Lucas Camilo

Back in early September, neighbors would stroll by our house and stare puzzled and the big, dirt hole in our front yard. Was there a sewage leak that needed fixing, they wondered, or a buried treasure we were trying to uncover?

In fact we were building a front yard ramp, but the progress on the project seemed painfully slow. Indeed building a giant, wheelchair-accessible ramp into the side of a hill — and landscaping it in a way that makes it actually look good — is not an easy (or cheap) proposition. Still, I optimistically predicted back then that Lucas would be able to travel up the ramp under construction by Halloween.

After getting off the school bus last Monday, he finally took his first trip up the ramp… 2 days before Halloween. It was triumphant all of us but Lucas especially, as he had been asking daily for weeks, “is the ramp done yet?” So when we got to the top that first time I asked him what he thought and he said “My ramp IS done and it is awesome!”

The patio at the top is another great addition, as it will allow the whole family (including Lucas) to sit in the afternoon sun on nice days. And there’s also a big planter box where we can plant our vegetables.   The guys who built it did a fabulous job and it genuinely made them happy to get to know Lucas and know that they were helping a kid in a wheelchair get safely into his house.

Check out some videos of the first trip up, and a subsequent trip down a few days later (with some of Lucas’s favorite classic rock songs in the background for effect.)