By John Pixley | Special to the Courier

I met John when I was at UCLA for the spring 1984 quarter. He was from Maine and was a big guy, like a dairy farm boy, with a big grin. But he was no country hick. Not only was he at UCLA as an out-of-state student, he was majoring in bio-chemistry or some such, way outside my English/humanities lane.

So it would always crack me up when he would break out his best heavy Maine accent and proclaim, “You can’t get ‘thar’ from ‘har’” — apparently a common Maine saying, at least in the rural parts. It was like a favorite line from a movie that we shared.

I was recently reminded of the line, except, this time I wasn’t cracking up. At least not in that sense.

Last month, after a four-year hiatus due to increasing disability, I flew to the Bay Area for a three night visit. It was something of a triumphant return, after having told myself that I wouldn’t return, made possible with lots of work in physical therapy and a critical and clever logistical update. Getting up there and being up there, while not easy, was no problem.

The problem turned out to be getting to the Ontario airport, the nice, quiet airport not even a half hour away. My van was driven up to the Oakland airport some hours before in order to get there in time to pick me up, so I needed to find a reliable wheelchair-accessible ride to the nearby airport.

This turned out to be quite difficult, ridiculously, insanely difficult.

The key word here is “reliable.” In the past, I had had some horrendous experiences with the wheelchair-accessible cab service, being all but too late or not showing up, which left me rattled to say the least. I couldn’t deal with this. I just couldn’t.

The big bugaboo was that Ontario airport, as close as it is, is in another county — San Bernardino. When I called Dial-a-Ride and Access, which offer cheap, subsidized wheelchair-accessible transportation, they said they can’t, won’t, cross the county line. If I was flying out of LAX, Access could take me, no problem, but who wants to fly out of LAX?

Things only got crazier.

AgingNext gave me a few numbers of private non-medical transport companies to call. (I called the agency after the Service Center for Independent Life, which I helped found decades ago, had, much to my dismay, no advice for me.)

The first place I called wanted $260. One way. For a ride that’s barely half an hour.

WT$!

The second company I called wanted something like $220. One way, again. A bit better, but really? A half-hour ride cost more than a flight to the Bay Area?

I stopped calling. I was getting too angry. This was insane. Highway robbery (literally). This was wrong!

Would I get up north? I was wondering.

A friend saw how desperate I was and recommended a company she knew about that charged $200. Round trip. This was way more than I wanted to pay — nearly as much as the round-trip airfare for two — but I took it, figuring the trip may have been off otherwise. (The service was great, right on time. It better have been!)

If I had the energy and the time, I would try to put together an organization that provides affordable, reliable, wheelchair-accessible transportation regardless of municipal or county lines. Somebody should.

There has to be a way, a better way, to get thar — er, there — from har — er, here!