May 22, 2024 • 16 mins
Breakfast and learn at an iconic college town restaurant, Rama Jama’s, with Dr. Margaret Stran who helped pioneer the Adapted Athletics program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where sports and accessibility converge. Dr. Stran shares its inspiring genesis and growth as Darley Newman tries the National Champ Biscuit breakfast. Next, step inside the largest and biggest facility dedicated to adapted athletes in the world, the Stran-Hardin Arena, to be a fly on the wall for the University of Alabama’s Women’s Wheelchair Basketball practice. Hear about the dedication of these athletes, including intricacies of the sport. Explore the thoughtfully designed locker rooms to understand how accessibility extends beyond the court, with every detail meticulously planned to accommodate athletes of all abilities, symbolizing a commitment to inclusivity beyond the court.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We're combining sports and food in this podcast episode, traveling to the University of Alabama
(00:06):
to learn about wheelchair basketball and dine at a legendary Crimson Tide themed restaurant.
They're not messing around here at Rama Jama's.
No.
The University is a forerunner related to adapted athletics. Dr. Margaret Stran,
along with her husband, helped launch the University of Alabama's Adapted Athletics program.
(00:27):
She's meeting me for a breakfast of champions at Rama Jama's, a long-time gathering spot for
students and athletes on the University of Alabama campus. I'll be trying a big breakfast classic
sandwich before heading to watch the women's wheelchair basketball team practice at a world-class
facility and going behind the scenes in the locker room. We're going back to school in Tuscaloosa,
(00:51):
Alabama.
A destination where students and lovers of college football dine and tailgate,
Rama Jama's is located in the shadow of the Bryant Denny Stadium,
and it's where I'm meeting Dr. Margaret Stran for breakfast.
Rama Jama's walls are covered in Alabama memorabilia, and if you've watched college football,
(01:17):
you may recognize this diner from ESPN, CBS, or MSNBC.
I spot one of the signature items to order on the menu hanging over the kitchen,
the National Champ Burger, with 18 ounces of meat, cheese, bacon, onion rings, and a dill pickle.
And since it's breakfast, I decided to go big myself and order the National Champ biscuit:
(01:41):
two eggs, two bacon strips, sausage patties, and cheese on a triple biscuit. Dr. Stran
orders something a little more healthy. But she's dined here many times before. We sit down at a white
table alongside red booths to chat and dine. Dr. Strand is wearing a red Alabama athletic shirt,
(02:03):
and I'm dressed sporty too. Even though my sport today is breakfast conversation, and observation.
Adapted athletics is sort of the umbrella term for all adapted
sports. So the idea is that these are the same sports just adapted, right, for athletes with
disabilities. The University of Alabama, we're the only program in the country that has two facilities
(02:26):
that were designed and built specifically for an Adapted Athletics program, and we're one of
the newer programs out there. You know, we've been around for 20 years. You know, the University
of Alabama has been around since the late 40s. They have a facility, but it's not an athletic facility.
It wasn't designed for that, and so, you know, we're trying to push other universities to
(02:50):
do more to recognize their athletes just the way they have standard athletes on campus are.
Share with us a little bit about the program here and how you started it.
So we started it in 2003. I say we, so my husband, Dr. Brent Hardin, and I started it.
And we, Dr. Robert Witt was the president of the University at the time,
and we met him at a new faculty reception at the president's mansion, which if you haven't been by,
(03:16):
you need to go by. And we were like, "So, we want to start our women's team," And he came from the
University of Texas, Arlington that already had a men's wheelchair basketball team. So he got it right
away. It wasn't, "Oh, what's this?" You know, you were talking early about misconceptions. He didn't have
any. He knew exactly what we were talking about. He said, "Well, let's meet next week," And so,
(03:38):
we met next week and we said this is what we want to do. And I still remember we were going down the
quad and Brent and I were talking and we had gotten a $5,000 grant. We said, "Well, we can do all the
season with $5,000," And now we just laughed because like, we're lucky of one trip now is just $5,000.
But we did, we put together our first season with $5,000 and we got some startup funds from our
(04:04):
department chair, Joe Smith at the time. And we just started small. We were doing everything. And when
I said everything, we were setting the schedule. We were washing the uniforms. We were driving the
vans, fixing the chairs, ordering the uniforms, I mean, everything. And so it's been a really amazing
journey to see from that first season in 2003 to now, 20 years later, to see where we are. And now we
(04:28):
have an amazing staff. We have 12 full-time people. We have two teams for wheelchair basketball
men's and women's. We have wheelchair tennis, men's and women's. We're starting Para Track
and Field in the fall. We have two facilities. And when we started, it was like, we just
we just want to start a women's team. And now it's just this isn't what we envisioned, but at the
(04:51):
same time, it's exactly what had I envisioned something that would have been ideal. Does that
that make sense? How many athletes are involved in the program here? So this year, we have 32.
Well, tell me about your personal story and your journey. How did you even get into this in general?
How did you start playing? And where did you come from? And how did you get to Alabama? Because you're
(05:13):
not from Alabama. I'm not from Alabama. You're a midwest girl. But I, Alabama is home
I've been in Tuscaloosa longer than I've lived
anywhere. So I started using a wheelchair in 1990 and my sister went to the University of Illinois
at her band of champagne and she said, "Hey, they have wheelchair basketball here," And I was like,
"Okay," because I had always played sports growing up and played basketball. And so I went to
(05:40):
summer camp that year after my senior year and was like, "Hey, I'm coming here," to the coach and
he sort of like "Okay," And so I went to the University of Illinois, started playing wheelchair
basketball, had a great coach, Brad Hedrick, and then made the Paralympic team in '92. So played in
(06:01):
the Paralympics '92, '94, '96, won some championships with Illinois. And then got done with that,
was going to play in 2000 on the Paralympic team, got a concussion because back when I was
playing, we didn't have fifth wheels, which are the wheels on the back to keep you from falling
over. So I fell over in one too many times. So anyway, started coaching, did a lot of coaching,
(06:26):
and that's actually how I met my husband. I was coaching in Georgia, Blaze junior wheelchair
basketball team and needed an assistant coach. He ran into the Blaze sponsor and anyway,
long story short, we met and he started coaching with me, we drove around the southeast with 12 kids
(06:47):
in the back of a 15 passenger van and I learned that this is how my parents blocked us out,
because after a while you just ignore all the screams from the back until you notice, "Oh, that
one's a little important. Oh, what's going on back there?" The rest of the time you just ignore them.
And so then, Brent got a job here at the University in 2003 as a professor in Adapted PE.
(07:09):
And so we both came, I started my PhD and so that's how we ended up here.
What are some changes that need to occur to move Adapted Athletics forward into the future?
Sport can be a vehicle for both exclusion and inclusion, right? It first was about race,
then it was about gender and now it's about disability, right? We're going to keep those people out.
Also, a lot of times the misconception is that it's just like, feel good and it's not competitive
(07:34):
and it's like, "Oh, that's so great! You're in a wheelchair and you play sport,"
And that's not what it is at all. It's incredibly competitive.
I think everyone is thinking more, hopefully, about how to make all things that we do more
inclusive because it makes the world more interesting. I agree. Now we're going to fuel up. This is
double bacon, double sausage, double eggs, a lot of cheese, and apparently a triple biscuit.
(07:59):
They're not messing around here at Rama Jama's. No.
That biscuit is good. That's also just good. They're recruiting me for variety of sports.
Eating being one of them. I'm on the Alabama food tour and I'm like,
excelling at the eating sport right now. It's important to excel in your area.
(08:23):
Dr. Stran and I head over to the Stran-Hardin Arena, the largest and biggest facility
dedicated to Adapted Athletics in the world. It's located on the University of Alabama campus.
We're will be watching a practice and learning about what makes wheelchair basketball unique.
All of the chairs have cambers, so their wheels are slanted out. That keeps them more stable,
(08:46):
it allows them to spin faster, to shoot with just your arms. You have to be really strong and so
we work a lot in the weight room to make sure that it looks effortless because for them,
right, it is, right? A lot of people who jump into a chair are like, "Oh, it's so hard," and
for somebody who does it every day, it's not that hard, right? It's just what they do and they train for
(09:06):
it and they build for it and it's, it's fun to see. It's not conditioning. Absolutely.
Sometimes you'll see the big ramp here. We didn't build that for conditioning, but it's been a
really lovely conditioning tool for our strength coach. How much now these chairs are
(09:27):
at least different from the regular chairs? How much is one of these chairs cost for wheelchair
basketball? So which are basketball chairs will cost anywhere from $6-8,000. And we do have a
wheelchair sponsor, RGK from UK and they give us a couple of chairs a year and then give us a
discount, which is really important because you have to have the best equipment. I mean, you can see
(09:50):
what they're doing out there. You can see how they're, you know, getting into each other, how
they're falling and if you don't have the right equipment that's really fine tuned, that's going to
hold up to the beating, then you can't be as good as you need to be. And they're also light, right?
A light chair is going to be easier to push. It allows right, you were talking about conditioning
earlier. Well, you don't want to be carrying around an extra 20 pounds of chair if you don't have to.
(10:12):
The right tools. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it looks exciting to watch and it looks challenging.
It's so much fun. It's a great game. And one other quick thing about the rules that you may notice,
if you see anybody shoot a three or a free throw, their casters will be in front of the line and that's
because it's where the ball's coming from. They're not shooting from their feet, so it doesn't matter
(10:36):
if the casters, the big wheels have to be behind the three point line or the free throw line for it
to be legal. As far as rules go, what would classify as traveling? Just like in stand-up, you get
two steps in wheelchair ball, you get two contacts with the wheel. Let's say you're holding the ball
and you're going one, two, if you don't dribble before that third contact with the wheel, it's a travel.
(10:58):
I get accused of traveling all the time. And I don't even play basketball.
It's kind of your job. I know, right? We head into the women's locker room to learn about how it was
designed to be accessible. So this is the women's wheelchair basketball locker room. Some neat features
is one is that the cabinets were designed by the UI cabinet shop and modeled after the Alabama football
(11:23):
teams locker room before they remodeled it most recently. But some really unique features are the
storage areas for their ball chairs. You can see they're nice and wide. They've got hooks to store
extra wheels. There is a barrier because floors are not even. And so when we used to do,
when we store our chairs, they would all go into the middle. So here they're all stay where they're
(11:48):
supposed to be. Like I was saying earlier, some people don't use a wheelchair, so they don't use a
wheelchair. They have a little stool to sit on. And it's just a great way for them to leave all
their stuff. And it's just a nice, homey space for them to just, you know, be here and have a nice
personal space. Their name above it and it's really an awesome place to be.
(12:11):
Interesting all the details that go into any designing any space, but in particular this space.
When they were building this, who played a role in advising on how to actually, yeah, so you said,
"Okay, we need these details," and you didn't think about this and all these things come into play.
Yeah, it was, those were the most fun meetings I've ever attended was building design meetings. And so
(12:35):
there's a lot of features around the building that you'll see when the bleachers are pulled out,
every section of bleachers has a cutout for people who use wheelchairs to sit in. So you're sitting
with somebody rather than in front. If you go upstairs into the mezzanine, there's glass and then
there's wire because the wires, if it's all wires, then they're all in your vision. But if it's
(12:59):
glass at the bottom, then the wheelchair will mess it up. So we had to do a combo. And then in the
weight room, you'll see the benches are a little bit wider. It just provides a little more stability.
Again, for our players who have a little less function. So there's just a lot of little features
in the building. There's not a lot of doors. Of course, people who use wheelchairs can open doors,
(13:20):
but we just wanted to make it easier, particularly when they're in their competition chairs,
not having to worry about getting through doors. So there's a lot of things that we thought
about that were really fun to plan, just to make it a more welcoming environment where nobody ever
had to think about or reach for things. All of these are very low. Everything is really handy.
(13:40):
Just we wanted it to be, like we said, something that was designed for our athletes, not as an
afterthought. So everything is accessible. All the showers, all the bathroom stalls are accessible.
So nobody ever has to wait for their turn, for their stall. It's everybody can use everything.
(14:02):
I like how you talked about the bleachers and having the feeling of, and having the space so that
your everyone's a part of it, not set apart, apart, not set apart. And that mentality is something that
if it's already designed that way, then people don't have to think about it. So it doesn't make
them think about it, and then we're not even thinking about it. Yeah, it just is. It just is.
(14:26):
It just is. Yeah, I come in with a group of people and we just find a seat. We can sit wherever we want.
We're not relegated to the one wheelchair section. It's anywhere in the gym that you want to sit
with your friends or family, you can sit there. And anywhere you want to look upstairs and view
over, you will have a good view. And it's like you were saying earlier, you know, when we have
(14:47):
diversity, we're more inclusive and we get lots of different viewpoints and physical inclusivity is
really important because it doesn't matter to you if there's a cutout for somebody who uses a wheelchair,
but it matters to me. And so it's great because it doesn't hurt you. It only helps and include people.
Well, this would be a cool thing for a lot of designers out there to tour and see because it may give
(15:12):
them ideas they didn't even think about because it's not just being a wheelchair, it's other things too
where this could be helpful in so many ways. Oh, parents with strollers? You know?
They want this space. They're a parking area at home would that be lovely?
So many new ways to learn and grow on your travels, including on America's college campuses.
(15:35):
We're a trip to somewhere like Rama Jama's in Tuscaloosa can mean so much more than just a meal.
If you're traveling to this part of western Alabama, add these top restaurants to your travel list.
Tuscaloosa is located along two major interstates, i20 and i59, making a road trip from neighboring
Mississippi, Tennessee and northern Florida, as well as eastern Louisiana, easy. If you're flying nearby,
(16:01):
Tuscaloosa is about an hour's drive from Birmingham and three hours from Atlanta.
Thanks for listening to the Travels with Darley Podcast, and if you're traveling to Alabama or
abroad, check out my other podcast episodes and PBS series for more great travel tips.
We're combining sports and food in this podcast episode, traveling to the University of Alabama
(00:06):
to learn about wheelchair basketball and dine at a legendary Crimson Tide themed restaurant.
They're not messing around here at Rama Jama's.
No.
The University is a forerunner related to adapted athletics. Dr. Margaret Stran,
along with her husband, helped launch the University of Alabama's Adapted Athletics program.
(00:27):
She's meeting me for a breakfast of champions at Rama Jama's, a long-time gathering spot for
students and athletes on the University of Alabama campus. I'll be trying a big breakfast classic
sandwich before heading to watch the women's wheelchair basketball team practice at a world-class
facility and going behind the scenes in the locker room. We're going back to school in Tuscaloosa,
(00:51):
Alabama.
A destination where students and lovers of college football dine and tailgate,
Rama Jama's is located in the shadow of the Bryant Denny Stadium,
and it's where I'm meeting Dr. Margaret Stran for breakfast.
Rama Jama's walls are covered in Alabama memorabilia, and if you've watched college football,
(01:17):
you may recognize this diner from ESPN, CBS, or MSNBC.
I spot one of the signature items to order on the menu hanging over the kitchen,
the National Champ Burger, with 18 ounces of meat, cheese, bacon, onion rings, and a dill pickle.
And since it's breakfast, I decided to go big myself and order the National Champ biscuit:
(01:41):
two eggs, two bacon strips, sausage patties, and cheese on a triple biscuit. Dr. Stran
orders something a little more healthy. But she's dined here many times before. We sit down at a white
table alongside red booths to chat and dine. Dr. Strand is wearing a red Alabama athletic shirt,
(02:03):
and I'm dressed sporty too. Even though my sport today is breakfast conversation, and observation.
Adapted athletics is sort of the umbrella term for all adapted
sports. So the idea is that these are the same sports just adapted, right, for athletes with
disabilities. The University of Alabama, we're the only program in the country that has two facilities
(02:26):
that were designed and built specifically for an Adapted Athletics program, and we're one of
the newer programs out there. You know, we've been around for 20 years. You know, the University
of Alabama has been around since the late 40s. They have a facility, but it's not an athletic facility.
It wasn't designed for that, and so, you know, we're trying to push other universities to
(02:50):
do more to recognize their athletes just the way they have standard athletes on campus are.
Share with us a little bit about the program here and how you started it.
So we started it in 2003. I say we, so my husband, Dr. Brent Hardin, and I started it.
And we, Dr. Robert Witt was the president of the University at the time,
and we met him at a new faculty reception at the president's mansion, which if you haven't been by,
(03:16):
you need to go by. And we were like, "So, we want to start our women's team," And he came from the
University of Texas, Arlington that already had a men's wheelchair basketball team. So he got it right
away. It wasn't, "Oh, what's this?" You know, you were talking early about misconceptions. He didn't have
any. He knew exactly what we were talking about. He said, "Well, let's meet next week," And so,
(03:38):
we met next week and we said this is what we want to do. And I still remember we were going down the
quad and Brent and I were talking and we had gotten a $5,000 grant. We said, "Well, we can do all the
season with $5,000," And now we just laughed because like, we're lucky of one trip now is just $5,000.
But we did, we put together our first season with $5,000 and we got some startup funds from our
(04:04):
department chair, Joe Smith at the time. And we just started small. We were doing everything. And when
I said everything, we were setting the schedule. We were washing the uniforms. We were driving the
vans, fixing the chairs, ordering the uniforms, I mean, everything. And so it's been a really amazing
journey to see from that first season in 2003 to now, 20 years later, to see where we are. And now we
(04:28):
have an amazing staff. We have 12 full-time people. We have two teams for wheelchair basketball
men's and women's. We have wheelchair tennis, men's and women's. We're starting Para Track
and Field in the fall. We have two facilities. And when we started, it was like, we just
we just want to start a women's team. And now it's just this isn't what we envisioned, but at the
(04:51):
same time, it's exactly what had I envisioned something that would have been ideal. Does that
that make sense? How many athletes are involved in the program here? So this year, we have 32.
Well, tell me about your personal story and your journey. How did you even get into this in general?
How did you start playing? And where did you come from? And how did you get to Alabama? Because you're
(05:13):
not from Alabama. I'm not from Alabama. You're a midwest girl. But I, Alabama is home
I've been in Tuscaloosa longer than I've lived
anywhere. So I started using a wheelchair in 1990 and my sister went to the University of Illinois
at her band of champagne and she said, "Hey, they have wheelchair basketball here," And I was like,
"Okay," because I had always played sports growing up and played basketball. And so I went to
(05:40):
summer camp that year after my senior year and was like, "Hey, I'm coming here," to the coach and
he sort of like "Okay," And so I went to the University of Illinois, started playing wheelchair
basketball, had a great coach, Brad Hedrick, and then made the Paralympic team in '92. So played in
(06:01):
the Paralympics '92, '94, '96, won some championships with Illinois. And then got done with that,
was going to play in 2000 on the Paralympic team, got a concussion because back when I was
playing, we didn't have fifth wheels, which are the wheels on the back to keep you from falling
over. So I fell over in one too many times. So anyway, started coaching, did a lot of coaching,
(06:26):
and that's actually how I met my husband. I was coaching in Georgia, Blaze junior wheelchair
basketball team and needed an assistant coach. He ran into the Blaze sponsor and anyway,
long story short, we met and he started coaching with me, we drove around the southeast with 12 kids
(06:47):
in the back of a 15 passenger van and I learned that this is how my parents blocked us out,
because after a while you just ignore all the screams from the back until you notice, "Oh, that
one's a little important. Oh, what's going on back there?" The rest of the time you just ignore them.
And so then, Brent got a job here at the University in 2003 as a professor in Adapted PE.
(07:09):
And so we both came, I started my PhD and so that's how we ended up here.
What are some changes that need to occur to move Adapted Athletics forward into the future?
Sport can be a vehicle for both exclusion and inclusion, right? It first was about race,
then it was about gender and now it's about disability, right? We're going to keep those people out.
Also, a lot of times the misconception is that it's just like, feel good and it's not competitive
(07:34):
and it's like, "Oh, that's so great! You're in a wheelchair and you play sport,"
And that's not what it is at all. It's incredibly competitive.
I think everyone is thinking more, hopefully, about how to make all things that we do more
inclusive because it makes the world more interesting. I agree. Now we're going to fuel up. This is
double bacon, double sausage, double eggs, a lot of cheese, and apparently a triple biscuit.
(07:59):
They're not messing around here at Rama Jama's. No.
That biscuit is good. That's also just good. They're recruiting me for variety of sports.
Eating being one of them. I'm on the Alabama food tour and I'm like,
excelling at the eating sport right now. It's important to excel in your area.
(08:23):
Dr. Stran and I head over to the Stran-Hardin Arena, the largest and biggest facility
dedicated to Adapted Athletics in the world. It's located on the University of Alabama campus.
We're will be watching a practice and learning about what makes wheelchair basketball unique.
All of the chairs have cambers, so their wheels are slanted out. That keeps them more stable,
(08:46):
it allows them to spin faster, to shoot with just your arms. You have to be really strong and so
we work a lot in the weight room to make sure that it looks effortless because for them,
right, it is, right? A lot of people who jump into a chair are like, "Oh, it's so hard," and
for somebody who does it every day, it's not that hard, right? It's just what they do and they train for
(09:06):
it and they build for it and it's, it's fun to see. It's not conditioning. Absolutely.
Sometimes you'll see the big ramp here. We didn't build that for conditioning, but it's been a
really lovely conditioning tool for our strength coach. How much now these chairs are
(09:27):
at least different from the regular chairs? How much is one of these chairs cost for wheelchair
basketball? So which are basketball chairs will cost anywhere from $6-8,000. And we do have a
wheelchair sponsor, RGK from UK and they give us a couple of chairs a year and then give us a
discount, which is really important because you have to have the best equipment. I mean, you can see
(09:50):
what they're doing out there. You can see how they're, you know, getting into each other, how
they're falling and if you don't have the right equipment that's really fine tuned, that's going to
hold up to the beating, then you can't be as good as you need to be. And they're also light, right?
A light chair is going to be easier to push. It allows right, you were talking about conditioning
earlier. Well, you don't want to be carrying around an extra 20 pounds of chair if you don't have to.
(10:12):
The right tools. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it looks exciting to watch and it looks challenging.
It's so much fun. It's a great game. And one other quick thing about the rules that you may notice,
if you see anybody shoot a three or a free throw, their casters will be in front of the line and that's
because it's where the ball's coming from. They're not shooting from their feet, so it doesn't matter
(10:36):
if the casters, the big wheels have to be behind the three point line or the free throw line for it
to be legal. As far as rules go, what would classify as traveling? Just like in stand-up, you get
two steps in wheelchair ball, you get two contacts with the wheel. Let's say you're holding the ball
and you're going one, two, if you don't dribble before that third contact with the wheel, it's a travel.
(10:58):
I get accused of traveling all the time. And I don't even play basketball.
It's kind of your job. I know, right? We head into the women's locker room to learn about how it was
designed to be accessible. So this is the women's wheelchair basketball locker room. Some neat features
is one is that the cabinets were designed by the UI cabinet shop and modeled after the Alabama football
(11:23):
teams locker room before they remodeled it most recently. But some really unique features are the
storage areas for their ball chairs. You can see they're nice and wide. They've got hooks to store
extra wheels. There is a barrier because floors are not even. And so when we used to do,
when we store our chairs, they would all go into the middle. So here they're all stay where they're
(11:48):
supposed to be. Like I was saying earlier, some people don't use a wheelchair, so they don't use a
wheelchair. They have a little stool to sit on. And it's just a great way for them to leave all
their stuff. And it's just a nice, homey space for them to just, you know, be here and have a nice
personal space. Their name above it and it's really an awesome place to be.
(12:11):
Interesting all the details that go into any designing any space, but in particular this space.
When they were building this, who played a role in advising on how to actually, yeah, so you said,
"Okay, we need these details," and you didn't think about this and all these things come into play.
Yeah, it was, those were the most fun meetings I've ever attended was building design meetings. And so
(12:35):
there's a lot of features around the building that you'll see when the bleachers are pulled out,
every section of bleachers has a cutout for people who use wheelchairs to sit in. So you're sitting
with somebody rather than in front. If you go upstairs into the mezzanine, there's glass and then
there's wire because the wires, if it's all wires, then they're all in your vision. But if it's
(12:59):
glass at the bottom, then the wheelchair will mess it up. So we had to do a combo. And then in the
weight room, you'll see the benches are a little bit wider. It just provides a little more stability.
Again, for our players who have a little less function. So there's just a lot of little features
in the building. There's not a lot of doors. Of course, people who use wheelchairs can open doors,
(13:20):
but we just wanted to make it easier, particularly when they're in their competition chairs,
not having to worry about getting through doors. So there's a lot of things that we thought
about that were really fun to plan, just to make it a more welcoming environment where nobody ever
had to think about or reach for things. All of these are very low. Everything is really handy.
(13:40):
Just we wanted it to be, like we said, something that was designed for our athletes, not as an
afterthought. So everything is accessible. All the showers, all the bathroom stalls are accessible.
So nobody ever has to wait for their turn, for their stall. It's everybody can use everything.
(14:02):
I like how you talked about the bleachers and having the feeling of, and having the space so that
your everyone's a part of it, not set apart, apart, not set apart. And that mentality is something that
if it's already designed that way, then people don't have to think about it. So it doesn't make
them think about it, and then we're not even thinking about it. Yeah, it just is. It just is.
(14:26):
It just is. Yeah, I come in with a group of people and we just find a seat. We can sit wherever we want.
We're not relegated to the one wheelchair section. It's anywhere in the gym that you want to sit
with your friends or family, you can sit there. And anywhere you want to look upstairs and view
over, you will have a good view. And it's like you were saying earlier, you know, when we have
(14:47):
diversity, we're more inclusive and we get lots of different viewpoints and physical inclusivity is
really important because it doesn't matter to you if there's a cutout for somebody who uses a wheelchair,
but it matters to me. And so it's great because it doesn't hurt you. It only helps and include people.
Well, this would be a cool thing for a lot of designers out there to tour and see because it may give
(15:12):
them ideas they didn't even think about because it's not just being a wheelchair, it's other things too
where this could be helpful in so many ways. Oh, parents with strollers? You know?
They want this space. They're a parking area at home would that be lovely?
So many new ways to learn and grow on your travels, including on America's college campuses.
(15:35):
We're a trip to somewhere like Rama Jama's in Tuscaloosa can mean so much more than just a meal.
If you're traveling to this part of western Alabama, add these top restaurants to your travel list.
Tuscaloosa is located along two major interstates, i20 and i59, making a road trip from neighboring
Mississippi, Tennessee and northern Florida, as well as eastern Louisiana, easy. If you're flying nearby,
(16:01):
Tuscaloosa is about an hour's drive from Birmingham and three hours from Atlanta.
Thanks for listening to the Travels with Darley Podcast, and if you're traveling to Alabama or
abroad, check out my other podcast episodes and PBS series for more great travel tips.
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