05-OCT-B-3
ARRIVAL IN SAN ANTONIO AND START RIGHT IN WITH
PLAYING WITH JORDAN AND DEVIN,
HIKING FRIEDERICH STATE PARK WITH BACKPACKS
AND SMALL RIDERS OF US AS PACKSTOCK:
THEN A COLUMBUS DAY HOLIDAY RUN ALONG THE San Antonio RIVER ALONG THE MISSION TRAIL BETWEEN
MISSIONS SAN JOSE AND LA SPADA,
BEFORE VISITING “DINOSAURUS TEX”
AT THE BOTANICAL GARDENS
October 9-10, 2005
It is really good fun to be playing with small four-year-old fellows who are cavorting all over and learning lots as they explore their world! I can remember now what a magic world it was when I could conjure up within my imagination all the wonders of a world that has turned out to be still more wonderful as I lived into it more deeply—as they are now doing. It is good to get to know them better at this stage of their development and have them get to know their Grandpa Glenn a bit better each time.
When I arrived on the U/A SkyWest flight, I came down to the luggage collection part below in SAT, and little Jordan ran the length of the terminal to jump up into his Grandpa’s arms. Michael had been standing at the phone bank, where Devin was busy playing with the phone pretending to be talking with any number of imaginary friends on the other end of the line, so I came along and asked if he might call his Grandpa. It takes longer for Devin to warm up than it does for Jordan, but he comes around with a bit of an independent streak. They are both charming, and Devin keeps up a non-stop litany of words and sometimes songs. Each of them sang to me in English and in Spanish.
We drove home from the Airport to get a picnic lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and put them in the kiddy backpacks as we drove to Frederich State Park. Judy was at a lunch with her group called the San Antonio Kids Exchange, an agency for the courts and judges to send kids from troubled families. We rendezvoused on the trails by cell phone. I had Jordan in my backpack, and Michael had Devin in his as we climbed to the high point in the parched hill country of San Antonio’s “Edwards Plateau” which is called here the “Hill Country”. The kids would walk for some part of the downhill and identify the trail markers counting out the numbers and then we would repeat them in Spanish. They are at a Trinity United Methodist pre-school where they also learn their songs and numbers in both languages, and practice their arts and crafts.
We stopped for our “snacks” at Jordan’s insistence, and then looped back down where the Quest van was in the parking lot with a special item in it that Judy did not want the kids to see, since it was cleared out of the guest room where I would be staying. So, the twins were loaded into the Sport Trac Explorer and we drove home. I learned from Michael that Donald is intending to have his big operation on October 18 and that they will be visiting the last of October, so I tried to arrange my already reserved trip on the sixth of November when Donald would be presumably home from the hospital in recovery phase, and did so by ticketing my trip after talking with Donald in the evening. He goes in for outpatient tests and consultations on October 17, then goes in form home on the morning of the October 18th, at which time I will still be in the high country of Colorado, so I will arrange to call Michael and Florida form a Sat Phone from there. I will be in Gainesville from Nov 6 to 10 post-operatively. Donald did not get the notes I had forwarded from Alden Harken, so I sent them again from the wireless connection that Judy gave me the access to, so I could email out from my own laptop into which I am typing now as I wing my way back to Denver.
When we returned home, we got the hot tub percolating and Michael and I and both boys got in to play games and see how well they could paddle around in their life rings. Max is getting to be an old dog, and is still a faithful companion but is not as excitable as he had been. The kids are also into the board game “Chutes and Ladders” and somehow manage to win each time. They were also intrigued by a few Halloween goodies and the games of the fall and a big box of kid’s books as well as the usual dinosaur fascination. We had a good time and I took any number of pictures, which they liked to see—immediately after each is taken in the digital viewfinder. I put them up on the computer screen and they sat and watched pictures of themselves. I also showed Michael and Judy some pictures of New Orleans and a few from Eritrea. The attempt to be able to play the video clips in the Eritrea program by converting the default viewer to Quick Time has changed ALL of the pictures I have loaded into QuickTime—but it still does not show the videos. After bath time and story time, the kids were put to bed, and I could confirm my Gainesville ticketing.
COLUMBUS DAY HOLIDAY:
RUN ALONG THE MISSION TRAIL,
AND SEE DINOSAURS AT THE BOTANIC GARDENS
It had been almost as dry in San Antonio as it had in Maryland’s record dry September before the heavy rains of the past weekend. Here the same thing has happened in that there was an unusual overnight rain before we took off on a sunny day excursion on the Columbus Day holiday. I had a call from the Mexicans who were trying to deliver the Viking Refrigerator for the fifth time, and I told them to really the word that all these arrangements had been made, but if they could not effectively deliver it on this the fifth try, they could cancel the order.
Michael and I drove to the Mission Trail and began our own excursion along their trials. It was started at the Mission San Jose along the San Antonio River. The Alamo is thee furthest north of the missions, and there was an elaborate system of dams and irrigations aqueducts built further south to support a chain of missions south of San Antonio. The one where we started was San Jose, and Michael biked north to Concepcion, while I ran south toward the Mission La Spada. The whole of the trail system runs along the San Antonio River and is along the backside of some rural ranch territory not much changed form the era of the missions except for the internal combustion engines in the old trucks and tractors lying around the farmyards and windmills. The national Park Service runs the whole preservation project, and the churches within the missions are still used as places of worship and are reserved for weddings and other ceremonies. I ran along the paved trail along the river and its canals until I came to Mission la Spada, where Michael caught up with me about five miles down trial. Because of the rain, they had blocked off the road which was probably flooded by one of the fords, so I turned around and ran back, for a good ten mile run, as Michael probably biked twice that in the ninety minutes we had been out in a sunny day.
We tidied up as best we could and changed into the “Army Ten Miler” shirt form last weekend (which should probably be relabeled the Army Eleven and a Half Miler, and we rendezvoused, again by cell phone, with Judy at the Botanic Garden. There is an exhibit called “Dinosaurus Tex” which shows some plastic dinosaur relics inside the labeled flora of the “Xeroscape” of the desert countryside. The kids liked it and could run back and forth over small bridges and “early Texas relics”. We came home to dinner after I showed them their pictures and played with them along with some story time readings. They had a sign posted by their request, which ere the “House Rules” such as they can only see one video a day and they must do some chores like always putting their toys away. They liked making up the sign, but are less eager to follow the rules, so they had some consternation about the limits on seeing big truck videos. But, unlike the Gainesville household, the big screen TV is not perpetually on filling the air with whatever is fit to broadcast to the great American public’s taste. The kids are well taught and managed well, with a wonderful growing opportunity around them.
A WELCOME RAINY TUESDAY SCHOOL DAY AND INDOOR
ACTIVITIES BEFORE THE SUNNY AFTERNOON
The morning rain was unusual and welcome. The kids went to play at Judy’s “home office” as she worked a few hors and Michel went in to observe a guest speaker at his class. I worked on the coming events in Denver and beyond just as Colorado got its first big (“early”) snowstorm with twenty inches in the mountains and three inches in Denver. I am glad I have brought all my down and wool and especially the new insulated ankle-fit Browning Boots! I am unsure how many of us there are going to be for how many days, since I have only the SUV reservation and a plan to start buying from memory the groceries and supplies for the next week. I did not connect with either Gene Moore or Reg, but did have a wonderful phone call form Iowa. I also learned that the Viking got itself connected in Derwood after the fifth try, and I will later learn about the reconnection of the water into ice makers both up and downstairs as well as the bolting of the Viking into its alcove as fully installed after that happens. I am not at all interested in it coming down on top of me again.
At noon we went to pick up the kids and run through the rain to rendezvous at the repair place to have the Explorer Sport Trac looked at, and then we all went to Cheesy Jane’s for lunch, where the kids could admire an electric train going around overhead. Then, wonder of wonders—for kids with too much electronic media around them—we went to their favorite place—Barnes & Noble bookstore! They could read books and have a few read to them in the kids’ alcove there.
When we returned home, the day had cleared and the kids took off on their plastic Fisher-Price tricycles and drove around the corner in their Pembroke Forest development of very quiet streets with minimal traffic to their school yard where a brand new heavy duty set of playground equipment had enticed them. Michael had assembled a large playground in their own backyard, but this one is good for variety. With Grandpa chasing them around their mailbox to the schoolyard, they parked their heavy plastic toys and we went through the drill on the monkey bars and slides and swings. They were trying to perfect the art that their anthropologist grandfather would call “brachiating” swinging from high overhead handhold rungs, but they could do rather well on them although needing their Grandpa below them holding on to have them drop into his arms when they felt like they could not make it to the platform on the other side. Each wanted to be on the outside of the swing set, so I would have to run back and forth between them to push, since they each had said “I don’t want to be in the middle.” I had played to exhaustion before they had, but we pedaled along around the streets home to get into their swim suits to take a dip in the hot tub, this time forgoing their water wing rings.
It has been fun to play, and these are wonderful playmates! I look forward to seeing them in Derwood at Christmastime, and we will see what further progress has occurred in these fast moving small men. Now, I leave in the dark before they will be awake and fly back to Denver for the start of another kind of adventure in a very different climate, as Donald undertakes a very much different life-excursion of his own.