New Mexico Out and Back
June 26, 2008
Dipping into Newark Bay (larger)
Flying “inContinental” into New Jersey…. (larger)
That would be me reading another Gavin Menzies book in the Albuquerque airport. (larger)
At least I didn’t have to set up camp like this lady. (larger)
My New Mexico… adventure? was yet another bizarre experience that is better told one-on-one. But I always enjoy New Mexico, especially the Northern part — with the exception of a growing desire to run down herds of those greying, sunburnt, wealthy retired men with their little ponytails and hybrid SUVs… and maybe take out a few of those Buddha sculptures along the highway while I’m at it. Namasté Mofo.
Frankly I don’t understand how rapidly growing desert cities like Albuquerque can continue building — the amount of water they must need seems impossible to sustain — isn’t that obvious? I did enjoy the Central Avenue/Route 66 area around UNM though — there is a lot of nice architecture and you can easily see how the older vernacular buildings are brilliantly designed and situated to make the searingly hot climate tolerable (which doesn’t seem to be the case with most of the outlying suburban homes.)
One of the (several) dumb things I did was to accidently check my unexposed film in with my checked luggage, as I had bundled it with my film changing tent earlier in the week. Ouch. Luckily they actually stock 4x5 film in the better camera shops, which is better than I say for Rochester (home of Eastman Kodak.)
Flying continues to be a huge hassle — I tried to leave a day early but the expense was almost $1000 — and the baggage restrictions are growing more severe — luckily I got my checked bag down to 46 lbs. — just under the 50 lb. limit. But I had to “think about it” rather than just bringing everything that I wanted to.
There is so much light there… I could have used neutral density filters — I had too much depth of field sometimes. The clear blue New Mexico sky is four to eight times brighter than it is here in New York… amazing.
Haha, it’s area code 505 if you need a tog. (larger)
