Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Thursday

Swim at West Mesa Pool.
pool is exquisite: deep, the right temp, no chlorine smell, tons of space. There is one family bathroom on the pool deck, and it even has a handheld shower. However, there’s another wheelchair user in the pool, and as I travel to that bathroom he gives me that panicked look I know so well: there are limited resources here, are we both going to be able to use them? He got out before I did, but he took a very long shower, so I was left to cope with the women’s lockers: a concrete seat with a low shower-head at pressure so hard it hurt (so I didn’t shower).

And that was it for Thursday, because I did too much on Wednesday and was exhausted.

Friday

Browsed various places with my walker.

Ate at Thai Vegan, one of many vegan restaurants in the city. They were vague about gluten, and I think I got some.

Napping, drowsing, snoozing.

Saturday

Stopped by “Sweet Nothings,” a GF bakery.
They have a brilliant approach to GF bread. It’s made in rounds, like English muffins, but aiming for bread texture and larger (around 1" thick). The point being that what I want most is crust, and that suffers least from being de-glutenized. Also, much easier to freeze. Sadly, still has the soft, uber-white bread texture so common to the genre. But still, served as a base layer for ham & cheese toasties..

Swam at Sandia pool
Water was pretty good. Very busy, but folks are friendly. In addition to lap lanes, they have a diving well. I was able to do my non-lap exercises there, and admire the immense athleticism that is synchronized swimming. No seating for the one lowered shower head. I was in a take-charge mood, so I rolled up to a staffer and said, where’s the folding chair with a plastic seat I can use in the shower? He was surprised, but found one for me.

Typically fabulous lunch from MyGuy: The Salad Meal with avocado chunks, cucumbers, romaine, scallions, and cold shrimp; dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Walk at Petroglyph National Monument Volcanoes
The National Park Service said that access was “partial”–a sandy path with screened gravel–so why did they heap 4 yards of large lava pebbles three feet past the entrance gate? Somehow I managed to power through it once. On the way back, I got out of my chair while a friendly stranger helped MyGuy carry my chair over the rocks. The trip was worth every bump, though. These cinder cones from three extinct volcanoes are eerie and remind me that the world is old and humans are a flyspeck on the landscape.

Back to walk El Paseo del Bosque north from Tingley Beach, with dog in tow.
This huge north-south park hugs the Rio Grande. There’s a 16 mi paved bike path, and scores of desire paths in the sandy dirt (with periodic fishing platforms). The river is wide and brown and fast and right there. In fact, the entire Bosque area is in the river’s floodplain. In many places, one can’t hear or see the city of 1 million people around you. Among the cottonwoods, ginkoes, and miscellaneous underbrush, we saw fearsome iron girders welded into tripods and wired around some trees. Thank goodness for the internet: these were mid–20th century flood control measures, called jetty jacks.

Colin McDonald, a reporter for the Texas Tribune, details the changes in the Rio Grande since human settlement and predicts dire things for the near future:
https://riogrande.texastribune.org/blog/2014/8/12/

Kathy Grassel’s Masters’ thesis “Taking out the jacks: issues of jetty jack removal in bosque and river restoration planning,” explores the history of the jetty jacks and is a useful cautionary tale for the application of Big Technology to environmental “problems.”
http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/wr_sp/140/