Milwaukee, WI – 0 Miles

July 27, 2010

The day started with another incredible breakfast by Independence First. Once finished up, we headed out to a local school that has a day program for kids with and without disabilities. We had a chance to hear them read some stories they were working on, and showed them all of our home states. After a bit of time hanging out with them, a few of our guys put on a kids on the block puppet show for them. They really had a lot of questions for the puppets, and I feel like they learned a lot from watching it.

We then went straight from the school to an Easter Seals day camp, where we spent some time hanging out with the campers. I spent my time coloring with a camper named Amy, and our visit was over before I knew it.

From there we headed to a mall where we had a bit of free time before shopping with some young girls with disabilities from Independence First. We had a lot of fun smelling the soaps in Bath and Body works, and accessorizing in Claire’s.

For our final stop of the day, we had the chance to play a few more adaptive sports. I started with beep baseball. This is an adaptation of baseball for people with visual impairments. The ball was slightly larger than a softball, and had a beeper inside of it. Once the ball was hit, there were two bases to run to, both also with beepers that were controlled by someone on the sidelines who could see the game, and would turn on the base that the runner was running toward. We of course were blindfolded to get the authentic feel of the game. I had one chance at bat, and actually managed a pretty good hit. After everyone in our group got a chance to hit, we headed inside to play a bit of wheelchair basketball. Since we’ve had a few chances already to play some wheelchair sports, we were pretty comfortable in the chairs. The hardest part of this game was the rule that anytime you had the ball and were pushing your chair, you had to dribble the ball. After a few attempts at this, I decided that it wasn’t going to happen, and started passing or shooting anytime I got my hands on the ball. It was probably the most exhausting day of the trip thus far, but was also the most fun.