My wheelchair adventure and Oprah's big event

 

It all began with some harmless junk mail that I'd received from Oprah's Angel Network. I'd almost thrown it out, but when I opened it, I discovered several checks inside. One was blank, which piqued my interest right away. Who sends out blank checks? Another was made out to some businessman, whose name eludes me, for the sum of $858. 

I began to feel a twinge of guilt for the thought I'd initially had about trying to make use of the blank check for my own purposes. I looked around at the other contents of the envelope, searching for some evidence that it was actually addressed to me but found none. Clearly, some error had been made at the post office.

 As I sat there in my electric wheelchair, going through the other letters which were addressed to me, Oprah rolled up in her own electric wheelchair and asked me if I was going to her event downtown. The details were all in the invitation I was holding, she told me. Sure enough, among the checks was a bulk mail flyer announcing an event in the soon to be newly renovated downtown Marysville.

We both zipped away down a bike path at top speed, with Oprah in the lead, headed off to the big event. My wheelchair was a bit wonky, however, and I had difficulty keeping it on the path, which was itself quite substandard as far as handicap accessibility. Some construction had re-routed the bike path over a drainage channel, and the terrain would have been challenging for a bicycle, much less a clunky electric wheelchair. 

Oprah's chair handled the loose gravel and small creek boulders just fine, but I kept spinning my tires and veering dangerously out of control. At one point, I had to get out and push my wheelchair back up a steep sandy embankment to avoid getting stuck in the slushy muck of the creek. I felt like I was cheating, since I was supposed to be testing this chair out for a friend who was actually handicapped. Between the erratic controls and the inability to propel itself over rough terrain, this wheelchair was not going to get a good review from me.

By the time I got myself unstuck, I could barely see Oprah disappearing over the hill on the other side of the creek. I was going to have to find another way to the event. Circling back through town, I went down alleys and through more construction sites, looking for the venue. 

As I made my way across a dirt lot, a giant foam boulder fell from the sky and bounced harmlessly in front of me a couple of times before rolling down into another creek. I was intrigued by this obvious Hollywood prop, so I abandoned my wheelchair for a bit and climbed down some rather large actual boulders and waded around in the creek looking for this foam outlier. Its camouflage had been too craftily designed, however, and I was unable to distinguish it from the natural terrain.

I gave up and returned to my wheelchair, which I'd parked next to a building and was currently being looked over by a couple of homeless guys. I quickly took possession of it, and as I was about to wheel away, one of them asked me to guess his religion. I looked him over from top to bottom. Treadworn shoes, pants and coat blackened around the edges with road grime and soot from hobo fires, greasy, unkempt hair and beard, he was the embodiment of Aqualung, Jethro Tull's archetypal vagabond.

I wanted to say Jehovah's Witness, but just then he rolled up his pant leg, exposing a network of needle tracks which he began to poke at with a wooden meat skewer. Maybe Rastafarian, I thought? I wasn't sure about their stand on IV drug use, though, so I kept my mouth shut. The other fellow kept encouraging me to guess, but I decided to leave, not wanting to miss Oprah's event.

The dream ended there, but from my vantage point in the spot by the building, I could just make out the Civic Center, the venue where the event was to be held. It was going to be big.