We get to Austin with no trouble. Reannon and I go to the baggage claims department to tell them where they can bring my electric wheelchair because I being sore from the flight was not going to wait on it especially when it was not my fault that it was not here in the first place. They graciously informed me that they would bring it to me at the hotel I was staying in as soon as the flight touched ground. We caught a shuttle with Roy and Benji and arrived at our hotel with no further incidence. I waited around a few hours for my wheelchair, but it never arrived. I needed to go get my weapons checked before the start of competition the next morning as we were fighting at 9:00 a.m. the next morning. So Reannon puts me in my fencing chair and we go to the Austin Convention Center to get in line to have my weapons tested. When we get there, there is a line from the front to the back and about 2 hours long. I feel like crying because I don't want to sit hours in my fencing chair and then have to wake up early just to get back in the same chair for what would be hours and hours of bouting and competition. Praise God, We run into Roy who takes my weapons and mask to a friend of his for check-off. Thanking Roy graciously, Reannon and I retire to the hotel for meal and a night of healing rest. Delta still had not delivered my electric wheelchair. I call their 1-800 number. I'm told that late baggage is delivered from 4-8 hours later. Finally, they deliver my wheelchair. I'm elated knowing I will not have to stay seated in my fencing wheelchair, which locks stiffly at a 90 degree seating angle. My electric wheelchair tilts from 90 degrees to 180 degrees like a bed allowing me optional postures.

The next morning I get in my electric chair and Reannon loads my fencing equipment on my manual chair and we head for competition. As soon as I move my electric chair I notice something wrong, but do not have time to study it. When I get to competition and transfer into my manual chair to fight, I notice that the leg rests have been pulled apart from the rest of my wheelchair. I compete happy with the way I perform, fighting rather well, being the only quadriplegic there for competing against a group of talented swordsmen who all have more experience than me and greater physical capacity, being paraplegics or able bodied fencers with slighter degrees of mobility impairment. When I get back to the room I call Delta to inform them that when they finally did drop off my wheelchair that it was damaged and the leg rests dragged the floor now as I moved. I reported the damage to the Austin terminal then flew back to Atlanta where they damaged it even further, to the point that Reannon had to tie my legs to the chair with a Delta in-flight blanket and I had to drive through the airport in a laid back position with every one looking at me like I had escaped from the zoo.

I reported damage again and told them I had to leave for the Bahamas the next day and that I would deal with getting the wheelchair fixed when I returned. I knew it would be a bad idea for me to go on vacation without my electric chair because I have severe back/leg pain and that chair is specially designed to relieve pressure on a person's back from sitting. I didn't want to cancel my vacation because my friends were counting on me and we had planned this, months in advance. So I went anyways. Delta never offered me a replacement chair and I knew I wouldn't have time to get one anyways. So I went and ended up spending much of that vacation lying down because of the pain I was experiencing not having the proper chair with me. I write this article now for two reasons- 1. to inform everybody about the upcoming International Wheelchair
Fencing World Cup happening at the Shepherd Center in downtown Atlanta, September 19-21 and 2. to expose how the airlines industry is so callous in their treatment of people with disabilities and equally inconsiderate when it comes to honoring our use of wheelchairs for our everyday living needs.

It has been a month and 6 days so far, I'm lying in bed now writing to you, still tweaked from trying to endure a vacation to the Bahamas without my electric wheelchair. Delta is just now getting in contact with me about fixing my electric wheelchair and this is only after dozens of phone calls and an email from me to the customer care center. I don't feel it is right for them to be able to get away with doing this to people with disabilities on a regular basis. They need a policy change so I'm calling for your stories and particular incidents so I can compile them for a lawsuit with Tim Willis of the Disability Law and Policy Center. The more incidents we have the better a case to be created. This doesn't have to be just Delta incidents.

I know this is by no means an isolated incidence. Just recently in the past month and a half two of my other friends who also use wheelchairs had the same experience with Delta. My beautifully kind friend, Minna Hong flew to San Francisco and found that they never even loaded her manual wheelchair on to the plane, this after wheeling all the way up to the plane. When she got off her flight and asked where her wheelchair was, they called back to Atlanta and had someone go look for her wheelchair which they found sitting out in the middle of the boarding area. To top it off they wanted her to wait for her chair to get there because it was against Delta rules to allow their airport chairs to leave the terminal. Finally after much frustration and eventual anger they let her leave with the airport wheelchair. She then had to maneuver herself and her luggage in a chair that was not fitted for her and extremely awkward for her to push, let alone navigate with luggage all the way to her sister's house. They then had to fly her chair to San Francisco and have a baggage person had to drive it to her sister's house at 1:30 that night. She got there earlier that afternoon. Another one of my friend's James Brown also a quadriplegic like myself flew to Las Vegas for a weekend of gambling and doing shows. They broke his electric wheelchair to the point that he couldn't even stay in Vegas. He had to cut short his vacation and fly back so his chair could be fixed. I could go on and on about my friends who are on the United States Wheelchair Fencing Team with me and their stories but I would end up writing a book rather than a story.

Of course it's not the airlines lives that are affected so why should they care? This attitude is exactly the problem. I hope you find this story of interest. I certainly look forward to hearing your stories and working with you to expose the obvious flaws of flying while being a wheelchair user, afterall, we are large part of the population. It will take our input and our impetus to change the policies of corporations and world realities that don't seem to understand exactly what it is we're going through. Also don't forget about the International Wheelchair Fencing World Cup at the Shepherd Center in downtown Atlanta, September 19-21. See you there. I will also be sending notice to the State Attorney General's Office, all the television news networks, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution in regards to this matter.