But Jayne is a nut, and she had lots of wacky things in mind. She ultimately made it multiple choice between cage diving with sharks or tandem skydiving, and I thought, "Jumping out of an airplane it is!"
I met Jayne years ago at the Pasadena Language Center. I wanted and/or needed an ASL tutor, and PLC matched me with her. Some time later, Jayne quit PLC, because they were dicking her around. They got a replacement ASL teacher (who became my teacher) and, shortly thereafter, I quit PLC because they were dicking me around. Also, the new ASL teacher was not as good as Jayne. I contacted Jayne on the side to see if she'd teach me outside of PLC, and she agreed. Since then, she has been teacher, friend, and my go-to professional photographer.
And now we're going to tandem skydive. Jayne has done this before, with an operation with "Santa Barbara" in its name, which is somewhat misleading as it is actually about an hour north of Santa Barbara in Lompoc. (But "Lompoc Skydiving" doesn't have the same ring to it.) We have to cancel the first weekend we book -- because I booked the skydive without first checking the hotels, and it turns out there was a NASA launch out of Vandenberg AFB, and if one thing is going to fill Lompoc, it's a rocket sending stuff off to Mars. So we reschedule for this weekend.
Jayne volunteers to drive (THANK YOU!) so we pack up her car and (after a stop for gas and snacks, to make this a Proper Road Trip), we head on out. We're staying in the lovely Embassy Suites in Lompoc. It's one of those hotels that, the day before, lets you look at a map of the property and pick the room you want. I see they have one room listed as "Hearing Accessible." I briefly wonder whether the terminology is right (shouldn't it be "Hearing impaired accessible?") but that's clearly the one for us, so I book it.
We arrive. The hotel has a nightly reception with free drinks and munchies, so we throw our stuff in the room and go downstairs for free wine. We hang there for several hours, and eventually just order dinner. It's our first chance to sit across from each other and really TALK. I mean, we can have some level of communication while she's driving, but it's not GOOD. She has to sign with only hand (since the other is on the wheel) and I'm not even that great at understanding two-handed signing; one-handed shorthand (so to speak) is certainly not my forte. Meantime, she has to take her eyes off the road to get what I'm saying. So we didn't have much deep communication on the road -- mostly discussing directions and traffic. But in the restaurant, we can actually talk. A friend with a young baby had recently asked me to teach her some signs so she could start using them with her kid; I mentioned this to Jayne and got a very animated lesson in what signs babies tend to learn at what age (and in what order, and how they get each sign wrong-but-close-enough). Interesting. The woman running the restaurant asks me if I learned sign language "from A to Z" and she seems awed at the idea. (And I'm thinking, "A to Z was easy; it's the whole damn vocabulary that's the hard part.")
We look at the weather for our skydive the next day. It's pleasant but windy. Winds of, like, 16-19 mph. I google the windspeeds at which you can safely skydive. I get mixed results -- some say they'll only do windspeeds under 15; others will go up to 25, but only if it's steady (no gusts). We consider the possibility that we may get cancelled on.
We go back to the room. I look around unsuccessfuly for ANYTHING that makes this a "hearing accessible" room. (Dammit; it's Atlanta with Molly all over again.) I don't even see lights on the smoke detectors. And there sure as hell isn't a light activated by the doorbell -- there's NO DOORBELL. You just have to knock. Well, THAT'LL work if the person on the inside can't hear. It's late, though, and Jayne is very "whatever" about the whole thing, so we just muddle through. At least there's closed captioning available on all TVs now. We circle channels and try to find something to watch. We go with SNL.
Fun fact: the captions on SNL lag behind the action so much, it's impossible to watch. You need to sort of remember what was on screen four lines ago and match it with what you're reading now. Utterly useless for visual jokes like in "Weekend Update," and not very helpful with a multi-person skit when you can't figure out who is talking. We give up in disgust, and watch a M*A*S*H rerun, which, at least, has perfect caption timing.
Jayne informs me that she sleeps with the curtain a bit open, because total darkness doesn't really work for Deaf people. I had never thought of this before, but I get it. Total silence and darkness must be pretty isolating.
The next morning, we get ready. I shower first then get dressed in the bedroom while Jayne is showering. She forgot the shampoo. She cannot yell, "Hey, are you decent? Can you hand me the shampoo?" The only way this works is if she knocks on the inside of the bathroom door, waits until I open it, and then sticks a hand outside and fingerspells "s-h-a-m-p-o-o." I put the little bottle in the disembodied hand, and the bathroom door closes. I kind of marvel at the ingenuity involved in her figuring out the best way to communicate in this circumstance, but also realize this is just another one of those "Deaf person getting by in a Hearing World" things I'd never even thought about.
When we are downstairs at the free breakfast (the room is kind of crap, but you can't complain about the hotel's freebies), we get the call that yes, our skydiving is cancelled because of the winds. I tell them we weren't entirely surprised, because we'd looked this up yesterday. The nice lady was totally impressed by our research, and filled me in on the details. She said they LOVE 15 mph winds from the West. Their landing zone runs East-West. What they don't like -- and what we had -- was over 15 mph coming from the North. Those are cross-winds that (and I'm quoting) "try to deflate your canopy." No, thank you. Why yes, we'd love to reschedule. We decide that since we've got to pass through Santa Barbara on our way back to L.A., we'll stop and spend the day there instead.
Checking out, I ask the lady at the desk exactly what "hearing accessible" features were in the "hearing accessible" room I'd booked, because damn if I didn't see any. I'm told that they have a kit and can SET UP the room as hearing accessible, but you have to ask for it. (And I'm thinking, "Really? The fact that I booked the room listed as 'hearing accessible' and checked in with someone with whom I was signing did not make you think maybe I wanted that shit?") They were proud of the kit. Said they had something that turned a knock on the door into a flashy light and everything. Said to ask for it next time. Well, maybe when we reschedule.
Off to Santa Barbara. Jayne had always wanted to go to the courthouse there, and was super happy to finally make it, so Courthouse Selfie!
What's cool about the Santa Barbara Courthouse is a clock tower you can go up, with nice views of the City.
See? Jayne's a photographer so she composes all the shots. She asked me to take a few pictures of her (with her phone) and she'd stand in the "photographer" position for a few minutes, holding her phone in just the right place, before handing it to me and jumping in the shot. I'm dealing with a pro.
When we left the courthouse, she was walking ahead of me, and I managed to trip over my own feet in the crosswalk. She didn't hear me trip and fall, so kept on walking, and I had to gather myself quickly and run a bit to catch up. I'm explaining what happened, and a dude comes up to us and asks me, in ASL, if I'm OK. Hey! First time I'm mistaken for a Deaf person!
We stroll/limp on over to State Street and find a nice restaurant for lunch. They'd just opened. Like, that day. Jayne had a really tasty eggplant parmesan, and I had a really tasty salmon piccata, but, when we asked, we couldn't get any bread, because they'd JUST OPENED and didn't, like, have any yet.
Guess what today was? Why it's the State Street Nationals Premier Car Show! Classic Cars up and down State Street. I channel my inner brother-in-law and we check out the vehicles. Jayne is taking all sorts of photos. I pose with the '57 Chevy because of course I do.
We stop for ice cream. (We may have planned to "check out the cars on the way to ice cream." Maybe.) There's a long line but we wait in it. We continue to chat. Dude in front of us turns around and asks (in signing worse than mine!) if we're Deaf. Jayne takes this conversation. Dude learned some ASL a few years back and wants to share the fact. It doesn't entirely go well; Jayne asks him "where" he learned -- he keeps thinking she's asking "when." I intentionally do not intervene; I only interpret for Jayne when she asks -- she is a self-sufficient individual who has incredible patience for bad signing. (Believe me, I know this. I apologize several times this weekend for using the wrong sign, or forgetting one I should totally remember. Hell, I even got "website" right when I was sure I had it wrong. Fuck me.) At the ice cream place, you can get a dish with 3 small scoops of different flavors. I ask Jayne which ones she is going to get. She tells me; I tell her my three. When we get up to order, Jayne orders by pointing. The woman behind the counter misunderstands -- Jayne is pointing at the name of the flavor and the woman thinks she's pointing at the ice cream instead (and they're different, as the ice creams are a few deep). The woman repeats it back (wrong) and THIS time, I intervene. (I mean, some dude trying to chat in long-forgotten ASL is one thing, but this is ICE CREAM we're talking about.) Jayne's order gets corrected and I wonder how many times she gets the wrong food because someone doesn't know what she's pointing at.
We finish up, drive back, and check how busy Lompoc is on various dates later this summer (must avoid Falcon 9 launch dates). And I wonder if, this weekend, Jayne didn't let me in someplace I couldn't go without her after all.
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