By now, it's no secret that I do quite a few charitable events with a good majority of them involving long-distance wheeling.
Over the past 30 years, I've traveled over 6,000 miles in my wheelchair with various events nationwide. Distances have been everything from one mile to 1,000 miles.
I'm finally sitting down to review some of the places I've traveled and some of the trails and parks I've experienced. I'm also reviewing some of the non-profits I've worked with. While I'm focusing on more recent events for obvious reasons, it's giving me a great chance to remember these tours.
I visited Muncie's Westside Park on the closing day of a recent Tenderness Tour. It was going to be an event on the adjacent White River Greenway, a beautiful trail that runs alongside, you guessed it, White River.
This was an awful day. It was cold. It was rainy, actually stormy, and I had a good 15 miles to. My attitude is that violence doesn't stop in the rain, so I can't stop trying to prevent it in the rain. So, I wheel in all weather.
Fortunately, this day also included some of the best volunteers I've had included the young woman pictured in my photo - a work peer who works in the Muncie office of my agency (I work in the main office in downtown Indy).
Westside Park is located in the floodplain along the southern boundary of Muncie's Westside (I bet you figured that out, didn't you?). It has a little league sized baseball diamond that is also used for softball. It has picnic tables and shelters, basketball courts, a playground, a shuffleboard court, three wire-control airplane circles, and tons of greenspace. The White River is along the southern boundary of the park and that's where you can join up with the White River Greenway. The White River Greenway is a paved trail that is wide enough for a wheelchair, though it's worth noting that it does have a couple of steep inclines on it. I had my challenges in adverse weather.
The park has been going through a series of improvements over recent years and seems to be steadily used. The basketball courts have been resurfaced. There's a new parking lot on the westside of the courts. New trees have been planted. Also, the White River Greenway was extended and includes a turn-around.
I'll be the first to admit that I didn't get to use the park as much as I'd have liked given the horrible weather I was wheeling in. However, I must say the shelters came in handy and were pretty wheelchair friendly. Also, the greenway gave us a nice surface and it was a cool place to be at when the local media from Ball State University showed up.
There's also a public restroom here and drinking fountain, though I didn't use it and can't speak to its wheelchair friendliness.
The real selling point to me with this park is the adjacent White River. It's really beautiful and I enjoyed the trail. The trail does get a bit urban at some points, think graffiti at a bridge point, but the vast majority of this area is a wonderful residential park and awesome trail for walkers, wheelers, runners, and bikers.
I felt safe here and had no hassles, though I suppose you'd have to be a really committed criminal to come out and hassle a guy in a wheelchair during a rainstorm. read more