First Taxi - June 9, 2011

On Thursday our only planned activity was a Bio-Fit appointment.  At 10:30am our van came and at 11am Eric began his workout.  The session started with the standard stretching of his legs and hips.  Then Alexis took Eric to the workout machines where he did shoulder, tricep, bicep and chest workout.  Tracy also found a few machines to work on along side Eric in between taking notes.

For lunch Tracy grabbed a large Subway turkey (pavo) sandwich.  She perfected the art of pointing to the ingredients and working on her "Spanglish" because not many people speak English as advertised.

Then for the big adventure.  We agreed that we would brave hailing a taxi and taking it to one of the shopping malls to see a movie.  Hailing a cab was easy as one third of the cars driving by the hotel are cabs.  Next Eric transferred in and I took the wheels off of the wheelchair.  The cab driver tried various ways to fit the chair in the trunk but it just would not fit.  When it appeared he was going to leave it in the trunk with the trunk door open, I grabbed it out and set it on the backseat next to Eric.  That solved two problems.  One, it would not fall out of the trunk.  Two, no one else could come in our cab, as cabbies can keep adding people until they are full.  For only $3 the cabbie took us to the MultiPlaza.  Yeah, we made it.  Next we scoped out the elevators, bathrooms and found the cinema.  We bought two tickets to Pirates of the Carribean, in English with subtitles, then walked around the mall.  Tracy found a pair of silver flipflops to go with her black skirt, then we went back to figure out the theater.  

We bought our popcorn, only $2.40 for a large (half the cost in the US).  We strolled into the theater a little early to check it out.  Hmmm, problem.  The ramp lead us to the very bottom row at the very bottom of the screen in the front and without wheelchair seating.  We looked up at all of the seats above us.  A cinema worker walked in and looked at us.  We looked at him and pointed towards the upper seats.  He turned around and we followed him.  We were taken into a special workers only hallway into a very dirty maintenance elevator.  We went up a floor and were lead back to the theater.  We walked in and found ourselves about 3/4 up in the theater.  It was a good start.  Then we realized there was still no wheelchair seating.  The ramp took us to the edge of one row with stairs up or down.  The platform was so small, Eric's chair would only face sideways.  Well, time for a transfer out of the wheelchair, over the theater chair arm into the seat.  With some effort, Eric did it and was comfortable.  YEAH!  We spent the next 2 plus hours enjoying an entertaining Jack Sparrow movie.  After the movie we found where the cabs pick up from the mall and paid $4 for a ride back to the hotel.  We were excited we had successfully traversed the cab system and seen the Pirates move.