Hottest shrimp. Much of what's on offer in Hawaii is like this. Splintering and funky and expressed in pidgin native dialect. Shave ice. Store is close. In between the big hotels are many miles of small towns and small shops. Country. As a traveler, I can only pass through it, never know it. There is a culture and a way of life here, and it is immune to assaults by travelers. When we stop at a high school, pass a particular row of shops, speed by the shrimp vans, our bus driver launches into a flurry of commentary. I can tell by his general intonation that he is uttering slogans, satirical or sincerely emblematic, one cannot say. I do not understand more than 10% of what he says.

Flowers, hibiscus or something like them, sprout from a carefully tended hedge woven through a fence. A golf course lies beyond. And now the bus turns from the highway, down a private road passing, of all things, a guard station. This is a gated community of sorts. It is my hotel. The bus stops, the wheelchair lift drops me to the ground, and I weave through a waiting knot of hotel maids and golf course attendants to the distant lobby. There, I do not roll through a door, because there is no door. There is not even a front wall. This is Hawaii. Land of the walless. My door is always open, because it isn't. And there in the lobby is my wife calling to me.

I tried to call her about half an hour before, as the bus was rounding its lagoon. But I had forgotten her number. Such a thing is not possible. I know my wife's mobile phone number. But such things are happening these days. These days may be our last. And what does this mean? How many are there? Haven't I had abundant opportunity to make some distracted move between Honolulu Airport and here that would end my own life? Is it the fact of death we fear or the separation from the one we love? What happens when there is no mobile phone and no number and no answer?

Marlou's parents have driven her from the airport, my 200 pound electric wheelchair being far too bulky for any normal car or van. Disabled travel is built around such realities. The Honolulu taxi company has a wheelchair-lift-equipped van that last year drove me here for $175. The money seems a waste. I got here today for one dollar. Marlou's parents joke about the bus ride. Over lunch, someone in the golf course restaurant heard about my transit plight and offered condolences. I assure them none are necessary.

Marlou's parents seem friendly but distracted. They leave quickly. Marlou tells me about her talk with them, all about her and cancer and time left. They all needed some privacy. I needed a journey.