I am heading to Portland, Oregon this coming weekend! My
friend Hollie had invited me to come visit her months ago, once she remembered
that I have a week off for Spring Break every year. This invitation was
followed shortly by three very dear friends of mine picking up and moving out
of the Bay Area and up north. I’ve taken
all of this as a general sign that I should visit.
Here’s the catch: Hollie lives in a Victorian. Like much of
the Bay Area, Portland seems to be teeming with either old Victorians or Craftsman
style houses. So, while I am essentially going up there to visit her, I can’t
and won’t be staying with her. And so, the search for accessible and affordable
accommodations began.
Last summer, when I went to visit Portland, I opted to stay
at the Motel 6 nearest her place. That
was manageable financially for a weekend, but I plan to spend the entire week
there, so I needed something much more affordable. I have lots of friends who travel as much as
they can, but none of them have physical disabilities. I realized that they might not be able to
give the best advice about where to stay as a result, but I asked anyway,
figuring it was as good a place as any to start.
I have discovered that my friends mainly stay with other
friends when they travel. My friends are smart & frugal people, obviously. Alas! This time that’s a no go for me. On the occasion
that my traveling buddies can’t stay at a friend’s house, they use hostels, Kayak,
Airbnb, and Couchsurfing. I have first
hand experience in “accessible” travel arrangements going wrong as a result of
using the more popular trip booking sites- mainly because the hotel rooms
available at steep discounts on those sites aren’t guaranteed to be a
specific type of room, i.e. wheelchair accessible (which I MUST call bullshit
on by the way, but that doesn’t mean that wasn’t the explanation I was handed
at the time). I’ve had mixed success with the sites, and I’ve stopped using
them as a result. I just can’t deal with the unpredictability…. or the
discriminatory practices.
I’ve never stayed at a hostel or arranged a place to stay
through Couchsurfing or Airbnb. I
decided to look into them, since I had started planning this trip so late
(according to my own standards at least) and needed to find something
affordable, or face not making the trip at all. I had no idea that even trying
to book a place to stay would become so complicated!!! I’m actually feeling
slightly panicked just thinking about the past week and I haven’t even begun to
write about it. Yikes.
So, about two weeks ago I started my search for a place to
stay by checking out hostels in Portland. I searched the Hostelling
International site for availability at the one hostel in SE Portland- HI
Portland Hawthorne District. Great neighborhood with lots to do. It shows that they have availability, but the HI
website is problematic as far as accessibility is concerned. I could book a hostel bed, but there is no
way to specifically book accessible accommodations. Nor is there any mention on
the HI site of whether or not the hostel in question is even accessible. So I
start to panic/wonder, and navigate over to the website for that specific
hostel. And again, there is no mention of whether or not this place is
accessible. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Surely, I just haven’t found the information
yet. I convince myself that I haven’t and proceed to peruse the entire site, to
no avail.
In a desperate move, I book a bed for the entire week, so
that I have something lined up
that I can actually afford. It was after 10 p.m. at the time, so I had to wait
until the morning to find out whether or not I would be able to stay there. I
shoot them an email asking about their wheelchair accessible features, and go
to bed. It was a fitful sleep, no doubt about it.
To their credit, they
promptly get back to me the next morning. Unfortunately, it is to tell me that
the hostel is not wheelchair accessible at this time. I correspond back and forth with them asking
about specific details of the layout- where the bathrooms are, where my bed
would be, how many stairs the porch has, etc.
I also walk with braces and crutches, so I could in theory have stayed
there. But there is a fine line for me between being active in my braces and
crutches and overdoing it. Overdoing it tends to land me in the ER with
incredibly painful lower back spasms.
And I tend to cross that line without realizing it. So, staying here
could potentially come at a huge personal cost to me. Also, if I were committing to climbing stairs
every day, I might as well have stayed with Hollie and saved the money. None of
this was an ideal solution. And so I continued to search for other options
while holding my spot at the hostel.