Downtown Mt Pleasant

One of my many physical weaknesses involves my vision. I am completely blind in my right eye. The left eye has a narrow field of vision, does not see colors the same way other people do, and is sensitive to bright light. Having sight in only one eye makes depth perception difficult, and 3-D movies are wasted on me. Then there's the whole problem with driving.

I love driving on wide-open two lane highways through farmland. I generally don't mind driving 25 mph through residential neighborhoods in town. But freeways, particularly in heavy traffic; busy city traffic; driving after dark; and driving through wooded areas where you drive in and out of the sunlight is difficult for me and makes me very nervous. And since nearly everywhere I might want or need to drive involves traveling east to get there and west to get home, or at least part of the trip is, I prefer to make appointments in early afternoon to avoid driving into the sun when it's low on the horizon.

My LEAST favorite place to drive is Mt Pleasant. Mission Road makes even my friends from metro Detroit cringe to drive. Downtown is peppered with one-way streets, stop signs along streets lined with parallel parked cars. Also the city is densely populated with young, silly adults, especially during the school semesters, and these people tend to step of the curb into traffic, ride their bicycles erratically and drive out of side streets with little or no regard to traffic many times more often than old people drive into farmer's markets.

So! Yesterday I drove into downtown Mt Pleasant for my first visit to my new shrink, Lynn. Downtown meaning almost right on Broadway, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. There is much more free parking downtown than I anticipated, and there is a good sized lot right across the street from Lynn's office. The downtown sidewalks are very smooth and have sloped curbs with some kind of anti-slip texturing at each corner. Lynn's building is easy to get into, as well--no steps, stairs or steep slopes, and the door stays open when you swing it open.

I'm looking forward to visiting downtown Mt Pleasant a few times per month during the summer. Maybe I'll do a bit of "spinorting" before and/or after each visit. It looks very handicap and foot traffic friendly from what I've seen. I know the theater is easy to navigate, but there are other buildings like Gray's furniture that are impossible for the differently-abled. As I find out more, I'll report on it.