The Seat from the "Throne" -- Sat., Jan. 5

Thursday: Took care of some business at the park office and called an RV wash service. Rigamarole will get a bath in a couple of days. Today was a quiet day reading blogs and catching up on Facebook.

Friday: Chores today: vacuuming, laundry, cleaning bathroom, reorganizing two cupboards to make things easier to get to. I also did prep work for chili to go in the CrockPot in the morning.

"I claimz dis fresh, clean, WARM laundry as my own bed."

Saturday: Got up early (6:30 a.m.--gasp!), ate breakfast, showered and started the chili in the CrockPot. Today is a two-10K (6.2 miles) Volksmarch day for Bob and I. 

I have been doing Volksmarching for over 20 years and this is the first year the AVA (American Volksport Association) has offered the Centurion health challenge. I signed up. The challenge is to do 100 Volkswalks in a year. That works out to approximately two per week. No falling down on this challenge or I'll only get behinder and behinder. (All kinds of puns in that sentence. I must have been inspired to use that word twice by the museum we saw today.)

Our Volksmarch at 9:00 a.m. toured through the Alamo Heights area of San Antonio. According to our friend, Peri, who grew up in San Antonio, the Alamo Heights area is very tony/chi chi. Zip code: 78209. Do you remember the TV show 90210? Well, in San Antonio the 78209 zip code is very desirable. Peri remembers when people from Alamo Heights were called the 0-9ers which meant they were very well to do.

Our walk started at Panera Bread, wandered past some shopping centers and then headed into the elegant homes of Alamo Heights.

Alamo Quarry shopping mall.

Quarry Village shopping strip mall. Very upscale!

I LOVE this sign!

One of the homes along the walk.

This family likes colorful outside walls.

The path through the neighborhood.

Next up was something you don't see every day--The Toilet Seat Museum. That's right folks, step right up! This was our second checkpoint on the walk. The volunteer working the checkpoint for the Randolph Roadrunners Club (who were sponsoring this walk) said it's the most interesting checkpoint in U.S. Volksmarching. I would have to agree, I've never seen another checkpoint on a sponsored walk that was more creative or interesting. Judge for yourself...and this is only a portion of his home-made toilet seat art. The museum is in Mr. Smith's garage, is free (donations accepted), but you have to call in advance to make an appointment to be let in.

Barney Smith is 91 years old. His wife has cancer and he has been caring for her for two years with the help of Hospice. Many of his toilet seats are of personal importance to him. You can see the toilet seat about Hospice below. Hospice workers involved in her care sign the toilet seat. Today, Bob and I got to sign a toilet seat dedicated to the Randolph Roadrunners Club. We'll be immortalized in the Toilet Seat Museum!

Pez dispenser toilet seat.

Deer heads that he mounted on a toilet seat gave him the idea to make more.

Boy Scouts, arrowheads, and feathers.

Wow! So much variety.

From the Toilet Seat Museum checkpoint we zig-zagged our way back to the start of the walk. It was 11:15 a.m. Lunchtime! The Alamo Heights HEB store was where we ended our walk. We went in and bought rotisserie chicken salad, rolls, and muffins. 

Jim and Peri were meeting us at Trinity University to do our second walk of the day; their first. We found out Peri spent her freshman year of college at Trinity University, but transferred to another college to finish up her schooling. Jim pointed out to us the church where they were married. These two definitely have deep roots in San Antonio.

The first part of the walk did not have written directions. We were supposed to follow the pink ribbons hanging from trees or little white flags on stakes in the ground. It was going well until we were about 15 minutes into the walk. There were pink ribbons going in two different directions. The four of us and another two walkers were going around in circles for a while until Bob found where the next set of ribbons were. Whew. I thought we were going to do our 10K going around in circles on the Trinity University campus.

Murchison Tower.

 We were going past the tower at noon and heard the music with 12 chimes for 12:00.

Sculpture outside Chapman Hall.

From Trinity University, our path took us up and down residential neighborhood streets in Monte Vista. Again, very nice homes.

I don't know what this Santa did, but they hung him high.

Trinity University mascot--LeeRoy, a Bengal tiger.

They look pretty chipper for just having walked 6 miles!

We started and ended both walks here.

We finished our walk quickly and headed back to the 5er. Jim and Peri followed us.

While we were sitting in the living room talking, the RV wash company we hired came to clean the outside of our 5er. The RV washers worked on our rig for about an hour, washing everything including roof, windows and awnings. Then they waxed it. Tomorrow they will be back to finish waxing. It looks so much better now!

During the late afternoon, we played a few rounds of pinochle. Jim and Peri have picked it up very well. For dinner, we had home-made chili, cornbread and berry pie for dessert. Thank you, Peri, for the cornbread and dessert. 

After the walk, my thighs, calves and feet hurt. I have four big blisters. Ouch. Tomorrow, Bob and I plan to do another 10K Volkswalk. We'll see how my feet and legs feel after that!

I'm falling asleep at my computer, so it's time to hit the hay. At least we're not getting up at the crack of dawn.

Travel Bug out.