September 25, 2023 Dallas to Albuquerque Dinner - Vietnam 2000

September 25, 2023 Dallas to Albuquerque Dinner - Vietnam 2000

I woke up at 8:00 but Suzette slept until 10:30, which I estimated was 12 hours of sleep.

We showered and dressed and fixed breakfast of scrambled eggs with diced baby grape tomatoes and 1/2 of a medium shallot and toasted and buttered a slice of rye bread and smeared by slice with strawberry butter. Suzette made coffee and I made Earl Grey tea.  We were happy that Billy and Elaine let us stay in their house for the night and left fresh milk for us in the fridge.

We called for an Uber at 11:30 and Mark arrived in his new blue Tesla Model  3 at 12:15 to take us to the airport where we had one of the most interesting experiences of the trip.

We asked Mark to drop us off at the baggage checking area at Love Field’s main entrance. After he helped us get the luggage to the curb we moved the five pieces of luggage to the check in area.

The attendant helped us with a couple of bags when he saw I was having trouble moving them. Suzette and I argued a bit about how much to tip. I am old school and wanted to tip a $1.00 while she said the tip should be $1.00 per grip and pulled a $5.00 bill out of her purse, which I laid on the counter as she laid our passports on the counter.

The gentleman went through the check in routine as I stood there resting on my cane and as he did he said, “I think you need Priority boarding.”

He then printed our boarding passes with Priority boarding.

I wasn’t sure what he meant until we got the bags checked and he added, “Priority boarding boards about 1/2 hour early. Do you need a wheelchair? It is a long way to the gate.”

I declined by saying, “No thank you. I am trying to walk a mile per day.”

It was a long way to the gate but we had over an hour until our flight.

I then realized we had been given a wonderful gift. We were to be boarded before any of the regular passengers.

So when the gate attendant called for Priority passengers to board we walked over to the cluster of 4 wheelchairs and family members gathered by the jetway and boarded after the attendant boarded a couple of wheel chairs and before a couple with a baby in a pram.

We took two seats on empty Row 4, which is the best seating I have ever had on a Southwest flight and thought how fortunate I was to be hobbling on a cane.

It was the usual uneventful 1 hour and ten minute flight, thanks to our recovery time in Dallas.

Suzette coordinated with Willy to pick us up at the airport, where I discovered another benefit of being less than full bodied.  I was able to get the four pieces of luggage off the luggage carousel with the help of three guys who were standing next to me while Suzette was having a business call.  We then took the grips out to the curb beside the red marked fire zone just beside the walkway across the street to the ground transportation roadway and the parking lot. 

When Willy arrived he parked in the fire zone and as he helped us load the bags an SUV parked in front of us in the middle of the walkway, blocking the walkway.  I thought the two uniformed security guards would surely demand the SUV move but they said nothing as a man in a wheelchair was wheeled out and got into the SUV and more luggage than we had plus his wheelchair was loaded into the SUV.

These two experiences expanded my awareness of how the airlines and airports have expanded or adjusted the normal rules for the handicapped and given them priority.

First the first time I felt good about my bad hip.

Willy drove us home and helped us bring in the luggage.

We opened the wine suitcase and gave him the bottle of Cantabrian red vermouth and he said, “Let’s try it.”

So I fetched three wine glasses and filled them with ice cubes and Willy filled the three glasses and we chatted about the trip over glasses of vermouth.

We also removed the other eleven bottles from the wine suitcase, each of which could be the basis for a story and lined them up.

The only casualty was a slight leak from the cherry liquor bottle we bought at Bodega Monasterio de Corias  winery in Gangas de Narcea.

We then walked the back yard gardens and Willy left around 3:30 after we decided to continue our discussion of the trip with Willy at dinner.

Suzette worked at her desk and I tackled the piles of mail that had accumulated in the 6 weeks that we were gone at my desk.

I finished opening most of the mail and depositing several checks by the time Willy returned at 6:00.

I had called Vietnam 2000 and determined they were open until 8:00, so we drove there for dinner.

Willy wanted us to try a Vietnamese sandwich made with a French baguette (Bhan Mi), so we ordered that with grilled chicken and asked for it to be served first.

Suzette and I decided to share a dish of steamed rice flour sheets garnished with grilled pork and fried egg rolls and Willy ordered No. 30, lettuce, mung bean sprouts and cucumber sticks on bottom, boiled rice vermicelli in the middle layer and grilled pork and fried egg rolls on top.

When the sandwich was served we cut it into three equal pieces. I noticed immediately when I bit into my piece that the crust was toasted and delightfully crunchy and the inside was soft. There was a small pile of cilantro on top of the opening, so I removed the cilantro leaves and opened the sandwich and lay them inside the cavity with the chicken, sliced onion, and lettuce. The sandwich )was delicious. I will order it again.

Soon we were served our main courses and the lemonade that Suzette ordered.

Willy did not eat many of his noodles because he is on a high protein diet but Suzette and I ate all of our dish. Suzette took more of the grilled pork and egg rolls and gave me more of the steamed rice flour sheets, which made me happy because that approximated the 70/30 carb to protein diet I try to achieve and allowed her to avoid carbs.

We also requested extra bowls of fish sauce and I requested extra basil and cilantro that I added to my portion of the dish.

We enjoyed our dinner of Vietnamese food immensely. It felt good to be back in Albuquerque, eating food we loved and knew would not upset our stomaches.

Willy dropped us off at home around 7:45.  I turned on Rachel Maddow and watched a portion of her interview with Cassidy Hutchinson, who has just published a book about her experience working in the Trump White House at the age of 27. The gist of the small part of the interview that I viewed was that the book may be the first draft of some of the true facts of what was going on in the White House during Trump’s administration.

Among several of the more shocking facts, apparently she was groped by Rudy Giuliani and Matt Gaetz tried to get her to go to his room on a Presidential trip.

Rachel’s concluding remarks and subsequent interview with former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki emphasized to young people thinking about government service that the Trump administration does not represent the normal functioning of our government.

Perhaps Rachel just edited Trump’s footnote to history, that it will be an apology for how government should not function.

I fell asleep in the chair watching Lawrence O’Donnell at 8:15 and woke up and went to bed at 9:30.

Bon Appetit