Four days in Santa Fe…

Atop the Atalaya Trail at 9,100 feet above Santa Fe. An elevation gain of nearly 2,000 feet. We slogged up snow the last 1,500. We learned the utility value of 'Yaks' too late in our trek to be of any help.

Reid is in India this week and next, traipsing in and around Bangalore.  Why he picked that spot is beyond me but that’s where he is for the duration of his odyssey.   If a kid is going to pull up stakes and travel, why not now when he has no life commitments beyond his job and rent and has a little change jingling in his pockets?  Everybody has a little bit of wanderlust and adventure in them.  He may have exceeded his supply.  By my count, he’s been to Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and maybe other nations I don’t know about.   Norway?

By comparison his old man had to settle for four days in Santa Fe.  But it was far from a booby prize.  As a getaway locale its pretty darn good if you like the Southwestern motif of food, culture, pervasive adobe structures and high-country desert.  I’ve been there more than several times and wonder if I blunt my own sense of wanderlust by not expanding my travel horizons with return trips to Bend, OR or Boise, ID or San Diego or sunnier, warmer spots.  I’m kind of Santa Fe’d-out for maybe the next half-decade or so.  You could do worse, however.

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Here’s what the kids received last week:

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February 13, 2012

Ellen/Reid: Reid, I hope this gets to you before you journey East (or do you go West to get to India?) and it has to be an enormous relief to have your visa in hand.  What a deal that would’ve been to go all that way only to be turned down at the customs office.  I cannot wait to hear about things and hope that you can get online as often as possible to send us your photos and your impression of things.  It is just wild that you are headed over there.  There was a book some time ago titled The Ugly American and it was about how in our arrogance we bullied some Southeast Asian banana republics into our way of thinking or some such thing.  You will be anything but.  What an experience.  Sure you don’t want to lug your old man along with you?

In lieu of your once-in-a-lifetime trek to India, Santa Fe had to do for us.  We had a great time.  The streets and byways come back to you after a little while, and we just had a low-key but fun four days.  Among the many places we dined and imbibed was Cowgirls (which if memory serves me, which it may not, was where we had BBQ there with you a few years ago), incredible wine at the 4 star Inn of the Anisasi, a couple of good visits to the La Fonda, Casa-something-or-other which was just a riot with a live flamenco dancer accompanied by an operatic singer.  It was really fun and the food was good, too.  I couldn’t tell you what we ate at El Farol but it was a wonderful meal.  That was the place a little bit south of the house you guys rented when you were there.   We stayed at a funky little B&B called the Inn on the Paseo.  Homey yet with good access to the Plaza.  We moseyed around the perimeter of the town square looking at Indian jewelry and the like and had a glass of wine now and again.  It’s a big art town and the cultural angle is kind of lost on me so 50% of the stores went unvisited.  It hadn’t changed a whole lot since the last couple of times I’d been there.

I suppose the other highlight besides gorging ourselves was a hike up the mountains to the east of Santa Fe.  Felicia found the alleged day hike online, and we literally went straight up nearly 1,800 feet on the Atalaya Trail.  The tourist info called it a ‘difficult’ climb but some other stuff I came across just this morning termed it strenuous.  It was accurate to say the least.  Whenever a trail sign offers two options, one being ‘Steepest’ and the other being ‘Easiest’, take the latter.  We opted for steepest, and while it was a challenge, we were in fine shape.  It wasn’t so much hiking as climbing.  We just weren’t mentally prepped for it.  Plus, we were on snow the entire last half and that made the going treacherous, but we did prevail and persevere, and after a few hours we made it to the top.    That’s where the cell phone photo came from.  It was unbelievable.  The few folks we did see sported a strap-on traction deal on their boots called ‘Yaks’ which were a poor man’s crampon.  Thus, we half-slid our way back down the mountain.  It was exhausting but well worth the ordeal.

We took the Turquoise Trail to Albuquerque and that was kind of a bust.  Of note was the town of Madrid, where the climatic street scenes from “Wild Hogs” were filmed.  So that was sort of fun.  We skirted Albuquerque in hopes of finding the desert but the shrubs and few cacti weren’t much different than what we saw around Santa Fe.  It ended up a waste of gasoline and precious time.

Ellen, let me know if you have questions about the bath thing.  Sounds arduous.  Tim’s demolition is really a huge part of it.  The other stuff should come together.  Just make sure you have your materials list in hand and the specific locations of where the shower, sinks, etc., are going to be.  Make sure the contractor gives you a daily report and a to-do list for the next day’s work.

Okay, guys, over and out.  Reid, do what you can to keep us filled in.  Can’t wait to hear all about it.

Maybe there are not enough nuggets…

Seriously, there is renewed thought about another stab at a book manuscript related to the subject of this itinerant blog: letters.  This time I mean it.

Yeah, I know.  You’ve heard this all before.  The gulf between thinking and doing is enormous and oh-so very wide.  A bridge capable of spanning that gulf would be miles long.   A big chunk of me continues to believe to my depth that there is something there to be mined from the hundreds of single pages.  The tough part is knowing what nuggets to dig up that someone might find of interest.  Maybe there are not enough nuggets.

So until those points are answered or the light comes on, I’ll continue to trudge ahead until an elusive brainstorm occurs that would put me on a solid track.

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Here is last week’s letter to the kids:

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January 31, 2012

Ellen/Reid: I’m looking out my window this morning – while keeping an eye on my real work, of course – watching the birds dive bomb each other for eating rights at the window feeder.  At this very moment a great blue heron navigated its way through the stand of trees out back to land awkwardly in the little creek.  It must see fish I have never seen because believe me I’ve looked as I go down to retrieve trash off the banks and in the water.  My BB gun has only managed to irritate the marauding squirrels because they circle back for more food as soon as I retreat to the office.

A good review is keeping my job safe at least for a little while longer – or until my next bad week, whichever comes first – so that is a smidgeon of good news for the week.  I’m happy enough for that.  I like what I do.  I head to the doc’s later this week and hopefully the good news trend will continue.  That would be great heading into the weekend.

The idea of a book is gaining steam but it would be good to get your two sets of thoughts on it.  While we’re in the air to New Mexico I’ll trot out my leather binder and scribble away at notes.  It will be a wholesale revision to what you saw before, more anecdotal, although there would still be some common themes.  Not sure how to weave in any comments from you (or even if you want to do so) but there will be room set aside for you both.  In a backhanded way, Bob Furstenau is encouraging me to continue down the creative path, both with the book project and the blog (he has some suggestions for it which are sorely needed, and I’ve also joined a local group of blogging techies in the hopes of glomming onto some ideas from that crew).  We’ll see.

Stuck some passenger floorboards on the Softail this past weekend.  Should make it that much more comfortable for Felicia.  She just didn’t have enough foot positions on the pegs.  But I swear (and I did, profusely) that Harley provides, without question, the worst product instructions of all time of any industry.  NASA satellites could take clearer pictures from space than what is provided on the faux instruction sheets.  Gobbledygook would be an upgrade from whoever writes their stuff.  The instructions are just God-awful bad.  Plus the machining of some parts was just a tad off, and that means nearly having to force parts together.  What a nightmare.  And it’s not just this instance but virtually anything I’ve ever done with Harley.  I’m not that much of a total mechanical doofus but holy smokes, schematics for nuclear plants are easier to comprehend.

Folks who are contemplating going into the Bridger Wilderness in late July will meet this weekend to talk about the details.  Looks like the last full week of the month.  The thinking now is to make it a significantly hardier jaunt.  We would in essence do “The Loop.”  Reid, you and I did it back in ’06 and Tim and Tom went a big chunk of the way on their one day trip this past summer.  My guess is it’s about 25 miles all tolled.  Ellen, we’ll push it the first day to make at least the campsite where there was a steep drop to the river and we cooked on the rocks for two days.  That will be a good shakedown cruise.  Not that we would have gone the Loop last year, but we would’ve run smack into the territory where the grizzly sow and her cubs were seen.  No doubt we’ll talk about how to fend off bears – my guess is we’ll ship anti-bear pepper spray to the motel – and leave it at that.  My guess is we’ll have 6-8 people sign up.  Even if it’s just 3-4 of us that’s close enough.  Maybe I’ll still be around to take my granddaughter up there.  What a swan song that would be.

Okay, enough of this drivel.  Reid, get me your India plans and itinerary.  Hopefully your Visa is in hand by now.  Ellen, send pictures of the bathroom demolition and of your designer plans.  We put in a hand-held Grohe shower this past week.  It’s a nice upgrade to a shower that was already nice.