The Speak Foundation and Hot-lanta

While waiting for the lift project to be completed, we attended a conference. This conference is for people with disabilities such as myself. It is put on by
The Speak Foundation, which was started by a beautiful Christian lady named Kathryn Bryant. She probably never dreamed it would be this big, but oh man it has grown. How exciting to meet up and make lifelong friends with people who know exactly the things you go through from day to day.

It was so much fun traveling around downtown Atlanta, GA, or Hot-lanta as we Speakies like to call it, in our wheelchair posse. Even getting caught in the rain was fun! What's more important is that we now have friends around the country (and Canada) that we will go to visit. How exciting! I can't tell you how invaluable this conference was for me. Good thing 16 hours in a minivan without a/c at the beginning of August didn't stop us! While in the area, we had to visit a Diners, Drive-ins and Dives restaurant, The Silver Skillet. Good old southern fare, complete with grits and lemon pie! This place hasn't been changed since its inception in the 1950's. That goes for accessibility. Since there are stairs in the front, I had to roll (squeeze) through the tiny kitchen, past the fryers and all. What we do for experience!

If that wasn't fun enough, we went to the most awesome restaurant ever with the best sister in the world on the way back: Blueberry Hill in St. Louis. This restaurant seats over 300 people, and we sat in the darts room. Yes, that means real dart boards, for free! The boys were in heaven. I loved the variety of food as well as all the framed pictures of famous people who had passed through the venue. Chuck Barry still also plays there! What a great trip!