Hill Slug Chronicles: April 2010

17-21 March

I tagged along with Jack to the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies annual conference again. Two years ago at this conference I started my blog from a hotel room in New Orleans. Last year I blogged about Richmond, Virginia. This year we were in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Egged on by Gordon, who instructed me to take pictures of everything and sort it out later, I took pictures of everything. And now I'm posting most of them here.

Enjoy!

17 March:

Getting to Albuquerque from Newark isn't easy. There aren't any direct flights, and it's not a good idea to plan for a connecting flight less than an hour later. Reversing our taxicab karma, our flight to Phoenix arrived an hour early. This gave us nearly four hours in the airport, during which we wandered from gate to gate looking for real food. This, we soon learned, was impossible.

The airport, "Sky Harbor," (seriously) is surrounded by funny brown lumps.

Phoenix is three hours behind Newark, Albuquerque only two, and by the time we arrived at the Albuquerque airport -- sorry, "Sunport," -- we had no idea what time it really was. The cab driver who took us to the hotel told me that the city is at 5000 feet above sea level.

As is our custom, I immediately texted Dale when we got to the hotel. She wrote, "We are coming up. We are gonna knock and see which moose made the trip."

"Oh, shit!" I said. "I forgot to pack a moose!" I scurried over to Jack's bag. "Is the gold lame moose still in there?" (Not lame, as in limping. Lame, as in la-may.)

"I dunno."

It was. Let me backtrack here. I started stuffing stuffed moose into Jack's suitcases -- no, it started before that. He put one in his suitcase to surprise me on our honeymoon. Ever since then I've been sneaking little ones into his luggage. A few years ago, on a conference trip to Montreal, Sean, Dale, and I were walking around the city. I found a stuffed moose on a key chain. Done in shiny gold fabric and imprinted tackily with "Montreal," it was perfect. We immediately named it the "gold lame moose," and it eventually found permanent residence clipped to the inner mesh of Jack's suitcase.

So we were saved the embarrassment of being mooseless in front of Sean and Dale.

A handful of text messages later, the usual suspects gathered in the courtyard: Sharon, Nora, Dale, Sean, Jack, and I. Missing were Kevin, Rebecca, and Brycchan, still en route. We heard a shout from a balcony above. I looked up. "Hey, Kit! We're going to dinner! Come join us!" So she and Keith came down too.

We found a Mexican restaurant around the corner and I had what was to be the first of too many taco salads.

18 March:

After not quite enough sleep we met Sean and Dale for breakfast in the hotel. When the waiter came by Sean asked for "Coffee. A big pot of coffee." The waiter brought a cup each for Sean and Dale. The menu exclaimed, "We proudly serve Starbucks," so I decided to wait until after breakfast to brew my own back in the room.

Yes, I brought my own beans, a French press travel mug, and an aluminum Oxo spill-proof travel mug too. Stop rolling your eyes. I had room in my suitcase.

Nora wandered in, exhausted. When the waiter came by she asked for "coffee. A big pot of coffee." The waiter brought her a cup. She wanted to go for a walk later around Old Town. Being the only one without commitments I said I'd join her.

She scurried off and Sharon came in. When the waiter came by she asked for "coffee. A big pot of coffee." The waiter brought her a cup. She wanted to go for a walk around Old Town after breakfast. Being the only one without commitments I said I'd join her.

Sean and Dale were staying in the room next to ours; Sharon and Nora were across the hall from them. So after making my own brew I walked across the hall. Here's the view from Sharon and Nora's room:

This is the courtyard, much more of which you'll see later:

Sharon and I headed east through Old Town, towards the mountain. We stopped at a cafe so she could get breakfast: a big, messy burrito that was worth the search. We wandered through a playground with random fitness equipment. For the first time in six months I did a pull-up.

"The mountain's farther away than it looks," Sharon said. But still we walked toward it. Ahead of us was a geodesic dome, a children's science museum. We turned around there. Sharon had to get back for a session.

When I got back to the room I got a message from Rebecca and called her back. "Where are you?" I asked.

"Wandering around Old Town."

"We were just there."

"I'm looking for coffee."

"I have some up here. The real stuff."

"I'll be right up."

By this point I'd finally made the connection between being 5000 feet above sea level and the dire need to be heavily caffeinated.

Rebecca just about had time to finish her drink before having to go to a session. Then it was time to meet Nora for another walk around town.

This time we headed east on Mountain Road, towards the mountain again. Nora had hatched a plan that we all get to the base of the Sandia Mountain and take a 2.5-mile tram ride to the top. I was all for it. Getting there would be a problem, though, because we'd need a car. Mary had rented one, but that would only seat half of us. We'd definitely do it on Saturday, though, for sure. I'd looked on a map; where Albuquerque ended the national forest began, and the mountain was in there. Maybe at least the edge of the forest would be close enough to walk to.

Not this time, though. Deep in conversation, we got well out of Old Town, but Nora suddenly grabbed me by the arm and swung me back around, towards the hotel. She had a session to get to.

After another taco salad at another Mexican restaurant with Kevin and Rebecca, Kevin went to a session. Rebecca and I wandered around Old Town for many hours.

We found a candy store, a bead store, many tourist-trap stores, a few galleries, and no place that looked like it sold decent coffee.

While Rebecca puttered around a cluttered shop full of quasi-antique southwestern and Mexican pottery, I looked out the doorway towards the mountain.

In the street a Native American, in full regalia, danced (you can see him if you zoom in). We'd already seen some Native Americans selling handmade silver jewelry on blankets along one street. That was uncomfortable enough; this dancer made me feel worse.

The shopkeeper pegged Rebecca as one of the conference attendees. "Do I really look like an English professor?"

"Yes," he said.

"Yes," I said.

I can't describe it. You know it when you see it.

These knit hats do not look like English professors:

The Allen Aragon gallery was the first gallery we went into. As in Venice, I took pictures of things too expensive to buy that would instantly look like crap anyway if they wound up in my cluttered house.

Ya gotta love a bird with sneakers. This roadrunner looks more like a speed-skater.

Allen Aragon makes minute, hand-painted pottery. For scale, that's an award ribbon about three inches wide under the mirror:

Outside again, I looked towards the mountain.

We went into another gallery of pottery and new and antique jewelry. While Rebecca picked out a gift for a relative I looked at inlaid stone bracelets. The shopkeeper was one of those overly talkative fellows who attempt to impress upon you their expertise by telling you everywhere they've been. When $300 was far too much more than I'd care to spend for a bracelet I wasn't really interested in, he said he'd drop the price to $100. No, thanks. If he can afford to cut the price by two thirds then it isn't even worth the one third left.

It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the hotel. We sat in the courtyard. The sun hit the side of the hotel just right.

What follows is side-of-the-hotel overload:

More courtyard:

Kevin materialized. At every conference he doodles on his name tag. This is his best work by far. You really need to click on this one and look at the details:

The afternoon sun was just perfect for a picture of the edge of the courtyard, but people kept wandering over to mingle. When they finally left I rushed up to get a shot. The shadows on the wall are pure luck. I hadn't even noticed them until I sat back down.

Dale and Sean arrived. Somehow we got talking about avocados. Dangerous ones. Something about shooting them out of the sky -- I don't even remember. Whatever it was, it was pure silliness.

From the 4th floor and our hotel room I took pictures of the sunset:

We had a big group for dinner again, this time in a cavernous restaurant situated in the back of a gargantuan, high-end tourist trap. I had another taco salad.

On the way back Dale pointed out the creepy sock monkeys. "Don't take a picture! They're too creepy."

"Well, now that you've pointed them out I have to."

March 19:

After breakfast I checked out the hotel's so-called fitness center. This was lamer than most: a treadmill, an elliptical, a one-piece weight-lifting contraption, and a handful of sissy-weights. I opted for the treadmill.

I was a third of the way through the workout when my body finally realized it was 5000 feet above sea level. So that's why treadmills have handrails. I forged ahead after my head stopped spinning. After that even the sissy weights felt a little heavy.

Rebecca and I sat in the courtyard. She was grading papers. I was recovering from oxygen deprivation and contemplating buying some semi-precious stone bear beads in Old Town. Overhead a cold front moved in.

I picked myself up out of the chair and was barely away from the hotel when the rain started. I kept going anyway. I got a lot of bears and some other good semi-precious beads without going too far into the red.

For lunch we found a French restaurant, no taco salads on the menu.

Whenever Jack goes to a conference he's invited to at least one high-powered dinner hosted by a well-known elder statesman of the eighteenth century literary world. I got invited to this one partially on the strength of having given the host detailed advice on buying a bicycle (he bought a wine cellar instead, but still promises to get a bike this year).

Reservations were for 8:30 p.m., which gave me some time to make some jewelry. I took a nap first, and when I woke up I wasn't entirely with it. As a result, the little glass tulip beads blossomed into a pair of ridiculous earrings. It's not often that I laugh at my work. These were so stupid that I had to text Dale: "Silly earrings are happening. I blame the altitude and the avocados." (I still don't remember what the avocado thing was about.)
Instead of taking them apart I made another pair just like the first one. The next four were a little more sane.

At dinner I knew the host, a little. And Jack, of course. Two others I'd met a handful of times. But the host seated us: "Boy-girl-boy-girl," he announced, and I wound up between and across from strangers. It wasn't going well in the beginning. I found myself whining to Dale in a text message. Then I pulled my head out of my ass and threw myself into the conversation. Who knew that an established eighteenth century scholar and mother of two could be on a roller derby team after hours? And that she called herself "Stone Cold Jane Austin"? I was doing all right until the bill came, we divided by however many we were, minus the wine that the host paid for, and I got soaked for $60. For a salad and two sides. I groused but Jack shut me up.

Vegetarians always get the short end when dining out in large groups. Several years ago Rebecca and I decided we'd had enough. We now make it clear ahead of time that we will not be splitting the bill with everyone else. It seems to work when the two of us band together. Not so much when I'm out there alone in a crowd of people tucking into prime rib.

While we ate there was a reception back at the hotel. Kevin, Rebecca, and Brycchan were there, apparently having one too many by their own accounts. Dale and Sean milled about then called it quits. When I texted Dale that my ordeal was about over she said she and Sean would come back down to the reception again. By the time we got there the bartenders nearly outnumbered the guests. We left.

March 20:

We woke up to snow. Big flakes falling, fog shrouding the mountain. The waiter at breakfast told us that it took one of his co-workers an hour and a half to make the 25-minute drive off the mountain at 5 a.m. this morning.

Nora called, wondering if I'd be interested in a bead show in Santa Fe. I told her what I'd heard at the front desk when I was asking about car rental: the highways were in bad shape. I wondered, though, what that meant compared to the two two-foot dumps we'd gotten back home this winter. Nora wasn't sure what was going to happen today. I said I'd call her if we hatched any plans.

Sean and I finally decided we'd go for a walk. It was nearly 11 a.m. by now. The snow stopped and the sun came out almost right away. I bundled up in everything I had: two layers of shirts, a wool sweater, a denim jacket, and gloves. Two blocks from the hotel the gloves came off. By the time we left Old Town we'd peeled off more layers.

We were heading east again. "I want to get to the mountain," I said. "Let's see how far we can get."

Sean pointed out snow on the desert plants:

And the vacant National Atomic Museum:

More snow on shrubbery:

On a pine tree:

And on cactus:

Snow on cactus. Now that's weird.

We walked on, slightly uphill, until we came upon a "road closed" sign. But the sidewalk continued, and so did we. Mountain Road ended at a highway. There was a crosswalk to a berm beyond the highway, so we crossed and scrambled up the side. I turned back to look at how far we'd come. See that yellow building in the center of the picture? That's our hotel. I'm in telephoto here.

This is how far we'd come (the hotel is barely visible above the highway):

I checked the map on my phone. In the hour we'd been walking we'd barely gone one third of the distance to the edge of the national forest. There was no way we could walk it in the time we had left.

We went further on past the berm. This was where the real Albuquerque began. On our right were car dealerships. Ahead was clearly a hospital. We were walking past a graveyard:

The sign on the right, by the way, says, "Let us solve your storage needs." Well, that's one way to look at a graveyard, I guess.

We turned around. On the way back I looked at buildings I hadn't noticed on the way up:

Sean saw the shovel on the roof of this house (zoom in, left of center):

A boarded-up barber shop:

Cactus, without a hint of snow:

Sean saw the speed limit sign first:

It makes a little more sense when I show you the sign under it:

Still, whose car speedometer dial shows 18 mph? If all rules of the road apply to cyclists, then bikers can't go above 18 mph either.

Sean was fond of the artistic way the cyclist was painted on the road:

Around 14th Street we found ourselves giving directions (hooray for Google maps on the iPhone), and at 10th we went into a bakery. I'd been told yesterday that this place was the only one with decent coffee. Wrong.

Back at the geodesic dome we met the Eyeball Guy.

Here I have to break from the time line and jump ahead a few hours.

We're walking along the Rio Grande. "Hey, Dale, did Sean tell you about the Eyeball Guy?"

"The Eyeball Guy?"

"I didn't," Sean says.

"The Eyeball Guy?"

"Are you gonna make her guess?" I ask.

"Yep."

"The Eyeball Guy. Eyeballs?"

Sean says, "They weren't really eye balls."

"One eye?"

I reply, "Nope."

"No eyes?"

"Nope."

"A guy?"

Here Sean and I have to decide. "Well, yeah."

"Did he have hair?"

"Nope."

"Bald! Eyeball Guy. Eye ball. Guy."

"See, now I'm gonna have to blog this out of sequence."

Sean says, "Naaah. The witty repartee won't translate."

More yes-or-no questions ensue until Sean finally relents and I can show her a picture:

It didn't look quite rooted to the sign, so I went over and picked it up. I handed it to Sean.

We got back to the hotel at exactly the time we said we would. There was some confusion over what we'd do next. Dale disappeared into the Women's Caucus. Now, in just about any other field I can understand why there's be a need for a Women's Caucus. But in English literature? Come on.

The snow in the city was gone, but it lingered on the mountain:

An hour later it was nearly 2 p.m. We decided to go for a walk along the Rio Grande. As we started out I looked towards the mountain, covered in snow.
Dale followed my gaze, and we looked at each other. One of us said, "Let's go to the mountain!"

If we were going to go it was now or never. We turned back towards the hotel. In the lobby I called the tram line number to find out if it was even open, the mountain being covered top-to-bottom in snow. All I got was a recording, which led me to believe it was open. So I went to the front desk to ask about car rental. I was told that Enterprise would send a car to the hotel, so I called. The office was closed. I went back to the desk and got another number for a rental place at the airport. Sure, they had a car for us, but we'd have to come and get it.

That would be $24 plus tip for the cab ride, $40 plus all the extra fees for the car, another $24 plus tip to get home again, plus the $17.50 apiece for the tram. We went outside where a cab happened to be waiting. I started having flashbacks to the previous week. "Can you get us to the tram?" Yes, for $40 one way. I said nothing, but it was either Jack or Sean who vetoed that. Dale and I looked at each other in defeat.

So we walked to the Rio Grande instead. It was a long walk that took us onto Route 66. Whatever it might once have been, or what it might still be anywhere but Albuquerque, it certainly wasn't here. It was a little seedy, a lot run-down, and completely not worth space on my camera's memory card.

A staircase at an overpass took us onto a paved path by the river. We headed south. To our right I could see a dirt trail by the water, and as soon as I could I led us onto it.

In the water, Canada geese. Some things don't change no matter where you go.

So, some scenes along the Rio Grande:

The mountain, losing its snow, through the trees.

"For once I'm not taking pictures of the Raritan," I said. But we figured that, if I'm taking its picture, it must indeed be connected to the Raritan somehow. Which it is, in a very abstract sense.

We couldn't figure out what the posts were for. If they'd once held wire, the wire was long gone.

The path curved away from the river for a while. We came upon a flat bench. I lay down on it. Sean said, "Now she's gonna do crunches, push-ups, and tricep dips." So I did three of each.

A little farther along is where the whole Eyeball Guy conversation happened.

The path went uphill to a pond:

I took this one with my iPhone:

Here's the same view, more or less, with my point-and-shoot:

I like the iPhone shot better. It mishandled the light in a good way.

Whenever the sun went behind a cloud the air got noticeably colder.

Jack was checking the map on his phone to make sure we could get out without having to retrace our steps. We wound up un-hitching a wire fence to get back to the paved path. Once more on the road, we were heading towards Route 66.

We found a book and record shop there. I thought I was in the middle of a Kevin Smith movie shoot. The owner, a guy who was in his thirties, maybe, seemed to know everyone. A woman was in with her teenage son. As she was leaving she said, "If you know anyone who needs a laborer..." and she gestured towards her son. The owner started talking about film crews shooting in the desert, in Vegas, in other parts of New Mexico, and about union pay scales and union-dodging and other things that made me feel as if I were listening to a screenplay.

Dale bought two books and we left.

Here are some things we saw along Route 66:

Slease? Loveless? Attorneys? Perfect. (Update: The sign says 14th Street, so it looks like I uploaded out of sequence.)

A boarded-up house behind a chain-link fence:

Kevin, here's a door picture for your collection:

The sign says "open." The window paint says, "Happy Halloween."

Jack got a call. We stopped. "It's Nora," he said. Then, "They took the tram."

I looked at Dale. I was furious and jealous and furious and jealous. I was thinking all kinds of unpleasant things. It took the rest of the walk for me to get rational again.

We turned onto 14th Street just outside of Old Town. Even here the first floor windows had bars on them. Here's an alley:

We stopped for drinks and snacks in Old Town. I was so thirsty I slurped down two massive cups of Diet Coke. The caffeine hit me right away.

While we waited for the gang to assemble in the lobby for our last dinner together, I found two pairs of little silver Kokopelli earrings in the gift shop. One bore black onyx, the other carnelian. I bought both pairs, swapped one earring from each, and found Dale. I pressed the earrings into her hand. Yeah, I know, it's so high school. Whatever.

Sharon had promised lots of veggie options at the restaurant, but when Rebecca saw the menu she told me we were screwed. While the group waited for the table, Rebecca, Dale, Gloria, and I went across the street to a jewelry store.

"Hey, Dale. Check out this cool Kokopelli," I said. It was a pendant with inlaid black onyx and opal. It looked like jazz. I moved on to some inlaid bracelets. I saw Dale whisper, scurry out, and scurry back in. I bought some jewelry after all: it's not easy to find sugilite. This was inlaid with opal on silver.

By the time I got out everyone had been seated. The group had sorted itself neatly into two tables: the heavy drinkers/meat eaters, and the vegetarians.

I saw Nora. I said, "I'm so jealous and pissed that you went to the mountain," but I was smiling.

There was one seat left at the meat table. I sat down at the corner of the veggie table instead. Everyone made room. Dale slipped me the Kokopelli pendant.

Later Nora came over and showed me video from the tram ride that she took on her cell phone. "It looks exactly like I thought it would," I said. "That's so cool. Can you send them to me? I'll put them on the blog."

She did, and here they are. It helps if you turn the volume down. Nora tells me there were thirty people in the tram.

As we were about to turn in for the night, Sean and Dale dropped by. I showed her the tulips. She bought all but one pair.

When I got home I hung Kokopelli on a silver chain and put him in the closet on a hook next to my bike jerseys. When I climbed Poor Farm last week I could feel the pendant hitting my chest, and I channeled Dale, who never complains about anything.

Hill Slug Chronicles

Thursday, April 29, 2010

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Thursday, April 15, 2010

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Sunday, April 4, 2010

Albuquerque

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