APRES RIDING –
Wine Open Spaces
by Voni Glaves
A
pres Skiing? Not for us. We
don’t have a lot of snow in the
Chihuahuan Desert of the Big
Bend of Texas and when we do get a
light dusting, it’s usually gone within
hours, so we don’t ski here, much. Not
on purpose. What we do is conserve
water. The source for our water here
in the desert is rain catchment, and
with an average annual rainfall of
about 11 inches, we’ve learned to be
quite frugal with water. But a shower
at the end of an intense day of riding
on all-but-impossible dirt roads? That
would be priceless!
When we moved here in the spring
20
of 2006, we didn’t even have much of
any way to catch water, and the 45-
year-old water truck used to haul well
water from a nearby bentonite mine
had outlived its usefulness. Over the
years we’ve added lots of refinements
to our basic 1500-square-foot, 40-year-
old, adobe home including water stor-
age tanks and a miniature water treat-
ment plant. Initially we had only a
claw foot bathtub, so to conserve water
we hung a camping shower on the
back porch. You know - the kind that
holds two gallons of water and is
warmed by the sun. We do have
LOTS of sun! Our motorcycle touring
Cenizo
First Quarter 2018
in southern Africa gave us lots of ideas
about showering outside. It does help
that our nearest neighbor is a quarter
of a mile away and on the other side of
the highway so we do have complete
privacy out back. After being inspired
by what recycled wine bottles could be
used for, I began to dream of building
a unique outdoor shower.
For six long years, I bided my time,
saving the wine bottles that we, and
many visiting friends, used to celebrate
evenings with our large open and
empty expanse of desert and sky, view-
ing fiery sunsets and mountains to the
west. Then on one of our rare sunless
days in January, I told Paul this was the
day and started bringing my bottle col-
lection to the back porch to begin plan-
ning how to do it.
Paul is a problem solver, so seeing
my activity, he got into problem solv-
ing mode. “How big?” he asked.
“BIG!” I said. He put his arms
about three feet wide and asked “Like
this?”
I said, “Oh, no. I’m thinking from
here to way over there. We’ve got
twelve acres. Might as well use some of
it.”
“Rocks? Mortar?” he asked.
“Too heavy,” I thought. A wood