The Wheelchair Pusher Chronicles: The Final Chapter

Welcome Home Lobster at BarBrix

LAX started off so well

Our Suite on AirFrance

The illuminated signs in a plane you to be about smoking, now computers

We left the Sheraton, which is conveniently located inside Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle Airport. We were met by our wheelchair pusher, who led us up and down a series of elevators until we finally reached the People Mover train and were transported to the Air France terminal. As requested, he took us directly to the gate.

It was a smooth process. Air France 1, Iberia 0 in the Mobility Assistance Challenge. I’m sure the actual assistance is provided by many of the same airport people, but somehow Air France managed to make it work.

After our 11-hour flight to Los Angeles, there was no exiting through a service door into one of those strange vehicles that lifts itself up to the airplane. Like normal people—albeit exhausted normal people—we walked off the plane and were almost immediately met by wheelchair pushers, one of whom pushed Cathy up the boarding ramp.

At this point, I need to interrupt our journey for some politically correct woke research.

While writing the paragraphs above, I suddenly had a moment of deep concern. Had I inadvertently offended the dedicated wheelchair pushers of the world by calling them “wheelchair pushers”?

True to my nature, I consulted AI.

The consensus: “wheelchair pusher” isn’t offensive, but it is considered informal. In the industry, the more professional title is something like Passenger Assistance Agent or Passenger Assistance Attendant.

So I will continue to use “wheelchair pusher” without guilt. In fact, I think it is a far more accurate job description.

I do feel sorry for the college graduate who responds to an ad for a Passenger Assistance Agent, imagining a desk job answering travelers’ questions, only to show up for his first day and discover that he will spend eight hours pushing people down very long airport hallways.

“Wheelchair pusher” may lack corporate elegance, but at least you know what you’re signing up for.

Back to our beleaguered college graduate, who has now discovered that his impressive-sounding job as a Passenger Assistance Agent actually means he is a wheelchair pusher. At LAX, he was about to discover something even worse: he was already being automated out of his new career.

He pushed Cathy up the boarding ramp, where we were met by a golf cart. The wheelchair pusher stopped pushing, Cathy and I climbed aboard, and the machine took over. We were driven toward immigration, which at LAX is approximately halfway to Sacramento. We were very glad we didn’t have to walk it.

And soon LAX will have its long-delayed new People Mover, which is supposed to make getting around the airport easier. I personally predict it will be a disaster. LAX has spent decades perfecting the art of making something as simple as getting from an airplane to the curb extraordinarily complicated. I see no reason to believe they are going to suddenly lose that talent.

Perhaps our college graduate shouldn’t give up on his wheelchair-pushing career quite yet.

Air France had pulled through. Now it was LAX’s turn to shine.

At immigration, Cathy got off the golf cart and was transferred back into a wheelchair. We were taken to a waiting area with about 30 other people who also needed assistance.

And we waited.

And waited.

This is where the humor of all these different methods of transporting Cathy around airports stopped being particularly funny to Cathy. She can walk, but long distances and prolonged standing are difficult. That is why we request mobility assistance in the first place. What became so frustrating for her throughout this trip was never knowing what was supposed to happen next. Do we walk? Do we wait? Is somebody coming? Did they forget us? Are we supposed to stay on the plane or get off? Each airport seemed to have a different system, and apparently passengers were expected to somehow know what it was.

At LAX we watched as one person after another was collected by a wheelchair pusher and taken through immigration. Cathy sat there with no idea when her turn would come. Meanwhile, our luggage was somewhere on a giant carousel, circling endlessly and available to anyone who happened to like our suitcases.

At LAX, as at most airports, nobody checks luggage tags. You see a bag you like, apparently you can just take it.

Eventually I got nervous enough that I left Cathy in the holding area and went in search of our luggage. That made the situation even more frustrating for her. Now, after an 11-hour flight, she was sitting in a wheelchair in an airport waiting area without me, surrounded by strangers, with no idea when someone was going to come for her.

I found our luggage, rescued it from the carousel, and waited at baggage claim while Cathy continued waiting for the next available Wheelchair Pusher.

Eventually one appeared, retrieved her, got her through immigration, reunited us at baggage claim, and wheeled us out to the curb, where our Uber arrived quickly and took us home.

It worked. Eventually. But that really summarizes the problem with airport mobility assistance: it is designed to get you from Point A to Point B, and eventually it usually does. What it doesn’t seem particularly concerned about is how stressful the experience can be for the person sitting in the wheelchair wondering what happens next.

We think airports should offer private wheelchair pushers. We would gladly pay for one, tip generously, and know that someone would stay with us from the airplane all the way through immigration, baggage claim and out to the curb. For Cathy, just knowing that one person was responsible for getting her all the way through the process would eliminate most of the frustration.

And who knows? With decent pay and good tips, it might turn out to be a pretty good profession for that college graduate who answered the ad for a Passenger Assistance Agent and discovered too late what the job actually was.

After Paris, Madrid, Iberia, Air France, strange vehicles, service doors, golf carts, wheelchairs and more airport assistance than we ever imagined we would need, we were finally home.

And Cathy was probably happier about that than anyone.

Planes, Wheelchairs and a Possible Kidnapping

Beef Tartar

This was the day when travel became so difficult that we made a few vows:

1. Never fly Iberia again.
2. Whenever possible, fly directly to our final destination.
3. Avoid the incompetence of Charles de Gaulle Airport.

There are probably a four and five, but I’m still too tired to remember them.

It started with our departure from Madrid for Paris. After checking in, the agent told us we could either go directly to the gate or use the Business Class Lounge. If we went to the lounge, she said, the wheelchair people would meet Cathy there and take her to the gate.

The lounge was close, so we walked over. When we arrived, there was a long line. There was no way Cathy could stand there waiting, so when someone walked out, we simply walked in.

A hostess immediately freaked out and told us we had to go to the end of the line. I explained that Cathy couldn’t stand that long and needed to sit down. The woman was completely indifferent. Cathy reminded her she will be older one day, and have issues. Finally, another hostess with empathy took charge, admitted us and found Cathy a seat.

What was frustrating wasn’t the line. Lines happen. It was that another human being could look at someone who was obviously having difficulty standing and simply not care.

Eventually we boarded our Iberia flight to Paris.

The plan was simple. We would fly into CDG, be met by mobility assistance, collect our luggage and be transported to the Sheraton, which is conveniently located inside Terminal 2, where Air France departs for Los Angeles.

Simple plans and Charles de Gaulle Airport apparently do not mix.

On the plane we weren’t sure how the wheelchair assistance would work. Would someone meet us outside the airplane door, or would we exit through the service door and use one of those special vehicles that raises itself to the level of the plane?

The flight attendant told us not to worry. She didn’t know yet either, but once our gate was assigned she would tell us.

It turned out to be the special vehicle. We exited through the service door, were lowered to the ground and driven directly to baggage claim. Our luggage was already waiting for us.

We were amazed.

We had our luggage. We had an assistant. We were ready to be transported to the Sheraton.

Then it all went to hell.

They took us to a special Mobility Assistance room, where we were told to wait for a vehicle that would drive us to the hotel.

I actually liked the guy who had been helping us and had already decided to give him a €20 tip.

After about 30 minutes of sitting there, I asked what the delay was.

“Another 20 minutes.”

At that point, I decided €10 would be sufficient.

Cathy was wondering whether we could simply take a taxi, so she asked the hostess. The hostess suddenly seemed unable to understand English.

Then our assistant disappeared—with his wheelchair—and never returned.

Since there was now nobody left to tip, I was able to reduce the amount from €10 to zero. Had he stayed around long enough, I probably would have asked him for money.

Finally the hostess announced, “Five minutes.”

And, amazingly, five minutes later a driver appeared.

90 minutes after landing we climbed into his rickety dented van, assuming we were finally headed to the Sheraton.

CDG is enormous. It makes LAX seem intimate. The driver drove and drove and drove.

Then Cathy spotted the Sheraton.

We drove right past it.

Meanwhile, our driver was on the phone having an animated conversation with a woman. He stayed on the phone almost the entire time.

I figured there were three possibilities:

1. He was lost.
2. He was having a fight with his girlfriend.
3. His girlfriend was telling him what she planned to do to him when he got home, and he became so excited he forgot he was driving two Americans to the Sheraton.

Cathy had a different theory.

Later she told me she had become convinced he was a rogue driver who was preparing to kidnap us. She was actually trying to figure out how to jump out of the moving van.

Interestingly, she never shared this plan with me.

I would have joined her.

Eventually, however, our kidnapper—or possibly just the world’s most distracted airport driver—delivered us safely to the Sheraton.

By then Cathy had had it with everything related to travel and was completely stressed out. Dinner at the hotel and a bottle of wine helped. I did order Steak Tartar and we both declared it excellent, but that didn't compensate even with an excellent wine for the horrors of this flight from Madrid.

Tomorrow we find out whether Charles de Gaulle can perform one final trick and actually get us onto an airplane.

Travel is wonderful. We love experiencing other countries, other cultures, great museums and, of course, great food. But travel can also be difficult, and as you get older it gets harder.

My advice: do as much of it as you possibly can while you’re young. 

Interestingly, we have never experienced anything remotely like the difficulties we had on this trip when we vacation in Mexico City. It’s a relatively short flight from Los Angeles, and once we arrive, the service and hospitality are extraordinary.

There may be a lesson in there somewhere.

Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, Air France will fly us home.

At this point, “according to plan” is a phrase I use very cautiously.

From Hearts in Art to Hearts in the Street

Excellent Rice and Seafood

Salmorejo de Pimientos

Back wall with shelves of Cheese Wheels

CPR would have saved the God

She needed an EKG

Edvard Munch and Cathy

Sometimes you just need to go with the flow.

After a leisurely morning, we went to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. This is a major world-class museum built around the collection of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his wife, Carmen, better known as Tita.
The source of the Baron’s wealth is complicated by World War II. His wife’s enormous wealth is simpler to explain: she was a former Miss Spain, married a very rich man, and he showered her with money and art.

The Baron didn’t exactly give his collection to Spain. Spain bought the core collection for about $350 million. Tita’s collection is still hers, and Spain pays millions of dollars a year to display it. The rich really are different from you and me.

Enough with the history of this vast collection, including the parts of the family history we will leave for another day.
What interested us was how different the museum is from LACMA. It is organized traditionally and chronologically, almost as if all art were Western and began sometime around 1500. Cathy and I have very little interest in religious art or portraits of rich people, so we moved rather quickly through about 400 years of art. Or, more accurately, I pushed her rather quickly through 400 years of art until we reached Impressionism and modern art. LACMA to us is revolutionary in how it juxtaposes all art into themes, not chronologically, it is much more imaginative.

What was special for us was a small exhibition of reimagined paintings, all related to cardiovascular health. It was clever, contemporary and political. The artist used digital techniques to take familiar paintings and reimagine them around current cardiovascular treatments and issues. It was surprisingly powerful.

Leaving the museum, we Ubered over to one of Madrid’s premier cheese stores, Quesería Cultivo. They have an enormous variety of cheeses, including many they make themselves. I don’t think I have ever seen that many wheels of cheese stacked on shelves in Los Angeles. Naturally, we bought several samples of cheese to bring home.

A word about Uber in Madrid: it sucks.

You request a car and Uber tells you how long it will take to arrive. Fine. You select it, and then the arrival time starts changing. And changing. And changing. Eventually you are standing on a Madrid street with no idea when, or perhaps whether, your car will actually arrive. We found it incredibly frustrating.

We returned to the hotel to find a bagel sandwich made with ham and cheese waiting for us in our room — a somewhat strange cross-cultural sandwich — so we opened a bottle of Champagne and nibbled on the ham and cheese. Then we started to  pack.

Tomorrow we leave our unexpected visit to Madrid and return to Paris. We fly into Charles de Gaulle, spend the night at the Sheraton that is actually inside Terminal 2, and the following day fly home to Los Angeles.This all assumes no volcanoes or other unexpected events.

For our final night in Madrid, we had reservations for a flamenco dinner show. On our previous visits to Madrid we always include a Flamenco dinner and show. I know it sounds touristy but it is really fun. After some confusion, we realized it wasn’t the place we had been on previous visits. We had accidentally booked a different venue.

But sometimes it is better to be lucky than smart.
The place was quite close to our hotel. We felt as though we had won the lottery — or at least finally gotten a little travel luck. Short taxi ride. Dinner. Flamenco. Short taxi ride back to the hotel.

Wrong.

The taxi — notice we did not take an Uber — headed toward the nearby venue and almost immediately ran into streets closed by protesters. Police were everywhere blocking traffic. Apparently, all of this was because an 85-year-old woman had been evicted from her home.

It seemed to us like a righteous protest, so we sat there while our taxi driver valiantly tried to navigate around protesters, police and completely snarled traffic. Finally we said, forget it, return us to the hotel. We thru away the flamenco tickets and ate at the hotel.

And that turned out to be just fine. We had a wonderful dinner on the hotel balcony, serenaded from the streets below by protesters singing “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” in Spanish.

We didn’t need a translation. We knew the words.

We’ll find out on November 3rd, when we’re back home, if the words are true this time.