BlindOnlineSuccessSystem.com

Archive for May, 2010

The Texas School For The Blind and Visually Impaired is having a makeover!

The Texas School For The Blind and Visually Impaired in Austin Texas  is totally renovating their entire campus.  We have all seen the show, Extreme Home Makeover which features none other than Tie Pennington who is the show’s host tearing down people’s houses and building them new ones.  Well the Texas School For The Blind and Visually Impaired is having its own version of that, accept for the fact that Tie Pennington isn’t there, and neither is that huge bus that is so imphomous with the show.  so that means that we can’t say, “Move that bus!”

However, just like the show, buildings are being torn down and new ones are being erected.  That’s right, the entire campus is getting an extreme makeover, and I do mean extreme!

The original buildings have served the blind and visually impaired for many many years now, and now it is time for a change.  New state of the art buildings are being erected where the old ones once stood.  There are even new buildings that weren’t originally there being erected too.

On June 12 of this year, there will be a fare well to the main building event.  This event will feature a tour of the main building, refreshments in the cafeteria and an open mike later on that afternoon for those who wish to express their memories of this fine campus.

The Texas School For The Blind and Visually Impaired is located at 1100 West 45th Street in  Austin Texas. you can visit their web site at the following here below to find out more on this major renovation.

http://www.tsbvi.edu

The new and improved Texas School For The Blind and Visually Impaired will be a state of the art campus.  It will feature the latest in technology and services designed with the blind and visually impaired in mind.  State of the art dormatories, along with state of the art educational buildings and state of the art food service and medical facilities will help to greatly enhance the education of all blind and visually impaired students across Texas.

Watching Matt Gilman use his bike like a two-wheeled pogo stick, bouncing from giant wooden box to slightly smaller wooden box, your heart is in your throat waiting for a nasty
spill.

When he rears up on his back wheel on the highest box, like the Lone Ranger on Silver, you instinctively look away.

The ballet that Gilman dances on his bike requires strength and balance, but, apparently, not sight, because Gilman is a blind bike trials rider.

Gilman, 30, who grew up in Mount Washington and now lives in Reisterstown with his wife and son, was performing at Sunday’s annual BikeJam in Patterson
Park. The event drew 800 riders — from kids to pros — and thousands of spectators to raise money for Patterson Park and World Bicycle Relief, which provides
bikes for transportation in Africa.

Gilman lost his sight about six years ago as the result of Type I
diabetes
, but quickly threw aside his doctor’s orders to give up riding.

“I trip over my own two feet, but I feel like I can do anything on my bike,” said Gilman, exhausted after three stunt performances during a long, hot and
humid day in the park. Behind him, the sighted pro cyclists raced at terrific speeds.

“The first time I got on my bike after I lost my sight, I fell over instantly. I was like a child again,” said the former BMX rider. Gilman works at Joe’s
Bike Shop in Mount Washington, where he has taught himself the tricks and shortcuts he needs to repair bikes without vision.

Gilman performed before a noisy crowd, many of them youngsters who fancy themselves trick riders and who peppered him with questions as he waited to begin.

But his friend of 15 years, Gary Lessner, a pro trials rider from Parkville, went first. Wearing a blindfold. He stumbled with the bike and didn’t seem
to know where the obstacles were.

“It was very hard,” said a winded Lessner. “I have no idea how he does it.”

Gilman says he uses his hands and feet to place himself on the oversized wooden boxes. And he uses the tires like two more hands. He will “feel” his way
around a course before attacking it, but he can’t see the gaps or the drops once he begins.

His years as a BMX bike rider gave him a control of the bike that he employs now. “It was 16 years of banging around.”

His brother-in-law, Louis Gingher, who announces for him, will occasionally give him verbal cues to go left or right on the blocks and triangles. Gilman,
who is miked, tells the crowd what he will attempt next and asks for their encouragement.

During a demonstration for a diabetes research fundraiser, Gilman was so charged up by the cheers from the kids that he jumped from the top of a 5-foot-tall
box, skimmed past another box that was equally as wide and landed on the pavement. It was his first time for such a stunt.

“My mother didn’t look,” he said, laughing.

Gilman rides rocks and mountain trails, too, following a friend who puts a clicker on his wheel so Gilman can follow the sound. “That’s actually the scariest
thing I do.”

But the big news for this blind bike star is the birth seven weeks ago of his son, Evan, who will be getting his first bike, his father says, by the age
of two.

“As soon as he can walk,” said Gilman.