Pickle Jelly Cheddar Cracker Sandwich

Traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico and stepped into a winter wonderland!
(I thought it was supposed to be warm.)

Locals said that the snow was normal, especially at 7,000 ft. But walking in the mini-blizzard was difficult–even for a Minnesotan–good thing most of it melted the next day!

Downtown Santa Fe:

Where the water runs brown

Since it was snowing and a lot of places closed early for the day, I decided to check out The Matador bar and spent a few hours there. (down the stairs)

Here, I met a guy (conspiracy theorist) named Leo, who told me a good theory about how the Tropic of Cancer is the optimal place to shoot off space craft (think Houston and Cape Canaveral) and it is not coincidental that many pyramids were built near the Tropic of Cancer. I didn’t exactly understand the correlation between pyramids and space craft, but he assured me that he did NOT think the pyramids were built by aliens.

Leo convinced me to go to the VFW with him (who was a veteran I found out) and tried walking me home when I was leaving–so I wouldn’t get lost; but I told him not to, so he just stayed in the middle of the street and watched me walk away.

Kinda weird.

I did get lost walking in the 3ft of snow, but eventually made it safely back to the van. That was the coldest night so far; the first night the water froze in my water bottle, and I could see frost on the inside walls.

I woke up with a phone call the next morning and to my surprise some guy was plowing the parking lot I was in, and since I was one of the only vehicles parked overnight, he decided to plow all the snow up to my van! So I crawled out of the side in the morning with the plow driver–stopped!–and staring and giving me a dirty look, then just continued plowing the rest of the lot.

Santa Fe was beautiful, upscale; the people were kind and intelligent–seemed like a good place for me; but I wanted to get to Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is only about an hour south of Santa Fe, but the snow had disappeared ten miles away. There is also a train which runs between the two cities called the Rail Runner.

Little doggie welcomed me to town.

The first night in town, I stayed with my Uncle’s girlfriend, Gloria, and her son Orlando (straight outta prison, nice guy).

So the next day we decided to go for a cruise. This is me and Orlando, about to get in the El Camino, and take a trip up the Sandia mountain.

Gloria drove.

This guy biked up and was gonna ski down the mountain to his car, and then drive up to get his bike. Hardcore.

Views from the top (10, 678 ft.)

In the summer you can walk the trail along this ridge

and the Rio Grande goes straight through Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is really spread out, but they have a surprisingly good bicycle path system.

It was nice Gloria drove the car since I have a fear of mountain driving, but on the way down we hit some ice and slushy snow and spun around and slammed into a pile of snow. I thought we were going over the edge for sure, I had my hand on the door handle in case I was gonna have to roll out, but it wasn’t even close.

It was actually pretty fun–until we realized how stuck we were.

A truck came by right after it happened and asked if we needed a pull, but we were laughing and taking pictures and told him we’d wait and see. We waited thirty minutes later and got unstuck by someone else–not too bad!

Just in time, because I was supposed to meet Manda Panda at the bike shop in 30 minutes–Bike Works Albuquerque!

(Manda, Dan and Gloria’s dog Jiggers)