Wordless Wednesday: a green spring

Wordless Wednesday: the root of the matter

Visiting a big little brother

I had a meeting the other day out at our city's biggest university, which happens to be one of the little sibs of that big boy up IH-35 in Austin.

I'm referring to UTSA—which stands for the University of Texas at San Antonio. There are University of Texas at's all over the state, but this one is ours and it's growing by leaps and bounds. Enrollment and programs are expanding, as is the campus' physical plant (and the library's collection, too). They even have a football team!

Gee whiz, but there are some huge buildings on that campus! Large enough to make you think of some of the structures on the campus of UT-Austin.

And, they're putting up new ones, it seems, as fast as they can.

Here you can see one of the many construction cranes I saw on my walk from the bus stop to the library, a walk that covers just a tiny section of the campus' acreage.

The library's not one of the newer buildings, in fact, it was one of the originals. But it's always (at least, I think so) had this amazing plaza in front of it...a pretty spectacular place that was looking a little lonely when I was there. Since the students were all on spring break. Imagine it full of chattering, socializing undergrads, as I'm sure it is on a normal Thursday morning:

I just love those panels overhead. I'll bet they keep the space relatively cool when the summer sun is beating down.

---

I mentioned the bus stop. Yes, I didn't have to deal with one of the concomitants of rapid growth that my UTSA colleagues have complained about—difficult and expensive parking. Nope, I just used the same bus pass I do every day going to work. But this time it got me a much plusher seat on the express from Crossroads/Wonderland Park-and-Ride out to the campus.

In addition to the nice seats, the bus even offers wifi, so I could have posted this blog item even sooner! However, I tend to use bus rides for reading and had a book with me to enjoy on the quick trip out IH-10 and back.

It's not quite the National Rail service I raved about when I was in England, but pretty nifty all the same. 

Wordless Wednesday: a bit large for a porch planter...

Intrepid explorers

We've had some really freakish weather lately. Not just that we've been treated to a couple of muscular cold fronts, but their timing has been terrible! Very nice, even warm-to-hot weather during the week. Then, on Saturday, when we're raring to go paddling, we get cold, rain and wind.

This weekend continued the trend. The weather spoiled a planned outing on a totally new stretch of river, too. The San Antonio River Authority recently opened a new paddling trail south of town. There was an article about it in the paper, and we really want to try it out But not in 40-degree, rainy weather.

However, since it's a slice of river we've never been on before, we thought a scouting trip to the put-in and take-out points would give us good information for that eventual sunny weekend that would allow us to christen it. It's great to have a good paddling area so close to us! (about half an hour from our house)

(The odd name for the trail is because of a little town nearby. An odd name for a town, too, you might say. The always handy and authoritative Handbook of Texas Online gives us the story: the syllables of the name stand for "San Antonio Sewer Pipe Manufacturing Company," a manufacturing concern active there from the early 1900's. Cute, eh? Also kind of catchy.)

At any rate, a small group of explorers took off to brave the cold, wet, and amazingly sticky and cumbersome caliche mud to see what's what along the Saspamco.

The river scenery is quite lovely. And our recent rains, in addition to creating the mud that caked our boots and almost got the car stuck, have made the river current flow look most inviting. Can't wait to get on it in a boat!

And the River Authority folks have made some very nice improvements to the loading-unloading areas, including graveled parking lots, porta-potties (very important elements!) and metal stairs leading down to the water at two of the locations. 

We were able to chat a bit with one of the Authority's employees and learned about plans they have for more upgrades. As well as some of the issues they have to deal with, such as flood-deposited silts that will have to be cleared off of any walkways.

But what's there now is very nice already.

Maybe we'll get a chance to give Saspamco a real test soon...if the weekend-spoiling weather pattern ever lets up!

Wordless Wednesday: must be spring