CityView Magazine

CityViewNC.com | 49 910-868-2121 | www.playerinc.net CURRENT PROJECTS GENERAL CONTRACTORS & REAL ESTATE State Employees Credit Union, Cary • Aquatic Center at College Lakes Recreation Center Fayetteville City Hall 3rd Floor Upfit • Highland Country Club Pool Facilities Renovations Carolina College of Biblical Studies Addition and Renovations • Fresenius Medical Care Renovations " We believe the facility is outstanding, primarily because of your efforts" – Fayetteville Police Department "Your team was always accessible to us and helped to guide us during each of three construction projects to date…a pleasure to work with." – Fairfield Inn "I do not believe that in today's economy that there is another contractor anywhere that could have made it happen." – Fayetteville Observer knowledge that these two spent much of their free time try- ing to help others within our community, I couldn't suppress my nervous laughter in response to their questions. Unlike Castro, I have spent much of my life avoiding dangerous sit- uations. I got the sense the two of them knew this, which was why they had chosen to do something that might help me relate more to Castro's life experience. Once I finished my coffee, Matos pulled out a blindfold. "is is one of the things we have done for team building in the past. You have to learn to trust other people." She secured the blindfold around my head and guided me toward the stairs. "Don't worry about falling down the stairs," Castro joked, "because we're on the second floor and you can't fall down past the first." By the time we got outside to the car, I was trying to think of some excuse. at's when Castro reminded me of something. "At the end of all this, you can take the blindfold off," he said. "I can't." Castro wasn't looking for pity; he was making a point. is was a temporary inconvenience for me, and the least I could do was try to imagine life from his perspective. During the drive, both Castro and Matos asked me about whether I had any guesses as to where we were driving. I learned that while blindfolded, I have a comically bad sense of direction. Aer a short drive in which I tried to distract myself from my discomfort with a series of awkward questions about whether being blind enhanced any other senses (yes, I serious- ly asked this. I am not proud), we arrived at what I determined, by the smell of body-odor and grunt sounds, to be a gym. At the check-in counter, I asked the woman if a man wear- ing a blindfold was a normal sighting at this particular gym. She said that it was not. Once signed in, we went to the men's locker room, one of the only places on Earth I tend to consider a blindfold a blessing. As Matos couldn't follow us into the men's locker room, Castro had to be my guide, in a literal case of "the blind leading the blind." Castro asked if I needed to use the bathroom, and I im- pulsively answered "yes," with the assumption that the need to use the bathroom would mean I could be expected to, mo- mentarily, remove my blindfold. I was wrong. What followed ranks among my top five scariest bathroom experiences. Castro talked me through how to use a walking stick to find the toilet, then to find the handicap stall, and finally, to cor- rectly aim for the toilet. At least I assume I hit the toilet. As it was only Castro and I in the locker room, I could have easily been watering a plant. Once we were out of the locker room, Matos guided Cas- tro and I to the treadmills. Castro, the guy who successfully trekked to the South Pole, obviously took no issue running on a treadmill without sight. Meanwhile, I walked at a snail's

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