Crashing Through Read Free

looked?” Jennifer asked.
    “You’re beautiful,” May said. “I think I know exactly what you look like. What would I see that I don’t already see? You’re gorgeous.”
    For a while May and Jennifer said nothing. At the halfway point they compared hunger levels and debated whether to stop for lunch. The consensus was to press forward in order to make it home in time to pick up the kids from school.
    “Saint-Tropez, huh?” Jennifer asked.
    May laughed. Jennifer took the Davis exit, telling her husband about a new client she had lined up, listening to his ideas for a new driving route to Kirkwood. He appreciated this hour with his wife. She had never mentioned the myriad practical benefits that would accrue to her if he could see—his ability to drive, fill the gas tank, read his own mail, sort the laundry, pick up groceries.
    “Imagine seeing the panoramas at Kirkwood,” May said. “This really has been an interesting day.”
             
    Jennifer pulled her van into the two-car garage of the Mays’ three-bedroom house, which sat at the elbow of one of the town’s shady, tree-named streets.
    Inside, the couple thanked Jennifer’s mother, who had watched five-year-old Wyndham and seven-year-old Carson, and kissed her good-bye. May threw a tennis ball to Josh in the backyard, fixed himself a sandwich, and continued the daylong process of returning business calls. When the boys’ school let out, he strapped the tan leather harness on Josh and walked over to pick them up. Kids called out, “Hi, Mr. May! Can we pet Josh?” As always, May said, “Sure thing, Tyler” or “Is that you, Emily?” On the walk home his sons competed to describe the bugs they’d found during recess.
    The rest of May’s day moved like every other: business calls, wrestling with the boys, feeling a new fabric Jennifer had picked for a client, drafting a business letter, doing the dishes, telling bedtime stories. It had been ten hours since May had returned from his meeting with Dr. Goodman. In that time he had not thought once about new vision.
    And that is how quickly life returned to normal for May. His start-up business was primary in his mind. In a risky move, he had resigned his executive position at a major adaptive technology company in order to design, manufacture, and market a portable GPS system for the blind—the first of its kind. By linking May’s receiver and mapping software to a laptop computer contained in a backpack, a customer could tune in the global positioning satellites that orbited the earth. Then, with the push of a button, that customer could receive real-time, turn-by-turn directions to whatever location he desired: home, work, grocery store, restaurant, park, Star-bucks—anywhere. May saw his product as liberating. It gave a kind of vision to the blind.
    But he needed funding, so much of May’s life centered on pitching potential investors. He had bet it all on this company (which was still without a name), drawing on personal savings to support both business and family. Neither he nor Jennifer was of independent means, which meant that he had maybe a year to make the business work. After that, he would need to return to the corporate world. The restraint on freedom that came with a traditional executive position was discordant with May’s DNA.
    He worked eighteen-hour days, testing the GPS between coffee shops in Davis, on the ferry to San Francisco, in airplanes as the unit’s cables spaghettied onto the shoulder of the person seated beside him. In Anaheim he raced a group of blind cane users from their hotel to Disneyland. Even though he had to stop along the way to hot-glue some loose wires, he still won. May believed in his product.
    And he was able to work from home, a godsend in allowing him the time with his family he so deeply desired.
    When Wyndham’s soccer coach quit before the team’s first practice, parents gathered at May’s house to determine what to do next. He told them