S1E15 - Adrenaline & Accessibility with Dave Wilkinson

Hello and welcome to the human
where See Things Differently podcast.

Each month, join your hosts, Rachel Ramos
and David Woodbridge as we bring you engaging interviews from
guests, interaction from our one of a kind distribution partners stories
that will take you off the beaten path.

Current promos, shows
where you can find us and so much more.

So stick around.

Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 15 of See Things Differently.

Where we are into March already.

So I'm not sure how that's happening,
but the time is just flying by.

And if you've been listening to us
for a little while, you may remember that

March is Onam
or Orientation and Mobility month.

So we love to have folks on
who talk about either teaching travel or their travel journeys.

And someone who reached out to us,
who has an absolutely excellent travel and athletic journey
that I'm sure most of us would not dream of
having is Dave Wilkinson.

So he is here, and I'm very excited
to tell you all about Dave.

Before we let Dave tell us all about Dave.

And I'm with David Woodbridge.

So I am surrounded by all of the Dave's
and it is a very, very cool thing.

So Dave Wilkinson, now he is an endurance
athlete and adrenaline junkie who pays the bills as a senior digital
accessibility analyst for Hilton Hotels.

I stay in Hilton often for my work.

So thanks very much, Dave,
for what you do.

Prior to his career at Hilton,
Dave helped sales and management positions at several assistive technology
companies, including Sylvia's

Human Wear and Freedom Scientific.

Throughout his professional
and personal life, Dave has been and is a lifelong advocate for Braille.

Of course,
we couldn't be a Human Word podcast without talking about Braille, so that
will feature in today's episode as well.

But Dave, who has been blind
since birth, has completed three Ironman triathlons,
tons of short tier triathlons, over 30 marathons,
numerous ultra cycling events, and spend a couple of years
racing on cross-country skis.

In 2024,
he attempted a race across America, a 3000 mile cycling race across the US.

The race must be finished
in a maximum of 12 days.

Dave and his tandem
pilot are attempting to race across

America again
in 2027, with lots more races before then.

Dave was once described by an exasperated
colleague as a good idea, taken a step too far and consider this
to be the ultimate compliment.

He is married to an incredibly patient
wife and became a grand Dave this past September.
Congratulations, Dave.

He can't wait to show his granddaughter
the magic and the wonder of this incredible journey.

So as you folks can hear,

Dave is the man who has tons of activity
to tell us about.

We'll talk about how the real part
of Dave's life is incorporated into his journey.

But Dave, first of all,
welcome to the podcast.

We are so excited you're here.

It is wonderful to be here.

And actually we'll start if, we can start by incorporating Braille
from the beginning because it plays a crucial role
in a lot of this. I, and towards towards the end of 2017,
I was in a car crash and I broke two vertebrae in my neck
and injured two more and was grumpy and on painkillers and lying around board.

And I was kind of mad that out of all the things that almost killed me,
it was someone else's driving that just about succeeded.

Instead of some of the silly things
that I'd done over the years.

One of the byproducts of that accident was
I was incredibly fortunate.

I, I basically healed and came back with one small exception,
which is that I have, small amount of nerve damage
in my right hand and my primary reading fingers,
my first finger on my right hand.

So reading was a challenge.

Just to, to say the least.

Over the next several months during this period of time,
the brilliant was released.

And at that point the brilliant didn't
have speech and I needed something where

I couldn't rely on speech as a crutch
to regain a lot of my ability to read.

And Don bought me a one of the first brilliant 40,
by X series units.

And if you look at it at this point, it's
worn down to where it's smooth.

There's no texture
to any of the plastic molding or anything.

And at this point it's been used to death.

But we got it so that I basically wasn't
allowed to use the stream once I had the brilliant,
because I could accomplish anything on the brilliant that I could do on
the stream, and it forced me to read it.

So the brilliant and no small part, was a crucial building block in me regaining the ability
to read after my car crash.

The other reason
that the car crash is important is

I sort of viewed myself as having a cloak of invincibility,
and when you break your neck, you tend to lose that
cloak of invincibility.

And it irritated me, and I wanted a way
to come back and prove that I had come all the way back from this thing,
and that I was no worse for wear.

And at a random dinner in Toronto,

I met Diane Bergeron,
who had completed an Ironman and who's a, a wonderful lady
for anyone out there who knows her.

And she mentioned that she had completed
an Ironman.

And I have one of those moments
where it was just like, she's not any better shape than I am.

If she can do an Ironman,
I can do an Ironman, and by golly,

I'm going to do one.

And the switch was flipped
and that's how I got into really endurance athletics and into,
you know, all these, you know, ultra sports
and that type of stuff that is incredible.

So I love that
you met this lady, Diane Bergeron, and you were using your brilliant
and living life.

But tell us, what is an Ironman for those
who may not know, and then tell us a little bit about the ultra
cycling events that you've done.

I mean, those are things that probably folks maybe not have been exposed to before.

And an Ironman triathlon is, and any triathlon is a swim bike
and a run there various distances, going anywhere
from what is called a sprint triathlon all the way up to Ironman.

And then you can get into there are people
that will do Double iron, Mads, etc. but they're, they're out of their minds.

And an Ironman triathlon is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride.

And then you finish it off
of the marathon, which is 26.2 miles, and you have to complete it
in under 17 hours.

So you're you're just spinning.

It's a it's a day of pain.

But at the same time, there's an immense sense of accomplishment
that that goes with it.

When, when I got into doing Ironman
and when I decided I was going to do one,

I didn't own a tandem bike
and I really didn't know how to swim.

So I had a long way to go to figure out
how all this was going to work.

So I took swimming lessons and, I mean,

I could keep from drowning, but I wasn't
I wasn't be able to swim 2.4 miles.

Right.

And so I, you know,
I took swimming lessons and was was lucky enough to land a coach, and a, an Ironman partner, in the same phone
call.

I was a guy that I'd run marathons
with previously, who at one point competed in Ironman triathlons professionally,
which just sounds way too hard.

But he agreed to both, be my coach and to be my,

Ironman partner slash guide.

And we and I did the Louisville
Ironman in 2019 and then went on to do a couple more
after that. And,

I did a lot of half halves along the half

Ironman along the way and, and shorter
triathlons and all this kind of stuff.

And at some point you're like, okay, now
what's next?

All right.

I've proven that
the cloak of invincibility is back and adrenaline junkie ism is back.

That's right.

And when you're swimming for triathlons, if you're a blind swimmer, you're tethered to someone else.

And so my my tether was a wildly scientific,
super custom made piece of bungee cord that I chopped off of a roll of bungee
cord that I bought from Amazon.

Nothing like a little DIY tether.

Yeah, absolutely.

So. And you're you're we are tethered at the waist,
and then I have a second tether, wrapped around my leg
in case it comes undone to waste.

I've still got something to.

But when you're jumping
into the sea of humanity at the beginning of a triathlon, you lose.

You already can't see.

Your head's underwater, so you can't hear.

You're using this bungee cord to sort of
figure out directions and where to go.

And meanwhile
you're kicking people in the head and they're kicking you in the head,
and it's just a sea of thrashing, flailing humanity.

And it's chaos.

I was finished
nude swim with a friend of mine, and we'd finished it up and she was like,
you know, I've seen you ride.

You're a good cyclist.

Have you ever thought about doing Race
Across America?

And I'm like,
I've never heard of this thing.

And she started explaining
that it's a 3000 mile cycling race, and it goes from coast
to coast across the country, and you've only got a few days
to finish it and all this kind of stuff.

And the more she's describing this thing, the more God awful, horrible it sounded,
the more it was like, this is for me.

You know, this is this sounds this
this sounds ghastly.

Sign me up.

And so I really started to get into ultra
cycling events and started with doing 160 mile race,
across the state of Indiana.

I've done races in the in the desert, in California, where you're, you're seeing
how far you can ride in 24 hours.

I'm going to do another one of those
coming up in June outside of Ann Arbor.

So it'll be my first time I've done any significant riding in Michigan,
which will be cool.

Later on this summer,
probably mid-September, my pilot and I are going to do
a couple days riding to the Appalachians.

It's not going to be an official race.

There is an official race that does it,
but it's like all I want is the experience.
And so we'll save the money.

What I want the Appalachians for is when we do Race Across America on day 8
or 9, we're going to hit those mountains.

And when I start feeling
pretty good about life in Kansas and start thinking about this is going to be smooth sailing,
I want to remember those mountains, and I want to know what I'm in for,
and have an idea of just how hard

I'm going to have to work
to get to the finish line to have.

David, one thing I've always wanted,
because I have to do like A5K run, what I hate about running around a track,
and luckily I can I can do it myself. Is like, if you can see,
you can see the fact that, you know, you can see the, you know, the container that you passed
last time off in the distance.

You can see
the next shaded group of trees.

So what keeps you going in knowing?

Look, I've just passed, you know, the farmhouse that we might have been talking about
when we're doing the route or we've just passed over a bridge
because you can't see your environment.

How do you get that sense of that?

You are making
progress. You're not sort of solidified that you're standing still, but you're not getting any visual
representation of you moving forward.

Hopefully this, this, this will be
explained in a way that makes sense.

I'm not concerned about the visuals
that are around me.

It makes no difference to me.

We could be running through
a gorgeous countryside or through some slimy part of, you know,
wherever there's a clock in my head and I'm paying attention to that clock and I'm paying attention in
something like a, like A5K or a race where you're running, you know, you've got someone at every mile
or every X number of kilometers or you know,
you've got like aid stations or whatever.

And so at that point you're like,
okay, we're halfway now

I start competing,
okay, this is how far I've run.

This is what I need to do.
If it's going to be decent time.

And I get really hung up on the clock
in my head.

If it's a marathon,

I get into album sides.

And what when you start
getting closer to the finish,

I know the marathon is almost over
when I can think of a and this totally dates me, but when I could think of a double album
and if I started playing it right now, by the time I finish listening to it,
I'll be at the finish line.

And so as we're going along,
you're at mile 2223.

Now you're on side two
or you're on side three.

And you know, and you just
kind of keep pace in your head.

And the other thing about something like
that is other people are are suffering along with you
in these longer races.

And so you know where you are
because they're constantly reminding you where they are
because they would like to be further, as you pass people through.

So but it's it's a really now the other part of your question that,
that you didn't ask, is when you're,
when you're riding or running in place, 90% of my training
is done on a bike trainer in my basement, and I'm riding for hours
and hours and hours at a time.

And so you have to find things
to keep your brain occupied so that you lose track of all the time
that you're putting into it.

And I love sports for that,
because sports have a false clock.

In American football,
two minutes can last 45 minutes.

That's true.

And and so and so I find it's easy to get caught up
in what's happening with the action.

And back
when I back when I was running more,

I would listen to baseball games
and I would decide that, like the top of the third
inning is going to be a hill, and then you don't know
if it's going to be three up, three down, or if they're going to have a historic
inning that where the team scores 14 runs and then goes on for over an hour,
most of being an athlete, really, people always say this,
but I really believe it.

A lot of it's mental.

You've got to yes, you've got to gear your
brain for it and your body will follow.

A good friend of mine years ago
who was trying to get me to do a 100 mile race, told me that if you can run a marathon,
you can run 100 miles, that it's all a matter of pacing and slowing down
and slowing everything down and just telling your body
that it needs you.

Having your mind slow your body down to the point
that you can just pace it out and do it.

And I think he's right.

So for those listeners who don't know,
before we started recording, we gave Rachel a hard time
because we thought, well, I don't know if David for it,
but I did it.

I thought, which was just a cake.

But Rachel,
I'm going to put you on the spot.

Now, what do you do for exercise?

I'm assuming you don't go
for 100 mile runs or anything.

I don't, but I do have a treadmill in my basement,
that I use, quite often.

So I'll go for runs.

I'll go for, kind of video workouts
that'll take you through, different runs, you know, sometimes
interval runs, sometimes split tempo runs, which, you know, you start at one pace,
you speed up, and then you end at kind of the same pace
that you started at.

I'll do, you know, some weight lifting?

Because it's
cardio and running and biking.

Those are wonderful things,
you know, for your cardio and you're keeping your muscles strong.

But, Dave,
would you agree that doing weightlifting,

I find, is really helpful
just in those everyday movements?

My brother, who's a chiropractor, says when you weight, lift and strength
train, you're training for life.

Because we're always doing things
like bending and lifting and squatting and pulling and pushing and making sure
that your muscles can undergo that which sometimes you're pulling heavy boxes
or pushing boxes or lifting heavy bags.

And so I, I like to kind of do cardio
workouts and strength workouts.

Dave is you're you're a pro athlete here.

What are your thoughts?

I'm so not a pro athlete.

I'm a big fan of strength training.

I have a, you know, I have a universal
weight machine in my basement.

One of one of the one of the,

I guess
lasting side effects of the car crash is that I don't really trust my right hand
for holding, like, a barbell.

It does really well, but on occasion,

I just drop things,
and so dead weights are out at this point.

So I bought a universal weight machine.

So that if I let go of it, it's, you know,
it just goes back and it's all pulleys and stuff.

But yes, I would totally agree.

The when I, when I do weight training,
it's more for tone.

I'm interested in strength.

But I have no no interest in bulking up.

Bulking up almost works against me
at this point because I need to be.

You know, the last thing I need is more
pounds for me to haul around on this bike.

I'm a huge fan of working out
because it engages the mind and engages the body, and it it just gets you up
and moving and it's this.

This isn't a shocking revelation
to anyone, but as a as a community, we blind people are way too sedentary.

We we don't get up and move.

And there are a lot of reasons for that,
a lot of it depending on how you lost your vision,
where you live, all that type of, you know, we could go on forever
dissecting why that is right.

But the bottom line is that it is.

And for me, lifting, working out whether it's riding, running,
rowing, swimming, you know, weights, whatever, keeps me engaged and it it enhances my quality of life
or whatever else that I'm doing.

So, you know, if you're if you're someone
who spends a lot of time on the couch, you can just start out with little things,
like when you're making toast.

When you're standing by the toaster, go up on your feet where you're
standing on your toes, and then gradually and then lower yourself back down to where
you're standing on your, your feet.

And that, you know, you're, you're,
you're working muscles at that point.

So you don't have to start big.

And I think one of the huge mistakes
that people make is that they start to think big.

You know, I'm okay.

I'm going to get off the couch
and run a marathon. Probably not.

I got to set realistic expectations, you know,
and then you go out and you run too.

You run too far, and it hurts.

And you're like,
I'm not doing that anymore.

And so you have to break these things up into small, manageable bites
and you take one bite at a time.

And I try not to look at the end goal
so much when I'm when I'm riding,
I'm not thinking, this is for race across

America 14, 15, 16 months from now,
whatever, blah blah blah.

I'm thinking in two hours I get to get off
this bike and I get to go have dinner.

Dave, I know you've you've done
a lot of travel, as David and I do.

And how do you find, you know, that
keeping so athletically active,
has that helped you in your travels?

Has it helped you
in your assistive technology work?

It's it's time for a Dave story. Yeah.

What's a book?

It's doing story time with Chris and Dave
and so many, many years ago,
while traveling the US and traveling the world,
I discovered that precor treadmills that were at Hilton
Hotels had tactile buttons.

From that point on, I pretty much insisted
that I stayed Hilton brand hotels, whether it was embassy Suites or Hamptons
or whatever, because they had the, the, the treadmills and the exercise rooms
had tactile buttons.

And so at the end of the day,
whether I was in, you know, Stockholm or Des Moines, when I finished my day, I would go
and get the people out of my head by running several miles on a treadmill
that I was gonna be able to use.

So fast forward that to, 2019.

I was at a conference in Chicago,
and it wasn't a particularly interesting conference,
and, I really didn't want to be there.

And you know how I mean that
it just happens with some of these things.

You're like, I could be home right
now, and instead I'm talking to these people who really don't care
that much about why that one?

And, Yep.

And the the director
of digital accessibility for Hilton, he happened to wander by our booth
and she introduced herself.

And it was almost like a Tourette's thing.

I was just like, I love your treadmills.

And she was like, okay.

Hello? Yeah.

And then there's and you're like, oh,
I said that out loud.

And she's like, I'll bite. Why?

And that led to a whole series
of conversations that ultimately ended up in and me
in my current job, at Hilton.

So I got into a field that I knew
nothing about as a direct result
of tactile buttons on treadmills.

Before we do finish this part,
I do want to talk about Race Across

America, a little bit,
because it has been my obsession, since early 2023.

And I do want to lay out
sort of what's involved in this race.

And, and some of the idea of the,
the training, etc., that's behind it.

And then because I'm always into self-promotion,

I want people of people
to follow me on Facebook so that I've got bigger numbers that I can get sponsors
and pay for this whole thing.

But Race Across America is a most people do this as a relay,
which I'm not.

And so is a relay.

You've got different team members,
and you hand it off and you're just sort of continuing to move across
and they get less time than we do.

I want to do this as a solo entry
now to be a solo entry on a tandem bike.

So it's a little bit of a strange bit.

It's like,
yes, it's a solo, but there's two of us.

But no blind person has ridden
the entire course, which I consider to be a personal affront because tandem bikes are our realm.

And 19 tandem teams have or solo tandem
teams have tried this, including me.

Nine of them have made it.

None of them hit a blind person
on the back of the tandem, except for my, attempt in 2024.

And so the you get 12 days to finish.

So for those who are doing the math,
that means that you've if you rode 250 miles a day, you would finish
at the last possible second.

So you're trying to ride
closer to 300 miles a day.

My goal is to have an average
of about 280.

You're.

So you're sleeping?

Not much.

You're being supported by a crew.

I had a crew of 8 in 2024.

My tandem pilot, Kevin Esser and I were
talking about this the other day, and I'm.

He's a new pilot for Ram 2027.

And I'm really excited about it.

He's got an amazing cycling.

Resume, but I think we're going to have
we'll probably have a crew of 9 or 10.

They're divided up into shifts.

And you're driving across there, you've got the crew that's on duty, is following you at 15 miles an hour
through the deserts, through the Rockies, you know,
through Kansas, through whatever.

And they're feeding you, giving, you know, providing water,
making sure that we stay on course because some of it, some of the course
doesn't have, the best cell service.

And so you're using
those old spiral bound map books, and they're literally taking care of us,
and we're eating on the bike.

We're we're drinking on the bike.

We're doing just about everything on
the bike, because time is of the essence.

You're only going to get to sleep
for about four hours, out of the day.

And otherwise you're moving.

So the the crew is,
is literally taking care of us.

They're also arranging for things
like if we, you know, if, if, if we have any mechanical issues
where we need to get something from a bike shop along the way,
then whoever's off duty would go through with
this happened to us in 24.

We were buying parts
from a bike shop in Durango, while I slept for a couple of hours.

And then there, you know, the bike mechanic is making modifications to the bike, and
then you hop back on and you keep going.

So it's kind of a small city that is moving across the the country.

It's absolute chaos.

And as as you get further and further along,
everyone is getting more exhausted.

My goal is to have my crew have eight hours on, 16 hours off
so that they have plenty of rest, because I'm going to be out of my mind
at the end of this.

And my pilot is going
to be out of his mind at the end of this.

And one of the most crucial things
that that the crew does is I've designate someone who has the authority
to get me off the bike.

If I become a danger to
myself and don't realize it, you know, for whatever period of time
that might be, but you get focused
on, oh, must keep going, must keep going.

And they're looking at you thinking you look like a zombie from the apocalypse, and you're
never going to be able to keep going.

You've got to stop for a few minutes.

And so the crew is an insanely important
part of this whole bit.

The race will happen in June of 2027.

And I,

I will turn I won't be 60 in 2027.

And as a gift, because I'm old
and decrepit by racing standards,

I get an extra 21 hours to finish
this thing, which really excites me.

I'll take those hours
and I'll be happy for them.

Dave, that sounds incredible.

Oh, it does,
and I'm actually tired of listening to it.

But the sense of accomplishment you must feel once you, once
you finish, must be out of this world.

I, I certainly hope to find out.

And in 24, because people are out there
thinking what happened?

The very short answer is we indeed
as, as as is the case with a lot of dreams and a lot of things
that are really important to you the first time you try it,
you don't know enough to really have a full plan in place
to be able to do it right.

And our our logistics,
we fought for a number of reasons.

After about 1200 miles,
it was very apparent that we weren't going to be able to finish
in the time frame.

And my pilot and I just ran.

We're we're running on fumes.

And so
I learned a ton from that experience.

This will be a much more regimented, attempt.

And you decide all kinds of things, like I've already picked out
when I'm going to be sleeping every day.

Even though it's months and months
from now, somewhere around noon to four, because that's
the hottest time of the day.

And so why should I be riding?

You try to to plan this out to the tiniest bit of detail, knowing that
you're going to have things happen.

Like our crew van had a flat
in the middle of the Painted Desert, and the jack broke when we were trying to to change the tire,
and we didn't have cell service, and we were stuck for a couple of hours
until we had someone who could, you know, have a jack
where we could put the freaking tire on.

So you just you, you, you and
and so I learned a ton from that.

The biggest thing being that
every second counts because you're going to lose them later on in ways
that you haven't figured out yet.

I recently had a thing on ABC radio here in Australia,
and it was all about the fact that, you know, can you still do things
when you're over 50 or over 60?

And, you know, from my point of view,
absolutely, as you can hear from your point of view, hell,
you know, if you can ride 3000 miles across America,
you can almost do anything. So,

I mean, that's just can be really exciting and it's not just for people
that have got a disability.

It's the fact that age
three doesn't mean you think, look, if you're mentally okay to do stuff,
then I just don't reset it.

People
go for it. Don't let age stop you, Dave.

You mentioned, everything that you've gone
through to, to prepare, but you also mentioned,
you have a Facebook presence.

Of course,
we'll put that link in the show notes, but how can people support you
from from the sidelines, I guess.

I mean, we obviously
all can't be a part of your crew, as amazing as that would be,
how can we support you virtually or in person if if we're local to you,
what can we do to help you out?

Team speedy turtle races across America
pulls our group right up on Facebook.

I'm putting together, and and

I think I'm going to probably give in to peer pressure and set up some
sort of like, go fund me or something.

This whole thing has a budget
of about 40,000 bucks.

I don't I don't intend to spend 40,000 bucks,
nor could I afford to.

So there will be
pleas for fundraising coming up.

So everyone out there,
if you've got ideas of companies who would love to sponsor six year old
blind guy riding across the desert, by all means, put him in touch.

Well, this has been absolutely incredible.

And you're sticking around with us for,
a segment next where we're going to talk about kind of the different types of,
I think David coined the word athlete.

So I like that athlete thing about,
you know, why we choose what we choose.

Or did it choose us. So stick around.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Hot
Topic segment for episode 15,
which is Orientation and Mobility Month.

We have been having a great time
talking with Dave Wilkinson about his Braille journey
and also his athletic journey.

And David, before we started recording,
David Woodbridge, that is mentioned
something about athletes.

So we want to talk about athletes
in this little segment and what type of sport, you know,
did it choose you?

Did you choose it.

Was it kind of a combination of the two?

So David, we'll start with you.

And I know you've talked about karate before on the podcast,
but let me tell us how you got into it.

How are you, athlete?

I originally got tall
when my children started, their own karate journey 15 years ago,
that there wasn't any way that a blind person
could do karate, because, of course, how could they see
what other people were doing on the mat?

How could they move
in a certain direction?

They probably get all their angles wrong,
and there was always 1001 reasons why it wouldn't have happened.

And then five years ago, when my sons were getting there,
I think it was their second or third day and in their black belt,
somebody wanted to pass it.

I, by the way, Mister, were
you might be interested in the fact that we're doing a grand master's
class, and, you're more than welcome to give it a go.

Since your family's been
the part of karate for such a long time.

So I rocked up there.

And this all goes
to what dad was talking about. Is it's sort of the other side in my.

Because I did my first class.

Now, I always said to my children,
if we do something the first time
and it doesn't work, don't give up.

The problem is,
I didn't listen to my own words because I did the first class.

I couldn't
follow what the trainer was saying.

The second trainer was going far too fast.

I wasn't following along.

I was getting really frustrated.

So I walked off the floor
and I went to my wife. Right.

That's it.

I'm not doing it.

I knew it wasn't going to work.
I'm wasting my time.

I'm feeling like an idiot.

Everybody, everybody's watching me.

And they also probably thinking I'm
an idiot.

They're doing better than I am. And then, one of my friends from karate, as another parent, came up
and she said, Melinda, what you said to your children
when they first started, don't give up on the first go,
because if you give up the first guy, you're doing yourself a disservice.
Go back.

Give it another go.

And she said, just forget information.

People look worse
than what you were doing on the floor.

Like they had really no idea.

At least you being a karate dad,
you had some friggin idea when they were talking about backs, stance,
forward stance and everything else.

So I did go back
and I haven't finished yet.

But David, to me
that's one of the important things.

Doesn't matter what type of athletic stuff
you do, whether it's, you know, running, swimming,
bicycling or anything else, when you start off
and give this stuff away for the first time, like you were talking
about, don't sit too hard.

It calls for yourself.

But it's also for the fact that, you know,
if you give something to go the first time and it doesn't work, don't
use it as a reason not to keep going.

Because to me, you're giving up too soon.

You're not giving yourself a chance.

And who gives a crap about what
other people think about you?

As long as you want to give it a go?

Then, you know, go for it if you have.

You found that talking to other people
that want to get into sports, they're a bit worried about being judged,
judged by other people, or

I think they don't get it right
the first time.

So it's a disaster.

That sort of stuff.

Yes. And I would fall into that.

I am paranoid about.

And I think a lot of this is, again,
you know, not uncommon in Blind World.

We don't know what we look like
in the general world.

We don't know.

I mean, we don't even
we really don't even know anything about basic body types in the world
and how we fit in, when compared to other people,
you know, my bigger little or whatever.

Whatever.

We have no idea.

And so, yes, you you have to get over it and I've, I've had issues with anxiety
since I was in it since before college.

You know, and just all the rest of it,
they go with it.

And at some point you just have to.

Who am I here for?

Am I here so that I mean there?

I'm going to be the guy with the cane
no matter what I do.

If I'm going to be the guy with the cane, no matter what
I do, that I'm going to do what I want.

That's right.

People are going to notice us
whether we want to or not.

So just, yeah, do do what you can do
and just be the the best at it.

We're only really competing
against ourselves, aren't we?

Like when it comes to sports,
I had a walking running partner that told me that one time she's like,
don't worry about how fast you go.

I mean, you're really just competing
against yourself and do the best that you can,
which would help me out a lot.

A lot of the stuff that we do, it
karate is all I mean, we keep

I keep getting back to that mental health
stuff because, you know, there's I won't do them now,
but there's like 12 magical principles of being a karate
and then eventually karate blackbelt.

And some of them talk about things like, courage, commitment, you know, self-discipline, indomitable spirit
and all that sort of stuff.

And you really do have to keep
that in mind when you're training, because if you don't, then you models will stop doing karate, because in karate,
there's no such thing as perfection.

It's always trying and doing your best
and feeling good about what you do.

So that's
what we're always doing about karate.

And like, you know, I,

I see people starting off on their first,
you know, their white belt and, you know, quite sort of people are going through
the exact same thing that I went through.

And not just being a blind person is now.

It's too hard. I can't remember.

It's like it's no different for me
if somebody throws a new color at me.

Okay, yes, I've done a lot more colors
in yoga, but I've still got to learn them.

I still get frustrated. I've similar try.

I still feel like giving up,
but I keep going.

And that's I think the
the main thing that I see karate is a black belt is a white belt
that hasn't given up to Dave and David.

Thank you guys so much for your input
on this hot topic of athletes and how the sports
maybe choose you or you choose it, but

I also like how it's kind of the whole,
I guess, holistic approach.

It's not just I'm going to run
50 miles today or I'm going to do lots of katas and sparring,
but I'm going to go into it with a mental outlook of, I'm
going to complete what I set out to do.

So I really like that
no matter what sport you choose, it's going to help you
not just physically, but mentally too.

And we've really seen a rise in mental, health becoming very important
as we all kind of move through the world.

And I'm glad that sports
can be a good outlet for it.

Hey everybody, and welcome to trials, triumphs
and Tips and Tricks.

And we have gotten into the cool habit
of combining this segment.

And I think we're going to do so again.

David had a great idea for what we want to talk about today.

And so I'm going to throw it over to David
to talk about trials, triumphs, tips and tricks
because he is so cool that he has combined
all of this into one tool.

So I was thinking today,
because people might notice my post on social media lately,
that I've been doing a lot on the evolve.

So I was looking at windows
and I look at the evolve, and I was looking at Nvidia and Jaws
and the razor and everything else.

And then of course, you know, today
I'm back on my beloved Apple ecosystem.

So my Mac, my AirPods, my iPad,
my Apple Watch and so on.

And I was thinking,
I am so lucky to realize the fact that if I get stuck on one particular document or one particular website,

I've got a number of tools
in my technical toolkit to be able to at least
get the content down that I want to produce, or access
to information that I want to access.

So, for example, in windows,
if somewhat reason, you know, Microsoft Edge doesn't work,
I'll go ahead and use Google Chrome.

If Google Chrome doesn't work, I'll go
and use Firefox or for some other reason.

If you know Microsoft Word doesn't work,

I'll go in their notes
or notepad or some other thing.

And then, you know, as far as
scrim is concerned on windows, you know, sometimes
Nvidia and Jaws don't tend to work.

So if I want to run
another full blown scrimmage or I can run supernova, or I can run,
you know.

Narrator. So again, you know,
it doesn't mean I really need to know how to use those different screen readers.

As long as I can get content down in the applications on windows,
and I need to access.

And that's all good.

And then as far as the max concern,
I have exactly the same issue on the Mac.

There are some websites
that are fairly ugly with Safari, so I have no idea that not even to bother
even going.

We need a safari.

If I'm going to certain websites,
I go straight to Google Chrome to use those websites.

If I take a dive into Microsoft Word, that doesn't work.

I can go to my favorite application on the Mac, which is TextEdit, or I can go and use practice,
or I can go in use notes.

And of course, the cool thing about notes
is that it's across all of the iPhone,

Apple Watch, iPad ecosystem.

The only, I guess, drawback on the Mac,
and yes,

I'm going to say,
is that we only have one screen reader.

So if voiceover falls over, then you're pretty much
in the doghouse as well.

I don't know why
I actually think about it.

I don't know why dogs get blamed
for being in the doghouse, but that's another philosophical discussion
for another day.

But the thing that's the thing of that
talk about lateral thinking.

The thing about the, voiceover is that, okay, so fine
voiceover stops working on my Mac.

Okay, fine.

I'll go and use my iPhone
oregonian's my iPad.

So I've got alternatives.

And then for some odd reason
is that just doesn't work on my Mac.

Sometimes I'm doing it
on the on the trackpad on the Mac.

Then fine, I'll go and use my iPhone, iPad, or again, use my Bluetooth keyboard.

So again, I'm keeping the flexibility
running all the time.

So what I normally say to people is please don't just depend on one application or one website, or one browser in particular, or one word
processor, particularly my client.

Just try and have a couple
of different solutions, as well as a screen
where as long as you have flexibility in your toolkit and not just one device, then you know you'll be able to get things
up and running up and up and running.

My goodness,
that's good English up and running.

I like that. Yeah. Up and running.

So my AC, I'm not backed into a t shirt
thing up and running right up and running.

It's just about being, proactive
and learning to problem solve, which I always think is is a great tip which can lead to two more triumphs.

And one I have that isn't, necessarily technically related is I was
I went to a sourdough bread making class recently,
and it was very cool.

I went with another blind
friend of mine, and we, we showed up and the instructor was great,
but on the table they had a, physical kind of recipe book and a book of,
additional resources.

And I thought, well, this is great,
but do I want to take this home and kind of try and scan it with my phone
or even the the flatbed scanner I have?

And so using the tool
I have in my toolbox, which is advocacy,

I asked the instructor
at the end of the class said, hey, are you able to send this to me
electronically?

She's like, absolutely no problem.

Send me a message
and I'll get that over to you.

And she did. And it was it was great.

So now I have it in a format
that I can read easily and without.

Yeah, too.

Too much, song singing and dancing.

So it, it worked out.

So all that to say is use the tools
you have at their disposal.

Some of them might be advocacy
screen readers, browsers.

However, you need to get it done. Exactly.
I see that reminds me.

This is quite a long time
ago. Like I'm talking about, 30, 35 years ago.

So I went to a boating,
like a boating class because, you know, we had a bite at the time
and I wanted to learn some rules.

Anyway, same thing as you.

The painting was there on the desk,
and I remember asking the guy at the time, could I have this in,
you know, some sort of trolley for my.

Anyway, do you think I'm silly? Might.

I'm not going to give you this document
to you because I worked on it so hard.

I don't want you spreading it around
for other, other things that you can get access to.
And I thought, wow, wow.

So but these days it's much better.

I mean, I've never heard
that book at work.

I give you this document
because it's top secret or it's, you know, it's one of a kind
or I don't want to copyright it, but, when you do advocate for yourself, too,
I mean, I was set up here, but, you know, do it in a nice way.

I don't waste, you know, I'm accessible.

You know, I need stuff to be accessible.
This is not a prior page.

I don't like it.

I shouldn't have to put up with this work with the person,
because most of the time, it doesn't even occur to people
to even think about stuff like that.

So don't assume that the person's
being horrible and nasty.

Just take it
as a bit of an educational opportunity.

So next time that person comes across
a blind or low vision person, I go, oh hi.

Last time I had a person in the class, they asked me to put stuff
on the trolley format.

I might even upfront
ask the person, you know, would you like me to email
you the the recipe stuff in this case?

So yeah, I think it's always nice.

So the other thing is you get better results with money
than you do with other things.

So yeah, just when you're advocating
try to be nice about it.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the upcoming shows segment.

You can find us in many places
throughout the month of April starting on April 14th.

You can find us at Site Village Exeter
in the UK on April 15th through the 17th.

You can find us at the Pennsylvania,
Delaware ADR that's Association for Education and Rehabilitation
Professionals conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
from April 16th through 18th.

You can find us in Los Angeles at the California Transcribers
and Educators Conference.

Lastly, from April 23rd
through April 26th, we will be at the NFB of Utah State
Convention in Ogden, Utah.

Come join us if you have comments or
suggestions, we'd love to hear from you.

Please send them to podcast
at Human Wired.com.

That's podcast at human where.com.

Thanks so much for listening to see things
differently.

We'll see you next month.