The writing glides across the page even though her fingers only observe.

A quadriplegic since she was in a car accident at 15, Lewkowicz has use of her arms, but, she says, "zero flexibility" in her fingers.

She has picked a beautiful day to sign autographs. The sun is shining. It's not terribly hot.

More than 40 people, many in wheelchairs, mill around a podium next to a sheltered food table at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, a pretty area tucked near the docks in downtown Oakland.

Lewkowicz and members of the California Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that funded the free 208-page guide, decided the park would be an appropriate site to launch the book. The area is among the more than 100 public places, from Point Reyes to Santa Cruz, that she covered.

A resident of Berkeley, Lewkowicz, 49, spent three years visiting trails, parks and recreation areas and writing about her discoveries; she types with a pencil, "peck and point, pick and point," she says.

She went to some with her editor "because I don't do windy roads." Her husband, Paul Church, a city of Berkeley accessibility specialist, drove her on weekends to others.

Comprehensive and user friendly, "A Wheelchair Rider's Guide" includes maps,photographs, directions, area history and sensations ("visuals and smell," she says), as well as the experience of going out on the trails.

"Everyone has his own different accessibility needs, so I try to be as objective as possible," she says.

Where a motorized wheelchair — her current vehicle of choice — might allow someone to negotiate a pronounced slope, "someone with limited upper-body strength may need a push" if they're using a manual chair.

"Because I had used a manual chair and was probably as physically limited as you could be and still get around, I had a good sense of what the challenges would be."

As Lewkowicz and members of the Coastal Conservancy emphasize, hers are personal judgments, not claims that all sites are up to government standards.

Each item offers information about parking accessibility and blue spaces, restrooms, hours, phone numbers and, where relevant, fees.

In the entry for Coyote Point Recreation Area in San Mateo, she writes, "... A network of paved accessible trails, bike paths and roads let you roam fairly easily." Later, she warns of one trail: "If you continue southwest along the shoreline, there is no curb cut at the end of the trail, but with assistance you can jump the curb, cross the road and arrive at the beach."

The guide is aimed at people with walkers or canes, too.

"Everybody needs it (the guide) because of all the newly opened Bay trails," says Ralf Hotchkiss, the Oakland man in the wheelchair pictured on the cover. "We need to know where to go in and how to go, before we start a trip."

Other information is also a blessing. For instance, Lewkowicz writes, "... The inside restroom's stalls are front-approach only, are too shallow to close the door, and have no grab bars on the back wall. ... Other accessible restrooms are near the picnic areas."

When Lewkowicz broke her leg six years ago she switched to her motorized chair from a manual one — and she got spoiled.

She doesn't say if the new wheels give her an edge when she plays on Quadzilla, the Berkeley quad rugby team she started, or when she performs with the Axis Dance Company, a "physically integrated" group she co-founded in 1987.

Not that it matters.

"I was always physically active as a youth. That doesn't change when you get disabled," says Lewkowicz, who started Access Northern California, a nonprofit group that addresses accessibility in travel, eight years ago.

"It may change how you get it done, but it doesn't change the core."

The motorized chair helped her negotiate some of the longer trails during her research, some of which turned up the unexpected.

At Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Natural Wildlife Refuge, near San Jose, Lewkowicz got stuck in a sand trap. "And then the hill was too steep to go up. Fortunately, I was with someone. But I had to wait for them to find me. Thank God for cell phones."

A Detroit native with a degree in recreation therapy from California State University, Sonoma, Lewkowicz — who also teaches dance to children — is clear about what she wants.

"My whole goal would be to change images of what people think of, when they think of disability," she says. "That's what I think the book will do, too."

"A Wheelchair Rider's Guide: San Francisco Bay and the Nearby Coast" is available by writing the Coastal Conservancy, 1330 Broadway, 11th floor, Oakland, CA 94612, calling (510) 286-1015, or sending e-mail to calcoast@scc.ca.gov.

As Lewkowicz writes in her introduction, "Happy trails."

Oakland Tribune
401 13th Street
Oakland, California 94612
(510) 208-6330 Switchboard
(510) 293-2709 Online Content
www.oaklandtribune.com