Overheard at the State Fair

As the we noted here a few days ago, as Jeff Foxworthy says: “If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.’”

Here’s two of the four examples from the Alibi Weblog (click to go read all four).

Father to group of kids outside of the Monkey Man booth: “You will hold hands or I will fuck you up!”

Mother to daughter at the petting zoo: “Janessaaaaaaaaaaaa … you think you know everything, but you’re just a little shit.”

Best line of the day, so far

“You show me someone who doesn’t have skeletons in their closet. That person is a saint.”

— Albuquerque City Council candidate Paulette de’Pascal after it was revealed the B.S. and M.B.A. degrees she claimed on a candidate’s questionnaire were from the unaccredited online Almeda University. Tuesday de’Pascal acknowledged that she never took any classes for either degree.

Misrepresenting your education isn’t a “skeleton in your closet.” It isn’t even about your education. It’s about lying.

Fast commuter trains and grade crossings — a deadly mix — again

The Rail Runner commuter train collided with a vehicle Wednesday, killing one person, state police said.

The collision occurred just after 6 p.m. at a private crossing midway between Los Lunas and Belen. It was about a quarter of a mile from where the train struck a sport utility vehicle last month, killing two people.

Santa Fe New Mexican

At top speed the Rail Runner is moving 116 feet a second. People aren’t used to trains moving that fast — and they usually don’t on rails that have grade crossings. One of these collisions is going to kill people on the train.

Boom

Earlier today there was a loud boom that rattled my windows. I’ve since learned that it was a “controlled” explosion at Sandia National Laboratories about 15 miles away. Be assured we were told, it’s perfectly safe.

I don’t know about you but NewMexiKen hates it when there are ’splosions at the place where they store nuclear weapons.

And New Mexico has three!

The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and two to watch) according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Members of the Senate:
Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)

Members of House:
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA)
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA)
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA)
Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)
Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA)
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA)
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM)
Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY)
Rep. David Scott (D-GA)
Rep. Don Young (R-AK)
Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL)
Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-NM)

Dishonorable Mention:
Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)

Here’s the goods on each.

Top 10 Best Law Schools for Hispanics

1. New Mexico (27%; 22%)
2. Miami (12%; 8%)
3. Texas (17%; 4%)
4. USC (16%; 6%)
5. American (14%; 6%)
6. Florida State (8%; 7%)
7. Arizona State (15%; 7%)
8. Stanford (11%; 7%)
9. Arizona (12%; 8%)
10. Florida International (28%; 17%)

First number is percentage of Hispanic students; second Hispanic faculty.

Source: HispanicBusiness.com via Discourse.net.

NewMexiKen finds HispanicBusiness.com’s headline (which is the post title here) interesting. Shouldn’t the top 10 “best” law schools for Hispanics parallel the top 10 best law schools period?

Things you should know

“More than 7,000 New Mexicans now hold permits to carry concealed handguns.”

— AP

You’d think this, at least, would reduce the incidence of road rage.

Idle thoughts

I love America and I love New Mexico and I love the New Mexico State Fair. Could there be anything more American than the fair with it’s crazy food, and horses barrel racing, and street entertainers, and bands, and high school students reciting their own poems, and FFA displays? And blue ribbons everywhere — pottery, Indian bead work, photographs, Lego projects, paintings, cookies, scrapbook pages, woodworking, quilts.

At the Fair a number of schools and school districts from around the state had displays of student art work. Some was what you’d expect and some was great. And I don’t know if there is some secret art colony in Clayton, New Mexico, or an art teacher of extraordinary talent, but WOW! can those kids do art in Clayton, population 2,132.

NewMexiKen took my car in for servicing early this morning. On the floor in the Lexus showroom were four cars, three of them black. Henry Ford would be so proud. (Ford once said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Black paint dried faster.)

“Today” was on the TV in the customer lounge at Lexus and I saw an interview with Jodie Foster, who has a new film. Watching Foster I decided John Hinckley Jr. wasn’t completely crazy.

The crowd of 41,000 for the New Mexico State vs. New Mexico football game last Saturday night doesn’t sound very impressive until you realize that was nearly as many people as live in Farmington, the sixth largest city in the whole state.

Easter Island in New Mexico

NewMexiKen was sorting through some photos taken this summer when I noticed the Easter Island-like look in this natural rock formation at La Ventana Natural Arch in El Malpais National Monument.

Click image for larger version.

The arch is visible from NM 117, 18 miles south of I-40 (Exit 89).

Here’s the post I did on that area in July.

10 things I like best about living in Albuquerque

Driving along Tramway across Sandia Pueblo last evening, I was reminded of one of the best things about living in Albuquerque. I began to think, NewMexiKen you can live anywhere, why do you stay here?

There are a lot of ways to answer a question like that. One way is to make a list.

These aren’t the only reasons, and they aren’t in any particular order, but these are the ten that came to mind.

1. The weather, except sometimes in March and April. Four seasons, all of them distinct, none of them oppressive, or too long. And September and October — amazing!
2. The food, red and green — and sopapillas with honey.
3. The Rio Grande, though we fail to do anything with it. A historic river — third longest in America — and Albuquerque’s Mayor Marty is so unimaginative he thinks pandas and streetcars are what we need. How about a river walk with cafes and shops (tastefully and environmentally correct, of course)?
4. The plaza. Not as historic as Santa Fe’s, or even Taos’s. Still it’s always inviting and often filled with people celebrating a wedding at San Felipe de Neri. In other words, while a tourist attraction, it’s still “our” plaza.
5. Santa Fe, Taos, Chaco and all, world-class tourist venues that are day trips for us.
6. The sky, whether bluer than blue, or lit dramatically by sun or twilight, or with clouds, white or dark. Our sky is always something to behold, most gloriously at sunrise over the mountains and sunset over the volcanoes.
7. The pueblos nearby with their cultures, feasts and dances.
8. The Sandia mountains right here, rising a mile right above us.
9. The diversity of people. It’s a community without a majority population.
10. The Indian land north and south of the city, the forest land (and wilderness) east of it. If it weren’t for the permanently undeveloped land that surrounds so much of Albuquerque, I fear it all would look like Rio Rancho.

‘Politics will not change me, I will change politics.’

Our favorite sheriff, Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano has been busy commenting on Kid Nation, medical marijuana and running for lieutenant governor.

Would you eat here?

Take a look at the food and read the review at Roadfood.com before you decide.

The shovel is a nice touch.

Comcast Rage

Former Albuquerque Mayor Jim Baca is unhappy with the ugliest utility.

Have you received your Comcast Cable bill this month? That little monopoly has raised rates again on just about everything. …

Oh, and if you want to talk to a live person at Comcast they now charge you for it. So if they provide bad service and you need help, they now charge for it.

NewMexiKen pays Comcast $65 a month JUST for internet service. There’s a $15 penalty because I don’t have television service — but if I wanted to add television I’m not eligible for any discounts because I’m an existing customer. That’s Comcast having their cake and eating it too I’d say.

Baca had a good piece the other day on the likely demise of Albuquerque’s afternoon newspaper The Tribune — Grab the Funnies. The surviving newspaper, The Albuquerque Journal, has the world’s most unappealing website. And, to my taste, the dead-tree version is about as equally ugly.

Been Readin’

NewMexiKen finally got around to finishing Hampton Sides’s Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West last night. I had started it when it first came out last year, but set it aside about a 100 pages in and just got back to it.

Despite that personal experience with it, I do recommend this book. As Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist M. Scott Momaday wrote in his review:

“Blood and Thunder” is a full-blown history, and Sides does every part of it justice. Five years ago he set out to write a book on the removal of the Navajos from Canyon de Chelly and their Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo, hundreds of miles from their homeland, where they were held as prisoners of war. But in the course of his research a much larger story unfolded, the story of the opening of the West, from the heyday of the mountain men in the early 1800’s to the clash of three cultures, as the newcomers from the East encountered the ancient Puebloans and the established Hispanic communities in what is now New Mexico, to the Civil War in the West and its aftermath — and all of it is full of blood and thunder, the realities and the caricatures of conquest. By telling this story, Sides fills a conspicuous void in the history of the American West.

It is a fascinating and important story well told. Surely anyone with any abiding interest in New Mexico and Arizona history should read it. I must say, however, that I found the episodic mixed chronology in the first third of the book terribly annoying. And Sides does let some anachronism float into his text — I don’t think Matthew Brady used flash bulbs, for example — and some lapses of fact. It’s not, in other words, a dry encyclopedic narrative. He tells a good story fervently and fairly.

The book I began before I was interrupted by my interest in Kit Carson — and will take up again today — is Craig Childs’s House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest. Childs, who grew up and lives in the southwest, takes a personal look at the Anasazi (or Ancestral Puebloan) ruins across the Four Corners area (Chaco, Aztec, Mesa Verde) as well as southeast Arizona and Mexico, and speculates about the people who lived there 700-1000 years ago and what happened to them and their magnificent cultures.

So long summer, hello fall

The highest temperature in Albuquerque yesterday according to the National Weather Service was 90º. It was the 23rd day in August we’ve gotten to 90º or more (it was 97º twice). A warmer than average August.

But it probably won’t reach 90º today — and there are no 90º days in the forecast.

Fall is here!

Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop

A writer for The New York Times visits Isleta, Laguna and Ácoma pueblos — Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop.

Today, these three pueblos are connected by freeways. Isleta and Ácoma have their own casinos. But each community still preserves its ancient identity. Eighty years after Cather’s novel was published and more than 150 since the events she recounted, it is possible to use her narration as a visitor’s guide. One warm March day, paperback in hand, I found my way to all three pueblos, grateful for Cather’s sensitivity to the great beauty and mystery of the Southwest and for her ability to bring to life the characters who had encountered one another in the same landscape so long ago.

I wonder why the writer failed to note that Laguna has two casinos.

Link via dangerousmeta!.

What is he up to?

The neighborhood phantom returned Sunday night after four nights off. About 9:30 he pulled up, strolled off, then returned after about half-an-hour, waited a couple of minutes and drove off.

As I told the neighbors, I try and be fairly libertarian about what people do as long as they aren’t harming anyone. So, I figure, why call the sheriff?

But this has all the appearances of something at least mildly nefarious.

I’m afraid I told you so

NewMexiKen last year: “A high-speed train crossing at grade level is a serious accident waiting to happen. People violate railroad crossing warnings all the time — and this time the train will be approaching at 116 feet a second with hundreds of people on board.”

Yesterday the Rail Runner Express hit a Jeep on the tracks at an ungated crossing, killing both occupants of the car. None of the 64 persons on the train was injured according to reports. The tragedy is compounded, however, because the victims, a middle-aged brother and sister, were together because their mother had died yesterday morning. Other family members in other cars witnessed the collision.

You just can’t have high-speed commuter trains crossing streets at grade.

What a Bunch of Yahoos

ALAMOGORDO — Otero County commissioners have passed a resolution opposing the listing of White Sands National Monument as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site.

“We have sent a letter to the National Parks Service and to our congressional delegation expressing our official desires that White Sands be removed from the list of those sites being considered as World Heritage Sites,” said commission chair Doug Moore. “I think this resolution does a great job in capturing our feelings.”

UNESCO’s World Heritage Site program encourages the identification, preservation and protection of cultural and natural heritage around the world. Twenty of the 851 sites are in the United States, including Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Great Smoky Mountain national parks.

Albuquerque Tribune

It’s National Park Service, by the way, not Parks.

Get Your Kicks

Ernst Haas’s photograph “Route 66, Albuquerque, New Mexico 1969.”

That’s Central, looking east from near Carlisle.

Click image for larger version from The New Yorker.

New Mexico Looks Again at Show’s Use of Children

The New Mexico attorney general has reopened an investigation into whether the CBS reality show “Kid Nation” violated the state’s child-labor laws and other state regulations governing the welfare of children, a spokesman for the attorney general said on Thursday.
…

“Kid Nation,” which is scheduled to have its premiere on Sept. 19, is a reality show that takes 40 children ages 8 to 15 to a New Mexico desert ghost town south of Santa Fe for 40 days and challenges them to build an adult-free society. Several children were injured during the production; four children drank bleach from an unmarked soda bottle and another was burned on her face with hot grease while cooking in an unsupervised kitchen.

The New York Times

Update

The software package arrived Thursday.

No sign of the neighborhood phantom Thursday evening, but we had an evening-long series of thunderstorms that may have dampened his plans.

What a light and thunder show, eh Albuquerqueans?

With all that rain I was thinking of my neighbor. He collects water from the canales (known elsewhere as gutters) and uses it to water his plants. I find that pretty impressive. I mostly use the water from my roof to splash down and wash soil from the yard into the street.

I’ve been seeing a roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) from time-to-time in the backyard. Beep-beep. No snakes or rodents when they’re around.

That scream you may have heard earlier this morning was when I bent over to adjust the rug under my desk chair and seriously screwed up the disc-nerve arrangement in my spine. And they had been getting along so well. I don’t know if I cried out more from the pain or from the sudden realization that it will be several hours-days-weeks before I can move easily again.

Here’s an item about TV news that I posted a year ago today — Live, local, trivial.

21

In New Mexico, until you are 21 your driver’s license is vertical (”portrait” in computer talk). Once you turn 21 you can trade it in for the normal horizontal license adults receive (”landscape”).

I’ve been told that some establishments refuse service to anyone who does not have the horizontal license. That is, even after you turn 21, if you haven’t gone to MVD and gotten a new DL, they won’t admit you or serve you. If you don’t head over to MVD on your 21st birthday, you could be turned away from your own celebration.

I guess a private establishment is entitled to set its own rules if the rules are in fact administered across the board with no exceptions. But this sounds a little like a class action lawsuit in waiting to me.

The Sheriff Seeks a Promotion

Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano today announced his run for Lieutenant Governor in the 2010 election.

So he added a second blog — The Road to New Mexico Lt. Governor.

Single again

Single digit humidity, that is. 6% at 4PM at Casa NewMexiKen.

So long monsoon season.

Update: Much of the red and orange at sunset tonight was caused by the smoke and ash in the atmosphere from the Zaca Fire in Santa Barbara County, California.

Most politically incorrect headline of the day, so far

The Day Santa Fe Emptied Out

That Albuquerque Journal online headline refers to August 21, 1680, when the Spanish were forced to abandon Santa Fe.

Emptied out? Well, only if you ignore the several thousand Pueblo Indians that remained in the area and the leader of the revolt, Popé, who personally occupied the Palace of the Governors.

The Santa Fe Indian Martket

… is this weekend.

Each year the Santa Fe Indian Market includes 1,200 artists from about 100 tribes who show their work in over 600 booths. The event attracts an estimated 100,000 visitors to Santa Fe from all over the world. Buyers, collectors and gallery owners come to Indian Market to take advantage of the opportunity to buy directly from the artists. For many visitors, this is a rare opportunity to meet the artists and learn about contemporary Indian arts and cultures. Quality is the hallmark of the Santa Fe Indian Market.

Southwestern Association for Indian Arts

As for NewMexiKen, it’s Taos this weekend. High temp 88º, low 55º. Or maybe Red River, high 83º, low 49º. Fall!

Get your kicks

On Route 66.

New Mexico’s newest special license plate, just $37 (extra).

Bang bang bang bang bang

Friends were just stopping first in line for a stoplight in Santa Fe last evening when the sixth car back hit the fifth car back at (according to the later police estimate) 65 mph. Number five hit number four. Number four hit number three. Number three hit number two. And number two hit number one.

The perpetrator backed up and tried to drive around the mess he had created. The third car in line, a BMW, moved to cut him off. So he rammed the BMW.

A friend or relative of the perp in a seventh, uninvolved vehicle called to the perp to quick, get out of his car, now blocked, and escape with him. The perp was too drunk to get out of his car. (He was arrested at the scene.)

A city not-so-different after all.

Yuck!

It got up to 95º yesterday in Albuquerque, the hottest day in three weeks.

With apologies to those with August birthdays, I have to say that this month is my least favorite among the 12. No holiday. Muggy, even here in the Southwest. Just because.

Feast at Jemez Pueblo

Today the Pueblo of Jemez (Walatowa) is celebrating “Nuestra Senora de Los Angelas Feast Day de Los Persingula” with a feast and corn dances. The Pueblo, which is normally closed, is open to the public.

Jemez is pronounced “Hay-mess” or traditionally as “He-mish”.

The events today originated with the pueblo at Pecos, which was abandoned in 1836 when its remaining residents moved to Jemez.

Jemez Pueblo publishes this guide about feast day etiquette:

* Enter a Pueblo home as you would any other - by invitation only. It is courteous to accept an invitation to eat, but do not linger at the table, as your host will probably want to serve many guests throughout the day, thank your host, but a payment or tip is not appropriate.

* Pueblo dances are religious ceremonies, not performances. Please observe them as you would a church service, with respect and quiet attention. Please do not interrupt non-dance participants by asking questions or visiting with friends.

* During a dance is not the time to conduct business or loudly socialize. Many Pueblo members only have a chance to see certain dances once a year and may have traveled many miles to participate.

* Please refrain from talking to the dancers. Do not approach dancers as they are entering, leaving or resting near the kiva.

* Applause after dances is not appropriate.

History of the Pueblo of Jemez

July

The average high temperature in Albuquerque during July was 91.5º. One day it reached 100º. Seventeen days saw a high in the 90s. The remaining 13 days had a high temperature in the 80s. It was pretty average for July.

The average high temperature in Phoenix was 106.8º. It reached triple digits on all but three days; it was 116º on July 4th. Las Vegas, Nevada, was about the same as Phoenix; the highs averaged 107.1º.

It hasn’t reached 100º in Albuquerque during August since 1994. The hottest weather, more than likely, is over.

La bohème

“The Santa Fe Opera and the City of Albuquerque have teamed up to present a live simulcast of Puccini’s opera, La bohème at the beautiful green Tiguex Park.”

Official City News

Saturday, August 11, 8:30 — free!

Now, how about some free Shakespeare?

Best of the West

Lists of the Top 10 rafting trips and Top 10 city bike rides from Sunset Magazine. The Grand Canyon leads the former; Albuquerque’s Paseo del Bosque Trail the latter.

Link via Grasping Reality with Both Hands.

Tagging and the Badlands

Saturday, setting aside Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (I finished it yesterday), NewMexiKen took a day trip to El Morro and El Malpais national monuments. Click any image for larger version or here to see all these photos and a few others.

El Morro National Monument is two hours west of Albuquerque on NM 53 (via I-40 to Grants).

A reliable waterhole hidden at the base of a massive sandstone bluff made El Morro (the bluff) a popular campsite. Ancestral Puebloans settled on the mesa top over 700 years ago. Spanish and American travelers rested, drank from the pool and carved their signatures, dates and messages for hundreds of years. Today, El Morro National Monument protects over 2,000 inscriptions and petroglyphs, as well as Ancestral Puebloan ruins. (El Morro National Monument)

At El Morro we took the entire 2 mile loop, past the pool and inscriptions, then around the end of the bluff, along the northwestern side, up the switchbacks 250 feet to the top. On the top, the trail (marked only by cairns and parallel lines carved in the rock in some places) goes up one side of the V-shaped bluff to near the point, then back the other side and eventually down via many, many steps. The views on top are gorgeous, including the look down into the lovely canyon between the two sides of the V.

	In the desert, water determined the route. The sandstone bluff at El Morro channeled rain and snow melt into this pool at the base. It’s about 10 feet deep (at present).
	El Morro is most famous for the petroglyphs and inscriptions in the sandstone near the pool. Leaving our mark (”tagging”), seems to be an inherent characteristic of our species.
	One of many historic inscriptions left by Spanish and then American passersby between 1605 and the 19th century (and, alas, a few more recent).
	One view of the bluff, this from the north side on the way up.
	This from the top of El Morro looking back at same rock shown above. That’s NM 53 down below.
	Soaring, almost hawk-like, the ravens seemed to enjoy the view as much as we did.
	At the top of the bluff the ruins of Atsinna, home to more than 1,000 ancestral Puebloans from 1275-1350. Pictured are the remains of just a few of the 875 rooms that originally stood in the three-story structure.

Closer to Albuquerque, El Malpais National Monument is south of I-40 along NM 117 (Exit 89) and along NM 53 between Grants and El Morro.

El Malpais means the badlands but this volcanic area holds many surprises. Lava flows, cinder cones, pressure ridges and complex lava tubes dominate the landscape. A closer look reveals high desert environments where animals and plants thrive. Prehistoric ruins, ancient cairns, rock structures, and homesteads remind us of past times. (El Malpais National Monument.)

Some of the lava flows at El Malpais are just 2,000-3,000 years old, not even yesterday by geological standards. It’s a rough, dark lava-covered landscape, quite different from the surrounding area, though vegetation is making its comeback. NewMexiKen visited the entrance to Junction Cave (actually a lava tube) in the El Calderon area just off NM 53. Boots, gloves and three flashlights per person are recommended to explore the cave — so, some other time. We also took the drive to the Sandstone Bluffs Overlook off NM 117; a great look at the surrounding lava flows. Lastly we took the short walk to La Ventana Natural Arch, along NM 117, 18 miles south of I-40.

	In shorts, without gloves or backup flashlights, Junction Cave (actually a lava tube) was inviting only for its rush of cool air. Note the cinder rocks.
	Some of the fascinating geology along the cliff just west of La Ventana Natural Arch.
	NewMexiKen failed to get what I’d consider to be a good photo of La Ventana, New Mexico’s largest accessible natural arch. (La Ventana means the window.) The sun was too directly overhead. Alas, I guess that just means another trip.

El Cafecito in Grants is a great little place to eat — breakfast, lunch or dinner. Good New Mexican cuisine at eye-popping prices (like two beef and bean burtios, rice, beans and two sopapillas for $7.25). Caution though, El Cafecito is not open Sundays. Exit 85, on the right well past motel row but before “downtown.”

The Santa Fe Opera

Still Albuquerque’s best blogger, Chantal gives us A survival guide for albuquerque kids headed to the santa fe opera. Not to be missed, regardless of whether you live in New Mexico or like opera.

Yikes!

A storm just passed by Casa NewMexiKen; a nasty storm. Lightning, including one strike you heard as you saw; hail, some larger than pea size; and a lot of rain real quick. I love rain and usually like storms, but this one was beyond my threshold for enjoyment. The temperature dropped from 87º to 63º between 1:45 and 2:05.

A house with seven skylights is never fun in a hailstorm.

And a person who has had his home struck by lightning isn’t happy when it hits too close.

But I’m better now. Thanks for asking.

No, it’s not like Phoenix

NewMexiKen is struck by the number times people have revealed that they think summer weather in Albuquerque is Phoenix-like. This happened both to me and to a friend last week.

We’re a mile above sea level in Albuquerque folks. The hottest temperature so far this year was 100º on July 3rd. It was the first time we reached 100º officially in four years. (We haven’t even seen 90º since Saturday.)

By contrast, the high temperature in Phoenix has been more than 100º every day since June 13th.

Jon’s Left Foot

NewMexiKen’s buddy Jon, known to the internets as Johnny Mango, has met a bump in the road. Here, let him tell it (excerpted from Duke City Fix):

[Friday] I am to start a bike trip across America, going from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia. The 4300 mile trek should take about 3 months.

I plan to finish sometime in the middle of October. This is not an organized tour. My buddy Mike Moye is to ride with me to Missoula, Montana and then I’ll be on my own.

I was going to post FAQ’s about the trip, but I’m too depressed for all that. I may not be going. But here are the answers I would have given if I were in a better mood.

1. About 50 miles a day.
2. No, we camp out.
3. In a trailer…it must weigh about 40 pounds loaded.
4. We eat in every restaurant we pass.
5 Sometimes…like whenever we need a shower.
6. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.
7. Yes. A Macbook.
8. On Albloggerque.

Jon’s at the doctor’s at this moment to find out what’s wrong with his left ankle, injured recently in a — you guessed it — bike accident.

Learn all about it at Albloggerque.

Most interesting line of the day, so far

“And it has to be something I can do from New Mexico, which is the most isolated place in the U.S.”

Author Walter Jon Williams