Jill G's Journal

Fajardo Genealogy in New Mexico

2012-01-26T21:34:00.006-07:00

Picture: Margarita Jaramillo, married to Floriano Fajardo

From old church records, census reports and other sources - including correspondence with a number of distantly related members of the family - I've put together an extensive family tree for the Fajardos of New Mexico going back to the mid-1600s. I don't just have one direct line; I have most siblings and descendents, too. Fajardos seemed to have played a part or at least been around during most important eras and events in New Mexico. The deeper I go, the more fascinating this exploration becomes.

So I saw a message by this guy Benny Fajardo on a genealogy website who mentioned that his family came from Sabinal, NM and his grandfather, Floriano, died in Denver in 1963. I wrote to ask him if Floriano could be the Flavio Fajardo I have in my tree? He said no. I gave him a bunch of other names and he didn't recognize any of them. Benny finally tries to run me off by saying, "None of those people are in my family tree, so there must not be a blood relation." Did I drop it?

What do you think?

I did some more research and then wrote back to Benny:

Benny, your father was Daniel B. Fajardo, right?

gfather: Floriano b. 1895, married to Margarita Jaramillo

ggfather: Leopoldo b. 1871, married to Maria Felipe Chavez

gggfather: Catalino b. 1846, married to Maria Jesus Gabaldon

ggggfather: Narciso b. 1820, married to Maria Gertrudis Barela

gggggfather: Joaquin b. 1787, married to Maria Rafaela Romero

ggggggfather: Francisco b. 1748 (in Tomé, NM), married to Francisca Ana Montoya

gggggggfather: Antonio b. 1718, married to Maria Gomez Duran

ggggggggfather: Cayetano b. 1681 (born a year after the Pueblo revolt, in El Paso del Norte, where the Spanish fled to escape the Indians) married to Maria Ledesma

gggggggggfather: Alonso b. 1656, married to Magdalena Lujan from Taos

You share Alonso and Cayetano with the branch I have.

Your gggggggfather Antonio had a brother named Juan Antonio. So coming back to the present:

Juan Antonio b. 1756, married to Maria Dominga Armijo

Jose Antonio b. 1789, married to Maria Guadalupe Chavez (lived in Sabinal)

Juan de Jesus b. 1829, married to Maria Soledad Alderete (original settlers of El Colorado, later called Rodey, next to what is now Hatch, NM)

Antonio Abad, b. 1853 married to Telesforo Martinez

Felipe, born 1884, married to Susana Lobato (Felipe came to Albuquerque as a sheepherder before the railroad came in. He met Susana, who was part of one of the Atrisco Land Grant families They lived on Williams St. and the house is still there)

Antonio, born 1908, married to Catalina Baros

So, I tell Benny, these are your seventh cousins and your sixth cousins once removed.

Was Benny impressed that I added several generations and mothers' names to his family tree and connnected it to a vast other Fajardo family tree in New Mexico?

No. Benny knows I'm not even a Fajardo. At best he knows I'm crazy and at worst I wonder if he'll put a restraining order on me.

Flying Saucer Cult's Secret Compound in Eastern New Mexico

2011-07-10T10:08:00.001-06:00

While I was in a mosaics class yesterday, Byron got on his motorcycle and did a 350 mile loop to the east; Santa Rosa-> Conchas Lake-> Las Vegas. He broke up the extreme heat with a dip in Blue Hole in Santa Rosa (he went into the water in all his motorcycle gear) and one very short rainstorm (he made a U Turn to go back and sit in the narrow curtain where it fell). He was most impressed with some of the extremely lonely, remote stretches; "if you broke down along there, you would just have to sit down and die." In the middle of nowhere, he says, is a sign for the town of Trementina and a couple of ranches.

We got on Google Earth to look at his route and... huh? What the heck is that in the middle of the desert?

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B031'28.56%22N+104%C2%B034'20.20%22W&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=35.513994,-104.576283&spn=0.034163,0.079565&sll=35.408453,-104.345166&sspn=0.136833,0.31826&t=h&z=14

So we Google search "Trementina" and learn that the Church of Scientology built a vault inside a mountain there containing the complete archive of Ron Hubbard's writings and utterances etched on stainless steel plates and encased in titanium capsules. There's also a private landing strip. And those weird crop circles? Sign posts for reincarnated extraterrestrials from the future to find the site. Duh!

I'm thinking the next UFO festival in Roswell could hire a tour bus to go see this loony place. Or maybe not..

Miraculous Santa Fe Loretto chapel staircase debunked

2011-05-19T00:25:00.010-06:00

So the Weekly Alibi newspaper printed a piece last week with several different lists of "Seven Wonders of New Mexico" One section presented a list of seven religious wonders of New Mexico. There's a mosque on a hilltop above Abiquiu which I could understand being featured. It is remote, gorgeously designed and situated and unique in a lot of ways. Chimayo Mission Church, of course, had to be included with the Easter pilgrimages, the crutches posted on the walls from people who had been healed and didn't need them anymore and... the room full of magic dirt, to which many miraculous healings are attributed. And then there was this:
---------------------------------
Loretto Chapel Staircase

lorettochapel.com

The lore surrounding the spiraling staircase inside this storied Santa Fe church goes something like this: When it was built in the late 1800s, carpenters couldn’t figure out a way to build stairs to the overhead loft without taking up most of the chapel’s space. Their intended solution was a ladder. The sisters of the chapel prayed to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, about the dilemma. On the ninth day of prayer, a man rode up to the church on a donkey with a toolbox in hand. He built the circular staircase and left without payment. The sisters searched for the man, going so far as to run an ad in the local paper. When he still didn’t return, they decided it was St. Joseph himself who erected the staircase, which has no visible means of support and no nails—only wooden pegs.
----------------------------
My Letter to the Editor addressing this mysterious miracle appeared this week:

The Truth Behind the Loretto Chapel Staircase

Dear Alibi,

[Re: Feature, " 7 Wonders of New Mexico," May 12-18] I know I’m not the first reader who will be surprised by the omission of El Morro National Monument in a short list of New Mexico wonders. And don’t get me started on Sandia Man Cave. Sometimes you gotta pick your battles, though.

So here’s my pick: Perpetuating the “lore” about the miraculous Loretto Chapel staircase in Santa Fe and repeating the tourist trap nonsense that credits a mysterious visit by a Biblical character with its creation. Really?

Actually this is half of a two-part New Mexico history pet peeve of mine; 1) that the real builder of the staircase is rarely credited and his fascinating story is practically unknown in New Mexico history books, and 2) the place where the master craftsman later lived and died ended up being named “Oliver Lee State Park” after the rancher/senator/henchman who was most likely involved in his murder.

The carpenter’s name was Francois-Jean Rochas, an expert woodworker who came from France and arrived in Santa Fe around 1880. He may have even been commissioned to work on the chapel by Bishop Lamy, as were other French and Italian masons and carpenters. This story came back to light in the late ’90s when Mary Jean Straw Cook, author of Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2002) found an 1895 death notice in The New Mexican specifically naming Rochas as the builder of “the handsome staircase in the Loretto chapel.” If this tidbit was printed in the newspaper at the time, shouldn’t we have known something about it all along? Not if the Loretto chapel owners or the miracle-aficionados have anything to do with it. Her book tells a fascinating history of the staircase, the chapel, the people who built them and the nuns and others who worked there.

After Rochas finished his work in Santa Fe, he headed south where he built a homestead and lived as a hermit in Dog Canyon at the base of the Sacramento Mountains. He channeled the year-round water from the canyon to irrigate his farm; raising cattle, growing grapes, cherries, peaches, figs and olives. While there is some evidence that he continued to do some fine carpentry in the area (including some work in Oliver Lee’s home), he also built himself a stone cabin and hand-carried huge boulders up the canyon to create walls to keep in his cattle. He and Oliver Lee helped each other out for a time, but then something about water—I’ll let you Google the rest of that sad story.

Now Rochas (called “Frenchy”) is portrayed as kind of a grumpy nut who died “mysteriously” in his cabin in 1895, while Oliver Lee (implicated in several other murders besides this one) later got a park and a whole bunch of other stuff around there named after him. And Saint Joseph gets credit for the Loretto staircase.

The ruins of Rochas cabin and the stone walls up the mountainside are still there. But you have to look really hard in the Oliver Lee Visitor Center to find anything connecting Frenchy to the Loretto staircase in Santa Fe, just like you won’t find much about Rochas in the Loretto chapel gift shop (though I think they have Cook’s book there).

Two pieces of New Mexico history that far outshine the fictional “lore” and deserve to be told right, in my opinion.

Jill Gatwood

Four Corners loop via motos

2011-03-21T12:01:00.036-06:00

Spring break: Had hoped to ride to Nacozari, Mexico, but we discovered too late that Byron's passport was expired. Whoops. So decided on this loop trip instead:

View March 2011 in a larger map

I fed my African frogs in my office, watered the plants, stocked the refrigerator for Nigel and we rode out to Farmington, NM on Sunday, March 13th. Cold and windy up through Cuba, but sunny and always lovely to get out of town. We stayed at The Region hotel in Farmington, which was pretty cheap: $50 or so, and very new-like, so I recommend it. The next morning we gassed up and headed up over the border through a corner of Colorado. Desolate road with distant view of the snow-covered mountains over Durango.

And then into Utah, where things get really beautiful. Roadside animal warning signs changed from deer to elk to cattle and then to horses, but there were no warnings about sheep.

Bluff is a neatly-kept little Mormon town with preserved historic stone houses. We shared a turkey blackbean burrito here and read about the Anasazi in a book from the gift shop.

Just east of Bluff, we pulled into "Sand Island," where we watched a youth group setting off in rafts floating to Mexican Hat (something I want to do in the canoe someday) and found some cool ancient petroglyphs.

The rocks and cliffs do crazy things past Bluff and it's well worth the drive, as is most of Utah. I tried to keep my eyes on the road. Crossing down into Arizona, we passed through Monument Valley, which I think will warrant another trip to explore more fully.

After Kayenta, we travelled down through the heart of the Navajo reservation, which is dry, red and sparsely populated. Sometimes you'd see an old woman in a long skirt, walking along a path very far from any habitation. A boy herding sheep. And hogans of different styles, all with the door facing east. (Hogan pictures stolen from the internet)

Most little ranches or "outfits" on the rez have a round, five sized hogan somewhere nearby and I always look for them. Some are apparently used for ceremonial purposes, but some are clearly family homes.

The scenery got a little dreary towards Chinle, which made the views of Canyon de Chelly the next day even more unexpected and spectacular. NOTE: there is no beer in Chinle, as is true on all of the reservation. Nothing sounds as good as a cold beer when you can't have one. We stayed at a cozy inn near the entrance to Canyon de Chelly.

This nice Rez Cattle Dog greeted us at the hotel and she didn't answer when I asked again about the beer. She seemed to feel our pain, though.

Tuesday morning we rode along the north and south rims of the canyon, pulling into the many scenic vista overlooks. From now on, when people tell me they haven't visited Canyon de Chelly, my response will be, "What the hell is the matter with you?!"

It's a spectacular area with three main canyons: de Chelly, del Muerto and Monument. A stream runs through the gentle grassy canyon floor and improbably high on the canyon walls are ruins of cliff dwellings; remnants left by the ancient Anasazi and Navajo. The name chelly (pronounced shā′)is a Spanish borrowing of the Navajo word Tséyiʼ, which means "canyon" (literally "inside the rock" < tsé "rock" + -yiʼ "inside of, within"). There is a hike to one ruin, White House, but the rest of the canyon is only accessible with a Navajo guide in jeeps.

One lookout faces a ledge on a cliff that the locals call "The Place Where Two Fell Off." Native people hid from the Spanish here and when the soldiers climbed up to get to them, one heroic Dinè woman grabbed a soldier and hurled herself and him off the cliff to their deaths.

We headed over to Window Rock and then down a stretch of road that rolled over small hills in a straight line with not a single building or sign of life for several hours till we got to St. John's, Arizona. Truly amazingly lonely road, except for two inexplicable sights: Half way between the beginning and the end was a small clearing in the road with a table loaded with stuff and a big "SALE" sign on it. We really should have stopped, to be sure I didn't just dream it. And an hour after that, a single little hut (on the border of the reservation, no doubt) in the middle of nowhere called "Witch's Well Tavern." It wasn't hopping yet.

That night we stayed at the Sunrise Inn in Eagar, Arizona; very nice place right next to a grocery store that was fully stocked with beer and wine. Before he'd even had anything to drink, Byron took a shower and used the little bottles of toiletries provided by the hotel. He didn't have his glasses on, so he washed his hair with mouthwash and used body lotion for conditioner. His hair smelled great and was really soft.

After Eagar the landscape changed dramatically, heading up past lakes and into pine covered mountains with patches of snow. We enjoyed leaning the bikes into the twisty corners, while keeping an eye out for gravel left over from winter roadwork. Crossed back into New Mexico and passed through Silver City.. The main drag through historic downtown was bustling with folks; locals and visitors. I stopped at the Bear Mountain Motorcycle Shop for a couple of things and talked to Mike there, who gave helpful tips and threw in three sets of good earplugs. Outside, Byron was being held hostage by some guy walking by who stopped to regale him with stories about the bike he used to have. A guy you don't know talking about a bike he doesn't have. He didn't ask where we came from or where we were going, but at least we brought back good memories for him.

Past the big abandoned mine, we dropped down into grassy hills and more fun twisties and stopped for lunch in Hillsboro, another little old town coming back to life with old buildings rennovated into cafes, small farms and art galleries. Hit I-25 at Caballo, NM and turned north to Truth or Consequences, where we stayed the night and soaked in a hot spring.

Every room in the Pelican is painted a different dramatically bright color. Across the street we found an excellent Italian restaurant called Bellaluca.

Byron just finished reading "Blood and Thunder", a very readable history of Kit Carson cutting his swath through this part of the country, so we stopped at the ruins of Ft. Craig on the way north to see the site of a civil war battlefield.

The fort was variously built with black volcanic rock from near Mesa Contadero, sandcolored rock slabs and adobe bricks. One small building off the trail was made of red terracotta brick, but the ranger couldn't tell me why. Maybe an oven for baking?

Bounced back down the washboard dirt road to the highway and back to Albuquerque we went. La Tierra Encantada.

More pictures of our trip are here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=115517&id=1269458027&l=c7f661d0b1

Uncle John in Nacozari, Mexico

2011-02-26T17:00:00.024-07:00

Brothers: Guyler Magruder (b. 1901), Fortunatus Brooks Magruder, my grandfather (b. 1897), John Magruder (b. 1898)
as kids in El Paso. Not pictured is their much younger sister Mary (b. 1913)

This is a story about my grandfather's brother John and their sister Mary. You can double-click on the photos to enlarge them.

In earlier posts here, I talked about how I searched for a lost branch of my El Paso family; my great-aunt Mary and her daughters. I heard rumors about them when I was little, but in later years nobody seemed to remember what happened to them. I recently found out that Mary had married Ted Brown and moved to Chile with her young daughters, Lucia and Molly. I've posted here about Lucia, who became an acclaimed writer (many stories about our shared family history that no one outside our clan might believe). Molly married a Mexican politician, Patricio Chirinos, moved to Mexico and never came back. Her daughters still live in Mexico; Andrea and Monica Chirinos, and I hope to meet them someday.

My one-eyed Great Uncle John for some reason survives in the memories of all fragmented shards of the Magruder family. I remember Uncle John well, though I was pretty young and only got to know him after he married Dora and stopped drinking. His stories about riding the rails as a hobo, living in Mexico for years while he was still on the bottle, scaring people by taking out his glass eye.

But I never knew Mary. Then, last year, my aunt Susan in El Paso (married to Guyler Magruder's son) sent me a short story written by Mary about her trip on the train, when she was about 13, to visit her brother John when he lived in Mexico.

Details in the story jump out at me: I still have one of the elk's tooth watch fobs; made by their father/my great grandfather, H.A. Magruder, a dentist in El Paso, using gold he had for making fillings for teeth. My grandfather, Fortunatus, is mentioned in the story.

Here are the first couple of paragraphs of Mary's beautiful story:

MY VACATION

by Mary Magruder (later: Brown)

I had dreamed of that trip to Nacozari, Sonora, Mexico. I knew my brother John wasn't the manager like he said. He was probably just a clerk or something, but that didn't matter. He had written good letters and had sent snapshots, too. One was of a burro and John. The burro faced one way and John faced us. He had his arm around the burro. It was titled: "My Best Friend." I still have that picture, if anyone wants to see it.

In one letter, in the spring, he invited me to visit him for a week. He said we would ride horesback through the clear, pebbly rivers and over the hills where the Indians raided ranch houses, broke Victrola records, and ravished women. He said we would swim and I would have my own personal hotel room, with Lupe, a maid, to wash and iron all my clothes and comb my hair.

There was a patio with a big fig tree and little foxes, who came out of their cage just to sit on John's lap and play with his elk's tooth watch fob and eat from his hand. Tom, the cook, kept fat figs over the ice in the water cooler at the end of the hall. They tasted good on hot mexican afternoons.

I don't remember how old I was that summer. I had conquered four dirty French knots and could make cupcakes and green Junket pudding. I hadn't gone barefoot for a year.

I had three big brothers. The oldest, Fortunatus, tried to refine me with Chicken-A-La-King at the Harvey House. He was sick about my rusty elbows and ashamed of the scabs on my knees. Guyler, the youngest, was kind and handsome, and let me watch him shave sometimes, poking the white foam at me until I squealed. Guyler wore white linen suits, played tennis and golf and had yellow hair. A woman named Georgia used to give him manicures in her apartment at Palms Court, after the State Bank closed, and before he came home to supper.

John, the middle one, rubbed Hinds Honey and Almond Cold Cream into my cracked knuckles in the wintertime; in summer he took an interest in my stubbed toes. Because of John, I owned a rope-steered automobile of wood, I had read the "Official Boy Scout Manual"; I could split tops and knew Mumbly Peg in its most dangerous stages.

John stayed at home a lot of the time, not working like the other brothers. After the hunting accident, he was blind in one eye, and he drifted along, not seeing too well, but he always had a crinkly, skipping joy inside of him and around him.
...

I will type out the rest of the story (which I have in PDF and can't figure out how to post) later. It describes the week Mary spent at Hotel Nacozari, lovingly hosted by the hotel staff, but never seeing her brother until the last day. She demanded that they take her to him, and they finally, reluctantly, did. Opening a door in the hotel annex, she found her older brother in a dark room, where he had been drunk on Tequila for who knows how long.

So in my searches for Mary, I found her grandson, who hadn't seen Mary's story, but had this picture of Uncle John and a burro, taken in Mexico sometime in the 1920's.

For the first time in many decades, this photo again united with Mary's story.

I continued to search, and got this photo (below) which again had no context or location, but Uncle John had thoughtfully signed the back, "Francisco Nolasco." (thanks to Jeff Berlin, Mary's grandson and my second cousin, for the photos)

I looked at John's boots in this photo with Francisco and saw that they were the same ones he wore in the photo with the donkey. The photo with the donkey, that matched Mary's description of the snapshot she received from John in the mail from Nacozari, Mexico. Francisco Nolasco must have been from Nacozari.

So I looked up the small mining town of Nacozari in Sonora, Mexico online. And found a big extended family of Nolascos, descended from Francisco, my great-uncle's friend. I shared this picture of their ancestor with them; it was the first time any of them had ever seen it. I found Francisco's son and grandchildren pictured on the Nacozari site.

Nacozari seems to be a vibrant, authentic Mexican town. The cantina, where my great uncle John was no doubt a frequent patron, is still there and I found "then" and "now" photos of the well-worn bar, the antique cash register. Hotel Nacozari, where John "lived" sits near the town square.

I sent Mary's story to folks in Nacozari, and Marco Alvarez translated it into Spanish so that the locals could enjoy it:

Mis Vacaciones.
Mary E Brown

Soñaba con ese viaje a Nacozari, Sonora, México. Yo sabía que mi hermano John no era el Gerente como el decía. Probablemente era uno de los empleados o algo así, pero eso no importaba. El me había escrito cartas muy buenas y también me había enviado fotos. Una de ellas era de el y un burro. El burro mirando de lado y John mirando al frente. John tenía abrazado al burro. El titulo de la foto: "Mi mejor amigo"
Aun conservo esa foto, por si hay alguien que quisiera verla.

En una de las cartas, durante la primavera, me mando invitar a mí, Mary, para que fuera a visitarlo por una semana. Me dijo que pasearíamos a caballo por los ríos arenosos y por las colinas donde los indios una vez allanaran las casas de rancho, destruyendo victrolas y asaltando a las mujeres. Me dijo que iríamos a nadar y que tendría my propio cuarto de hotel con Lupe, una criada, para que lavara y planchara toda my ropa y me peinara.

Había un patio con una higuera enorme y unos zorros pequeñitos, los cuales salían de su jaula para sentarse en el regazo de John y jugar con su diente de alce y al mismo tiempo comer de su mano. Tom, el cocinero, siempre mantenía gordos higos helados, en la hielera al final del pasillo. Se saboreaban muy bien durante aquellas tardes calurosas mexicanas.

No recuerdo mi edad en aquel verano. Pero ya había aprendido a forjar nudos franceses, a hornear pastelitos y también a hacer dulce de cuajada de leche. No anduve descalza por un año entero.

Tenía yo tres hermanos. El mayor, Fortunatus, intento perfeccionar mis modales llevándome a degustar 'Pollo a la rey' en el restaurante de la Casa Harvey. Le molestaba la piel reseca de mis codos y le avergonzaban las cicatrices en mis rodillas. Mi hermano Guyler, el menor, era amable y muy guapo, y me dejaba observar cuando se afeitaba, salpicándome con la espuma hasta que yo chillaba de incomodidad. Guyler vestía trajes de lino blanco, jugaba tenis y golf y tenia cabello rubio. Una mujer, llamada Georgia, usualmente le proporcionaba manicuras en su departamento, después de que cerrara el banco y justo antes de que llegara a casa para cenar.
Mi hermano John, el de en medio, me untaba crema 'Hinds' de almendras y miel de abeja entre los nudillos de las manos durante el invierno y en el verano en los dedos gordos del pie. Era por John, que yo tenía un carro de madera que jalaba con una cuerda, también por el leí el manual oficial de los Boy Scouts y jugaba al Mumbley, un juego algo peligroso en el cual se usan navajas.

John se quedaba en casa, por largos ratos, sin ir a trabajar como los otros de mis hermanos. Después del accidente de caza, había quedado ciego de un ojo y se las apañaba sin ver muy bien, pero, aun así, el siempre transmitía alegría y regocijo. El y yo leímos la novela Los Miserables y también El Conde De Monte Cristo...las aventuras de los hermanos Rover y Tarzan de la selva, y cuando terminamos de leer el conjunto completo del escritor Mark Twain, se lo vendió a Jake Erlich de El Paso. Esto dejó un espacio grande y oscuro en el librero, Mamá se fastidió y Papá enfureció. John le vendía muchas cosas a Jake. El reloj de oro fue el límite, al parecer. John le llamaba por teléfono a Jake y le preguntaba: qué hora es en mi reloj?...hasta que un día Jake finalmente se lo regresó. John nunca hizo nada malo, un dia si, forjó la firma de Papá en unos cheques, pero el llevaba a Mamá a los matinés de media noche, doble función de películas de Dracula y King Kong y también la llevaba a ella y a sus amigas a servicios funerales. Siempre hacia reír a la gente, barberos, carteros, meseros, incluso hasta a los perros. El nunca necesitaba beber alcohol. Yo sabía que el iba a mejorar. De todas formas, yo iría a visitarlo.
Mamá me ayudo a empacar para el viaje, lleve 2 blusas, un vestido de puntos, medias y bragas para el caballo. Mamá también empacó unas nueces para John.

Viajé a través de la línea del tren Southern Pacific hacia Douglas en donde se suponía que el me estaría esperando. No estaba en la estación, así que como pude arrastre la maleta hasta un taxi y le pedí al conductor que me llevara al hotel Gadsden (Nombre que se le dió, debido a la compra del territorio a México en 1912) en donde entre a la recepción oscura del hotel. Un empleado muy amable, que conocía Johnny, me dijo como llegar hasta el consulado Mexicano e inclusive me ayudo con la compra de mi pasaje de Agua Prieta a Nacozari.

Me tome la foto para mis documentos de viaje. Había que esperar una hora para cruzar la línea divisoria internacional, así que fui a la farmacia del hotel donde ordene un antiácido para el estomago. Me costó diez centavos y me supo a sal hepática y calmil.

En Agua Prieta, deslice mi maleta sobre la alta escalerilla para subir al tren. Los Mexicanos me sonrieron y yo les regrese la sonrisa mientras me tomaba un refresco tibio y me comía un dulce 'Tootsie'.

El único problema en el tren seria ir al baño. Era solamente un agujero en el piso al final del vagón, tenia que maniobrar con mis piernas delgaditas y no podía quitar la vista mientras veía pasar de manera muy veloz las trancas de los rieles. Había unas piedras para usar pero yo utilicé una pañoleta blanca la cual salió volando hasta la parte de atrás.

Era una noche muy oscura cuando llegue a Nacozari y recuerdo bajar por la escalerilla del vagón, nerviosamente buscando a John entre la oscuridad. Un hombre de alta estatura se me acercó, caminando rápidamente y puso su brazo alrededor de mi cuello. "Mary, me dijo, soy el señor MacKenzie", "John no pudo venir a recibirte". "Venga conmigo y la llevare al hotel". "Tiene hambre?", "no mucha", aun yo estaba nerviosa y temblando por dentro.
"Sabemos todo de usted Mary", "Y son puras cosas buenas". "Johnny nos ha dicho que usted es su hermana favorita, es verdad?"
Yo no le conteste, no pensé decirle que eso era simplemente un chiste pues John únicamente tenía una hermana... yo!. El hombre era delgado y olía a cigarros mexicanos y a humedad.

Caminamos a través de una plaza muy pequeña, con lámparas de alumbrado muy tenue. La grava en el suelo crujiendo y deslizándose debajo de los zapatos, mientras el platicaba de niñas preciosas, jaló los rizos de mi cabello delicadamente, y de pronto llegamos, frente al grandioso, blanco y hermoso hotel. Hasta en la oscuridad, resplandecía como un castillo. Por supuesto, yo aun no podía ver el patio, ni la higuera, ni los zorritos, pero había plantas colgando de los balcones, como cabellos de princesa.

La recepción del hotel estaba vacía, nos dirigimos por un pasillo largo y entramos a una cocina blanca y deslumbrante. Ahí, el señor MacKenzie me elevo y me sentó en un taburete cerca del lavaplatos. Un hombre Negro, Tom, me sirvió cocoa en una taza pesada. Me lo tome lentamente, tratando de no desparramar o hacer ruido.
"El señor Johnny va a estar muy contento de tener a su hermanita aquí por un tiempo"
"El no fue a recibirme en Douglas."
"Señorita Mary, su hermano es un hombre muy ocupado. Este hotel es muy grande, incluyendo la parte anexa. Gusta mas cocoa?"
"No gracias, está muy bueno. Me da dolor de estomago generalmente, pero está muy bueno, de hecho, mas bueno que el de Mamá"

El señor MacKenzie regreso con una niña mexicana, era Lupe, llevaba huaraches de suela acolchonada y tenia trenzas en el cabello. La seguí hacia la planta alta y por un pasillo largo hasta llegar a mi cuarto. Mire como un policía caminaba despacio por la alfombra del otro lado de las puertas. Tal vez sería el velador que recorre la propiedad por la noche.

Ya en mi cuarto me desvestí rápidamente, pensando si tal vez olvide empacar algo, lo último que vi fue el cielo del cuarto, hecho de metal o tal vez de hojalata, con figuras onduladas y pintado de color gris. No me dolía el estomago, y pensé que John me explicaría en la mañana porqué el cocoa mexicano era mejor.

El sol me daba directamente en la cara cuando abrí los ojos. En cuanto me puse de pie, me di cuenta de que mis vacaciones habían comenzado. Ahí estaba yo, en mi cuarto de hotel con balcón, una silla mecedora hecha de mimbre cerca del barandal, al salir del cuarto, se encontraban las escaleras y el pasillo, brillantes a la luz del día. Me pase a la recepción.

"Buenos días, Mary!" una voz con tono feliz que venia detras del mostrador me dijo: "Bienvenida a Naco, querida. Yo soy Freda Lanier, y tu...déjame adivinar...tu eres la hermana favorita de Johnny, Mary! verdad? Has desayunado ya?"
"No, señora." Le conteste la pregunta sobre el desayuno. John debió haberle dicho a todo mundo que yo era su hermana favorita.
"Por ahí, pasa por esa puerta, y llama a Tom..."

Mientras me alejaba, pensé en lo bien que me a caído Freda, también me llamo la atención el anillo que llevaba. Siempre quise un anillo como ese.
Me dijo en voz alta, mientras me alejaba. "John se encuentra justo a la vuelta, querida. Probablemente en la bodega. Regresa después que hayas comido y te enseñare la propiedad. Te parece, Mary?"
"Muy bien. Le puedes decir a mi hermano que estaré en el comedor cuando llegue?"
Tom se mantuvo cerca, mientras yo desayunaba. Había más cocoa y me tome dos tazas con pan con azúcar.
"Ha visto usted a John hoy, Tom?"
"No, señorita Mary, no lo he visto esta mañana." me dijo mientras me servía agua helada.
"El señor Johnny dijo que la va a hacer subir un poco de peso, para que no esté tan delgadita" mientras reía. "El señor Johnny es un buen hombre, el nunca ha sido malo con nadie. Usted es muy suertuda de ser su hermana"

Le conté a Tom acerca de mis pasatiempos y también de cosas que me gustaba envalijar, como polvos faciales, fotos de actrices de cine entre otras cosas. Los dos estuvimos de acuerdo al opinar cual actriz era más bella que otra, tampoco el sabía que mi hermano John había actuado al lado de John Barrymore en una película. John llevaba un suéter de cuello de tortuga cuando lo hizo, toda la familia lo vio.
Después del desayuno, Freda y yo caminamos por el pueblito. Mire la tienda de los mineros y el área mas pobre, había muchos burros, como el amigo de John en aquella foto. La fuente en el parque era de origen Francés y un perro brincaba de adentro hacia afuera de la fuente como si estuviera luciéndose ante mi.

Freda se regresó para abrir la tienda de cigarros, yo me senté an la recepción y la observe trabajar. Freda me presentó a un vendedor de joyería y a una caballero de la oficina de ensayo. La primera noche, fui al cine y comí piñones, después me senté en el balcón con los demás en el hotel.

Pasaron los seis días. Leí las novelas Graustark y Beverly de Graustark y también aprendí a jugar al solitario. Una de las noches, Freda toco la canción "Pale Hands I Love Beside the Shlimar". Aquella canción era hermosa.

En el patio hacía mucho calor y los zorritos estaban enojados y olían mal, así que nunca me les acerque. No había higos en la higuera, solo polvo.

Empaque la noche antes de partir. Llevaba dos brazaletes de turquesa, tapetes de zarape y unos huaraches, todos eran regalos que me dieron los empleados del hotel. Por la mañana siguiente, ya estaba lista, con excepción del almuerzo que Tom me dijo que me prepararía. Fui a la cocina para comérmelo. Tom estaba en el patio trasero quitándole las piedras a los frijoles pintos, me miro y se sonrió mientras me sentaba junto a el jugando con los frijoles en mis manos...tenían muchas piedritas y palillos. Entonces me pare y le dije: "Tom, vale más que me digas donde esta John, inmediatamente por favor" El sol estaba tan brillante que tuve que fruncir el seño.
"Señorita Mary, sabe qué?...sus ojos son muy verdes, y se ven muy enojados, como el verde de la selva" y siguió limpiando los frijoles, y luego le dio una risita.
"Señorita Mary, el se encuentra en el número cinco, en el anexo."

John no se veía bien en aquel número cinco. Al acercarme a su cama, se levanto usando los codos, se sonrió y me dijo: "Mira nada más! Mary!" Me di cuenta que olía a tequila. Me tomo las manos y las junto, poniendo presión para que no las separara y así me las mantuvo un buen rato.

"Todavía ere mi hermanita favorita, Mary?"
"Supongo que sí. Mama te ha enviado obsequios"

Se recostó en su almohada, cerro sus ojos y se rasco la frente, "Mañana los veo Mary, también compraremos una piñata, tendremos una fiesta!. Tendremos fiesta mañana."

Me pareció áspera su mejilla al tocarla con mis labios, lo cubrí hasta la barbilla. Se había quedado dormido.

El señor Tom me estaba esperando en el patio con mi almuerzo. El señor MacKenzie me llevo a la estación del tren y le agradecí. Me acuerdo que Freda tenía lagrimas cuando le di un beso al despedirme. De regreso a clases, justo después del día del trabajo, la maestra, señorita Keifer nos asignó como tema de trabajo: MIS VACACIONES.
Mae Snoddy habia ido a Venecia, California y había traído dulces de caramelo de la región; George Martin había estado en el campamento de los Boy Scouts en Ruidoso, Nuevo México; Malvina Owen, quien era rica, paso tres meses en Cloudcroft, Nuevo México. Casi todos en mi clase habían ido a algún lado, con excepción de Geronimo Besa, que se sentaba en la parte de atrás del salón y le ayudaba a la maestra a abrir las ventanas usando un palo largo de madera.

La historia que yo escribí, fue acerca de mi visita a mi hermano John y la leí en clase. Escribí acerca de mi viaje 40 millas dentro del territorio Indio en Sonora, México. Les conté de Cuca y como un cocho salvaje la había mordido. Mire como cuatro bandidos pasaban el rato en la plaza y un perro con tres patas, también mire como uno de los mexicanos se comió una granada de tal manera que se miraba espumante en su boca.

Traducción al Español
-Marco A Alvarez

Five Easy Pieces

2011-02-26T16:24:00.010-07:00

I love that scene in Five Easy Pieces.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8

I been there. Except I've noticed that when Jack pulls this kind of stunt in the movies, people laugh and clap. When I do this kind of thing in real life, people get embarrassed for me, look frightened and recoil, and bosses put "critical incident reports" in my employee file.

Sometimes I show restraint. At work I wear an ID badge/card on a lanyard around my neck. I swipe it to get through locked doors, it identifies me as an employee and I can deposit funds in my account and use my badge like a credit card to pay for food in the hospital cafe, where I also get an employee discount. Good deal all around! (except for the cumulative poundage effect of pastrami sandwiches, Swedish meatballs and cheesecake for lunch too many times).

So yesterday morning on my way in, I noticed the special: two eggs, hashbrowns, toast and coffee for 2.95. Good deal; "I'll have the special, but no hashbrowns." I handed her my employee badge for payment. She rings me up and says, "That will be $4.95."

Why not 2.95?
"Without the hash browns, it's not the special," she says.

Now this is not one of those deals where the plates are pre-made and they'd have to do something extra, like scrape off the hash browns. They make food to order. I ordered less than the special; shouldn't I get the special price? She wouldn't budge.

I decide to be a grown up and drop it. But then I look at the receipt again and ask, "Why didn't I get my employee discount?" She fires back, "You aren't wearing your badge."

I said, "Because you are holding my badge."

She sets my card on the counter, rolls her eyes at me and turns to make a phone call. Sometimes you pay an extra coupla bucks for something just for the story.

Racing the Brewtown Locos

2010-10-11T20:08:00.003-06:00

Whenever I speed on my motorcycle in town, I am conjuring an excuse in my mind ahead of time, in case I get stopped by the police. "That semi back there was drifting across the line and I wasn't sure my bike was visible in his rear view mirror, so I had to accelerate to get past him." I'll go to court and fight it, dammit. Haven't been stopped yet, but I'm always ready in case.

Today's reason was Wow! Stupid! Coming down Menaul I get cut off abruptly by a little souped-up Honda that's flicking back and forth between cars, in and out of lanes, to get ahead. At the 2nd St. stoplight, I pull up beside him in the left lane, still pulsing with adrenalin, lift my visor and enunciate, "Fuck you, you fucking asshole," right at this guy who - I realize as I'm saying it; a little too late - is a major, scary little gangbanger. Not sure if he had the teardrop tattooed under his eye, but probably.

Now what? The light turns green and I gun it, leaning into a turn north onto 2nd, and he turns, too! My bike isn't that fast, but it does accelerate, and I'm slamming the throttle now.

I outran him and got off on Griegos. I might even recycle this excuse if I get stopped by the cops someday in the future. "Yeah, it was ill-advised for me to cuss at the gangbanger, and then when I saw his pistol, are you telling me I shouldn't speed to get away?"

Figuring if they stop a guy by that description, chances are good he's gonna have a gun in the glove compartment and hey, it could have happened.

A Christian Charlie Brown

2009-10-07T22:46:00.009-06:00

This is a story about some of my childhood friends; Jim (now a Christian minister), Rahn (an attorney) and Mike (founder and designer of Osprey backpacks) back when we were about 17 years old.

One early evening Jim, Mike, Rahn and I were walking by the Santa Cruz harbor and came to a boat crane on the shore. Mike commented that someone could hold onto the hook hanging from the crane and the others could swing him or her around over the water in a big arc, and back onto the shore. They all looked at me expectantly, but I suggested that Jim should do it. Jim said OH no way, he thought we'd stop the crane over the water and make him fall in. We were offended by his distrust in us. "How can you call us your friends, and yourself a CHRISTIAN at that, if you don't even trust us not to betray you?" we said. "Why would you expect and assume that we'd let you down?" Jim stood his ground and refused to do it, suggesting that maybe Rahn should try it and he'd help push with the rest of us instead.

Rahn said that not only was he disgusted by active church-goer Jim's spiritual hypocracy and lack of trust in his friends, he now felt that this had become an Exercise All about Trust.

Jim looked us each in the eye and said, "Are you all promising me right now that you will not stop the crane over the water? That you'll spin it around until I reach the ground on the other side?" We sincerely promised him, as his best friends, that he could absolutely trust us and our word.

Jim grasped the hook and the rest of us pushed the crane. When he reached the farthest point from shore, without even a glance at each other, we all pulled the crane to a stop. For a moment Jim's slender body dangled, helpless and Christlike, before plunging into the water.

Ride to Corona, New Mexico - Center of the Universe

2009-07-26T15:10:00.015-06:00

My friend Dave has specialized expertise in fixing esoteric heaters, coolers and such, so his job sends him all over the state to the most out-of-the-way, forgotten towns. When he’s in his truck traveling little-traveled routes across the state, he’s imagining riding his green Ninja under that big sky and sharing it with his biker buddies. One of his recent work trips took him to Corona, New Mexico, almost dead center of the state out on the plains, where he had a nice lunch at El Corral Café, so he posted a proposed motorcycle trip to Corona on the Duke City Fix motorcycle riders’ forum.

Nobody signed up. We didn’t know where that was or why we should go there. So Dave said fine, I’ll cancel the trip and go camping and fishing instead. Then we all signed up to ride. One guy learned about the ride from a posting on the RidingWithPride gay motorcycle group site, one heard about it word-of-mouth, one didn’t RSVP but showed up anyway, which is what he always does. I also invited two friends that ride motorcycles and don’t belong to any of these groups. Seven people met at Tramway and Central: Ninja Dave, Honda Nighthawk Dave (aka Ditching Dave), Frank on his cool white Honda Interceptor, Ken on his newly-once-again-running Savage, Dan on his blue SV650, Tom on a Harley Sportster 883 and me on my groovy Honda Hornet with the new beaded seat.

Dave was the one who posted the ride, and then we all decided to lead it and we all had different ideas. Tom wanted to change the route to include a stop at the ancient Gran Quivira ruins. Dan wanted a loop trip that didn’t trace back the same route. Ken needed a route with regular gas stops for his short cruising range and couldn’t go too fast on the old Savage. Nighthawk Dave wanted to go really fast and try to ditch us. I wanted to stop in the cemetery in Corona, because – in my online research on this town – I found a woman from Kansas on Ancestry.com who had a great grandfather buried there and wasn’t sure where this even was, so I figured I’d find the gravestone and take a picture. I also pitched in to support various other route changes, just to mix things up some more. Frank was telling a story about Fiji and tuning us out. And with that, we set out!

Ahh, we leaned into cool, pine-scented twisties and cruised by eroding adobe ranchitos in the Spanish Landgrant towns of Manzano, Tajique, and Chilili down old Hiway 14. Regrouped in Mountainair, we immediately lost Ditching Dave. Tom led us to a gas station, then disappeared to find Dave. The rest of us rode back and forth through town looking for both of them. How do people get lost in Mountainair?? (the same way people get lost in Corona, we found out later). Finally saw Dave and Tom in front of the café none of us knew about (who goes to Mountainair and stops anywhere but the Schaffer Hotel??) then we all weighed in at once on the map and route and the rest misguidedly recruited me to lead us on. I had no idea where we were going, but happily set off, missing the turn off to Willard and headed toward Ancho. Ditching Dave was already gone on the right route to Willard, so the rest stopped and waited while Tom on the Harley chased down Ditching Dave and Ninja Dave chased me down to make me turn around. Keystone Cops.

All together, we headed out onto the hot, flat plains of eastern New Mexico. The road paralleled the tracks for awhile and Dan sped by at 100 mph+ to beat the train. I caught him and Ninja Dave passed us like we were standing still.

The town of Corona hasn’t seen the population jump over 200 in a number of decades. Far away from another human settlement of any size, its only recent almost-claim-to-fame came when a rancher about 30 miles south found the wreckage of a weather balloon and brought it into Corona for others in town to examine. It was decided that the most likely explanation was that it was a UFO full of aliens, so they took it to Roswell and put Roswell on the map forever.

Expecting a ghost town, we pulled into Corona and found flags flying on the main street, lots of trucks parked around and spectators lining the sidewalks. We had missed being part of the annual city parade by half an hour! In front of El Corral Café, a veterans’ group was selling raffle tickets to raise money to spruce up the graves of veterans in the cemetery and serendipitously were familiar with the old gravestone I wanted to find. A woman pointed out the town festival “syllabus” on the café wall and urged us to stay for the dance that night. The café featured chicken fried steak with cream gravy and green chile chicken enchiladas (also with cream gravy), but no Corona (or any other beer) in the town of Corona. Probably best, as we had miles to ride and no naps were forthcoming.

In front of El Corral Cafe in Corona: sitting (front to back)me, Ditchin' Dave, Forgotten Frank, Tom. Standing: Dan with the map, Kenny standing back not wanting to get involved.

Then we lost Frank.
On the restaurant porch, we broke into two groups over maps and generated four opinions about which way to go next. I think Ninja Dave had given up any idea that he was the Boss of this ride by this time. Frank and I sat on the bench and commiserated about all the times in the past we had gotten lost. Kenny decided to find a gas station to fill up and I told the group I was headed to the graveyard, just past the gas station. I pointed out the flags over the cemetery on the hillside so nobody would get confused, and headed off. The others soon followed, but when we got the graveyard, no Frank. I figured he was waiting below, not wanting to ding up his white motorcycle on the rocky path up the hill. We roamed the graveyard till Ken found Ralph Green’s stone, nicely manicured and with a new flag from the Veterans’ group and I got some good pictures.

Back down the hill, still no Frank. We went back into town, rode up each road a little bit, but no idea which way he went. We hoped he had a nice ride home and set off again. I followed the others along the straight, rolling hills in a hot, open landscape with views of clouds and plains a hundred miles in all directions.

At one point I found myself lolling off to sleep, which is ill-advised on a motorcycle going 85 mph, so I knew I needed to stop. We found the town of Willard, where I spotted Ditching Dave’s Honda Nighthawk behind a tree next to a bar, and stopped. The others turned around and joined us. Ken had had enough of this fickle, ADHD-fueled group with no planning skills and worried that he’d end up out of gas out in the middle of nowhere while we debated about which way to go, so he headed off for Estancia alone. In the bathroom at the bar in Willard, I took off my tee shirt, soaked it in the sink, wringed it out and pulled it back on. I found the others outside on the porch and called out, "Hey, I just won $50 in a wet tee shirt contest in there!" They didn't laugh as much as I wanted them to. So we sat on the porch and drank cold Cokes and chatted nostalgically, mostly about the old days (or years, in some cases) we spent stoned on pot. Good and bad memories all around.

Ditching Dave took off on his own and we were down to four. Twisting back down through the Land Grant towns behind the Manzano mountains and into Albuquerque, we split off for the final time, to home and the awaiting couches for naps.

(Frank made it home - we found out later - going south through Carrizozo (!) and I’m sure will have a much-deserved scolding for the rest of us scofflaw bikers that might even lead to a new safety protocol for motorcycle riding groups. That we’ll probably ignore. I’m sorry, Frank, and I still hope you’ll join us!)

Ride to Taos, April 19-20, 2009

2009-04-21T10:58:00.024-06:00

(double click on the photos to enlarge them.)

The plan was to ride my motorcycle up to Taos to watch my daughter Olivia perform with her slam poetry team in the state high school competition there on Sunday. She said her performance wouldn't be until 5pm, so I had all day to meander on the way, through some of the most beautiful country in New Mexico.

Things were getting iffy when, a few days before, a big Spring storm moved in dumping heavy snow on the northern half of the state. It warmed up a lot on Saturday, but I worried about black ice on the remote route I had planned to take through Tres Piedras.

So I decided to follow the northernmost piece of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, completed by Don Juan de Onate in 1598, connecting Mexico City to some villages north of Santa Fe. The route came up from Mexico, through El Paso, across the desert known as Jornada del Muerto, and then followed the Rio Grande river valley north.

My friend Steve, an infectious disease doctor with the Department of Health, and his partner Adam live on a big farm in Dixon, NM, near the Rio Grande south of Taos. Dixon was on the Camino Real and the acequias still used to irrigate the crops here were dug by some of the earliest Spanish settlers. It was also the scene of a battle between the U.S. Army and new Mexico rebels in 1847.

Steve still commutes to Santa Fe to work, but Adam has retired from his job as an anesthesiologist and runs the farm, living his dream (and mine!) of working the fields with a big tractor growing all manner of crops, including hops to make beer. Great timing for my visit, because it was the day of the Seed Exchange in the Dixon Community Center. Adam initiated this yearly event, where local farmers bring seeds from last year's crop - some of them heirloom local varieties of beans, squash, herbs - and swap them with others. People come from all over for this event now and it was a great mix of farmers from Dixon and neighboring villages, elderly locals out for a social event, old hippies, young families.

Farmers and would-be farmers bustled about, a guy played a guitar with a resting dog at his feet, the scent of simmering red chile was in the air, Steve and I stood outside the community center in the glorious New Mexico sun with snow frosted mountains lining the horizon, chatting about infectious diseases, I got a bag full of interesting seeds to plant, looking forward to riding the twisty road along the river up to Taos... I felt like I was going to explode with this dreamlike happiness invading all my senses.

It's hard to watch the road with the rushing river gorge on one side and views of the mountains on the other, then the distant view of the gorge carving through the plains west of Taos. It truly is one of the most beautiful scenes in the world. I got to Taos and booked a room in a hotel near the plaza. I aimed my camera at the mountains a few times, but couldn't capture them in the tiny frame, so gave up

Lots of time to kill before the poetry event, so I had lunch at a shi shi place where the waiters were visibly and audibly stressed, harried and backed up. The people at the neighboring table noticed it too and told me they felt like apologizing to the staff for being here. They had been waiting for 40 minutes for their food. On the menu it said, "Our goal is to put service back into customer service." (It's good to have a goal. My goal is to own an island.) Also on the menu: "We graciously invite you to be part of our Graham's Grill family." I quipped to my neighbors that I didn't wanna join their family. In fact these people were too much like my family and I came here to get AWAY from my family. Not really true, but got a laugh. The food was exquisite though, so I went back for dinner, which was much more relaxed.

.
Finally time for the poetry competition, so I headed over to Taos High School to find out that the event had actually been going on since 10 am and they were just wrapping up. Damn Olivia. She had already performed. On the good side, I didn't have to listen to poetry all day. And I got there in time to see her and her two buddies win first place for their group poem; a cash prize and invitation to be part of a big poetry event/workshop held by national poetry slam people in Taos this June. Olivia whispered to her friends and then motioned me outside. They lined up in the parking lot with the mountains in the background and performed their poem for me as their private audience. Wow.

Monday morning, I packed up and headed south to explore more sites along the historic Camino Real. Below Taos, I took the side road through the villages of Los Luceros, Villita and Alcalde; original settlements of Onate’s caravan. Names on mailboxes and gravestones still match the original family names that arrived in the 1500s. My friend Gary Guillen grew up in Alcalde, descended from the Guillen in one of the first Spanish expeditions.

I took some pictures of old Guillen graves in La Villita cemetery.

Unfortunately a lot of mobile homes have cropped up in these communities, but very old adobe abodes survive, some lived in; some melting back into the earth. The original Spanish acequia still waters their crops.

This section of the main road in Alcalde doesn’t look like it’s changed much in 500 years.

Onto my next goal; to find the original capital of New Mexico. Santa Fe was not the first. When Juan de Onate arrived in Ohkay Owingeh (the original name of San Juan pueblo, which they have recently reclaimed), the people were so hospitable that he renamed them after his patron saint – San Juan de los Caballeros. The Spaniards then moved on to a smaller pueblo just across the river called Yunge. They liked this place so much and the people were so friendly that the Spanish sent them packing to join San Juan across the river, and the Spanish moved into Yunge themselves, renaming it San Gabriel. Nearby they built the first capital of what is now New Mexico. I had seen this story in history books, but Yunge/San Gabriel no longer exists and you can’t find it on the map.

Some explorative wandering, some intuitive hunches, and I finally found it.

Across the river from San Juan/Ohkay Owingeh and down a dirt road, there is a grassy hillside with mounded earth that appeared to be the site of Yunge. It has not been excavated and no ruins or walls are visible. A cross and a small plaque on the hillside drew my attention so I parked the bike and walked up the hill. The plaque doesn’t specifically identify this spot, but it became obvious when I started seeing lots of ancient pueblo pottery sherds littering the hillside, a polished stone axe head and then Spanish glass and painted pottery pieces from old Europe. I spent a couple of hours on this hillside over the river, looking for artifacts and imagining what it was like for the people who lived here. I took several pictures, but the spirits apparently did not allow them to be saved on my camera.

When I got home, I read that in 1964 San Juan pueblo invited an archeologist to excavate what they thought might be the original San Gabriel capital built by the Spaniards in the 1500s. While they lived in the pueblo on the hill where I stood, the Spanish (with the help of hundreds of Indian workers) built a church, plaza, and dwellings in the valley just below, where an orchard stands today. The archeologists located the foundation of the Spanish dwellings and the footings of the church. The site is on private land and not open to the public. Next time, I want to see if I can get access to that, too. But I was happy – a mystery for me was solved.

It was after 2pm and I was famished by the time I got to Espanola, so stopped for stacked enchiladas with an egg on top and a dos equis beer at La Cocina.

It was about 80 degrees out by now, with strong, gusty winds on the freeway. At Bernalillo, I took the old road through Sandia pueblo and down 4th Street – still traveling on the old Camino Real – and home.

Presidents Day

2009-02-16T20:15:00.007-07:00

I am wringing every bit of outdoors joy out of this unemployment thing. Wish it could last.

On Friday, I hiked with Kathy in the Ojitos Wilderness about 40 miles northwest of Albuquerque. What a fabulous, wild place. Multicolored rocks, little springs burbling up on mesas, leaving a trail of mineral deposits, views to distant mesas. Nobody there. This is where they discovered the bones of the Seismosaurus dinosaur. I can just imagine that guy stomping around there.

Saturday, I went on a motorycycle ride with a couple of friends up to Santa Fe, back through Madrid to Tijeras Canyon and home. Cold day, but I was dressed like a sumo wrestler, so I was toasty. Looking forward to spring rides.

On Sunday, Byron, Nigel and I visited the secret "Glass Garden" down by the river in the south valley. It was the first municipal dump in Albuquerque in the 1930s, but all the trash was long ago burned away, leaving only several acres of magical glittering broken glass and antique bottles. Great place to wander and poke around. From blight/garbage/pollution to a secret, special/nutured/historic spot full of treasures. How many years have to pass for this transition in our perception to occur?

After the dump, we went to the zoo, where we made up a new game. The gorillas are amazingly entertaining. I am going back with a lawn chair this week, just to watch them all day.

Our new "One Bullet Game": While standing before the zoo exhibit, viewing a Snow Leopard, Golden Tamarin or Orangutan, you pretend that you have a gun with one bullet. You have to shoot either the animal, yourself, or one of the other spectators next to you. Guess which one I usually chose?

Wednesday

2009-01-08T19:28:00.010-07:00

or is it Thursday today? One of those.

This morning around 10am I took the dogs for a run on the mesa, temps around 50 degrees; glabulous. Not having a job is good in every way except that pesky pay check thing. On my way to Costco, I stopped at the Moto Guzzi shop and they had a 2008 Breva 750, which is not being made anymore, so they've marked it down and it is Sweet!

While I was sitting on it, the guy suggested I go get my gear and take it for a test ride; said he could even mark it down more because they need to get it off the floor. I told him I was just some loser who got laid off last week, so he says, "well, then you have lots of time to take bikes for test rides."

Sebastian is over at our house... Olivia told me before he got here that I was not allowed to drill him with questions. Do you have any idea how hard that is for me? He's in her room right now which is such a disastrous hovel, he probably misses that cave (see next post for background on this).

Lost

2009-01-05T19:33:00.015-07:00

Sunday evening, my 16 year old daughter is squeezing out her last evening of winter break before school starts again, vegging in front of a mindless Supermodel "Reality" show on TV and I decided to join her. The show is relaxing for her and excruciating for me, but I want to sit next to her and I'm biting my tongue till it's bleeding to keep from emitting my usual editorial stream of sarcasm and disgust at the show. I'm just bein' with Olivia now.

The phone rings and she listens, then says, "you're kidding, right?" Her eyes go wide and her face turns white. "Let me talk to the ski patrol guy." She's quiet, listening intently, very still, and then a tear quietly trickles down her cheek.

Sebastian, the boy she loves, went missing while snowboarding in northern New Mexico Sunday at 4pm. The call was from his friend, still at the Pajarito ski area, calling for help. Sebastian and his buddies spent the day snowboarding above Los Alamos, then took the last lift of the day for one final run. They decided to take the intermediate run that would lead them directly to where their car was parked. The other boys reached the bottom and waited, but Sebastian didn't show. They waited.

The ski patrol was notified and headed up to do the run and look for Sebastian. No sign of him, so more help is called. A major winter snow storm is headed in that night and the weather people on the TV news have that mindless smile when they describe the plummeting temperatures and foot or more of new snow that is expected.

Olivia has a strange, flat affect. She's gone into monotone cruise control denial. Then she knows she has to go to be with his family and her teen peer family and drives away.

Last Tuesday I was suddenly, rudely, laid off from my job and I've been spending a lot of time since then commiserating, righteously indignating, reeling, facing stumbling blocks that didn't seem fair to me. I don't know what to do next for work, except that I don't want to do what I've been doing. So I work on finances, clean up the house, make a doctor appointment to address this sinus infection that won't go away. Now, with Sebastian gone, the world is upside down.

Sunday night, when Sabastian was lost, I found the phone number for Peter Dixon, head of the Pajarito ski patrol. He described the huge rescue effort that was brewing. They would stay out all night, if they had to, to find this boy before the winter woods claimed him. He worried about the weather coming in. He made sure I wasn't a journalist before he talked to me, but I called the TV news right afterwards, thinking maybe a skier who was up there that day saw something on the last run?

It was announced on the news - a similar story to others I've listened to with vague interest in the past when they were about unknown missing persons - but this time about someone we know and care about. We didn't sleep well that night, then woke to find that Sebastian still had not been found. The storm moved in with temps close to zero and a blizzard of new snow. Mountaineers scoured the ski area on snowmobiles and snowshoes and found no sign of him. They brought in dogs who didn't detect a scent or a soul. "It's worrisome," said Peter, "I wish I could say we found him and he's here by the fireplace, but we can't say that yet."

Today I continued about the minutia of my workfree life; grocery shopping, reading, stopping by my ex-work place to sign severance documents, walking the dogs, doing laundry. But it was all from another dimension now. It's a blur of trivia. In between my errands, I talked to Peter on the phone. "We're increasingly mystified about why we can't find him. There is not a clue anywhere about what has become of him." He tells me that helicopters are standing by, but the wind and snow won't let them fly. "We'll keep looking," he says, "through tonight again, if we have to." Sebastian's mom, who migrated to this country from Colombia when Sabastian was little, drives up to the ski area to wait for word on her oldest son. I hear that his ex-step father is headed up there too, and his father is flying in from Dallas. I want Olivia to come home, but I understand that she needs to decide where she needs to be and I realize that it might not be with us.

Albuquerque High School called with their automated message that "Olivia G. was truant/absent from school today." The neighbor groused that the garbage man didn't empty her bin. I called Peter; no news. I called Olivia, who is crying hard now with grief in her voice.

Peter is prepared for another night searching the mountain. Everyone waits with dread.

Twenty five hours after Olivia got that first call, I get a call from her. "HE'S BEEN FOUND AND HE IS ALIVE." She is in full-relief style crying now and we all shout and cheer.

Sebastian was snowboarding behind his friends in a blizzard and got blown off course. He began to walk as night fell and it got cold. Using his snowboard as an axe, he tried to break down tree branches to build a shelter, but couldn't keep the snow out. He came upon a cave; a cave big enough for a large animal and he wondered what kind of animal it was and if it would come back. So he climbed into the cave and set up a simple trap at the entrance as a warning if a bear were coming home. His IPod was comforting to begin with, but the batteries were getting low, so he turned it off. There was a lighter in his pocket, but leaves and sticks wouldn't burn, so he found cash in his wallet and burned that (think about this story next time you worry about the depressed economy and what priorities we have).

Sabastian ended up in a canyon beyond the ski area where nobody expected him to be. But he climbed to the top of the mountain when he heard the helicopters, that had finally risked a fly-over during a short break in the weather before the next storm hit. As darkness started to fall on the second night, he turned on his IPod, that produced a faint light. The night vision instruments on the helicopter spotted the little IPod and he was found. The copter couldn't land, so a rescuer dropped down on a line to carry him up (and had to tell Sebastian to drop the snowboard so he could hold on with both arms.) He was wisked to the hospital, and, other than a little frostbite and exposure, Sebastian is back.

http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/offbeat/offbeat_krqe_los_alamos_ipod_saves_lost_snowboarder_2009010601352148734

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/environment/environment_krqe_los_alamos_ipod_saves_lost_snowboarder_200901060135

November 26-30 Mexico via Moto

2008-11-30T16:09:00.050-07:00

(Double click on pictures to get a close up)
Wednesday was cold with snow in the forecast. I cooked a whole Thanksgiving dinner early for my family before I went out to load my motorcycle bags, dressed like a sumo astronaut, and headed off for Mexico. Rode through snow flurries most of the way to Deming, where the Mexican restaurants don't serve beer (?!) and the hotel "didn't have no way to call long distance." In the morning, the streets in Deming were wet and there were threatening clouds as I headed toward Columbus (the American town invaded by General Francisco "Pancho" Villa and his 600 Mexican revolutionaries in 1916), border town with Palomas, Mexico.

With some guidance from a helpful one-legged Mexican man and his tiny chihuahua side-kick on the Mexico side, the border crossing wasn't too bad (I already had my vehicle permit from the Mexican consulate in Alb.). I had been warned that the streets of Palomas would be littered with bodies from drug cartel warfare, but the only hazards I encountered were muddy, flooded streets.

I stopped in this place for a burrito, in Janos, Mexico. The woman running the place asked (in Spanish), "Are you alone? Aren't you afraid? Nobody bothers you? What do you think of Barack Obama?" The US election had just happened and everyone was curious about it. She told me she'd seen a small group of motorcyclists from the US come through the year before. I saw only one motorcycle on the whole trip; a Honda CB125 being used for postal delivery in Casas Grandes. Cool little bike.

The roads in Mexico are generally in pretty good shape, though the curves through the mountains aren't banked properly. There is no shoulder whatsoever and so no way to pull over and take pictures along the route. There were lots of fantastic shrines, descansos and paintings of La Virgen de Guadalupe on the cliffs above the road that I wanted to record, but couldn't safely stop. Chihuahua is vast and mostly unpopulated. An hour either direction from any town, I came across this out in the middle of nowhere and risked parking on the highway to photograph it.
This is the carcass of a dead cow, propped up on a pole with a dummy riding it. I have no idea who went to the trouble to do this or why. Fabulous, though.

At a fork in the road, there was a military police check point and the guys in camo gave me worried looks, pointing to "mucha lluvia" up ahead. I looked southwest, the direction I was about to turn, and saw the curtain of black. No point in turning back now, so I rode right into it; a torrential, drenching downpour that lasted most of an hour. I found myself laughing, because it was so ridiculously desperate. Later I read the "Mexico driving tips" (for cars) on my Mexico map: "If it begins raining, you should either stop driving or slow down to a crawl. The oil residue on the roads can mix with the rainwater, creating an almost ice-like surface." Glad I didn't see that ahead of time, because I just gripped the handlebars and continued on my merry way. The "tourist tips" also mentioned that "motorcycle riding in Mexico is not for the faint at heart." heh.

Around 4pm, I arrived in Casas Grandes. Hotel Guacamayas sits on a hillside just above the ancient ruins of Paquime. Mayte Lujan, who runs the hotel, used to be the curator for the Paquime museum and is very knowledgeable about the area. She had the hotel built using the same packed-earth technique as was used by the original Paquime civilization to build their settlement there. These people were trading partners with the folks at Chaco Canyon until they disappeared (like all these people seemed to do) a little after 1200AD.

My room (above). This is the view from the hotel (below). It's totally silent up there at night.
I roamed the ruins (more later), then walked into Old Casas Grandes for tacos and beer in a plaza cafe and called it a night.

The next morning, I met some guys visiting from Santa Fe; Gary, Jack and Kim, and little Jose, age 5 (Jack and Kim are partners, and adopted Jose as a baby in Guatemala). Turned out we had many friends in common currently and historically (even from 20 years before, when Jack was in Peace Corps Guatemala and Byron & I were in Peace Corps Jamaica). I managed to invite myself to tour the area with them on Friday in their little SUV, since the roads going south were mostly dirt and not suitable for my motorcycle.

We had arranged ahead of time through Mayte (owner of Guacamayas) to have lunch and a tour of Hacienda San Diego on the way to the next village, Mata Ortiz. This huge, mostly ruined hacienda was built by Luis Terrazas at the turn of the century when he was the richest, most powerful man in Chihuahua (there is also an interesting wikipedia entry about Terrazas in Spanish). The family who still lives in the livable part of the spread are descended from a worker for Senor Terrazas. Sara made us a wonderful lunch and afterwards her 19 year old daughter Diana Acosta Ramirez, who grew up there, gave us a full tour of the hacienda in perfect English, which she learned in a bilingual school in the nearby, isolated Mormon settlement of Colonia Juarez. Her goal is to preserve the hacienda and to develop a tourguide service for the area; it's heartening to see a young Mexican woman who is so knowledgeable and proud, and wanting to share her heritage with visitors.

Next trip, I'd like to check out that little Mormon settlement and also the nearby German Mennonite colonia. The Mennonites, who have been in Chihuahua since the 1920s, speak German and wear traditional clothing (women: bonnets and long dresses, men: overalls and straw hats), but use modern machinery to produce the famous cheese, Queso Menonita, that is popular all over Mexico.

Hacienda San Diego

An outbuilding that was used as a granary

Sara, la senora (y concinera) de San Diego

One long wing of the Hacienda had been used as horse stables around an open ring. While the adobes were melting away and it appeared to be mostly ruined, it was still being used the way it had for over 100 years. As we watched, some cattle were rounded up into the ring and a horseman threw a lasso over a cow to bring it down. Little Jose was very impressed with this image.

We went to Mata Ortiz, a town that historically processed lumber and would have disappeared by now if not for the inspiration of local potter, Juan Quezada. Many years ago in his youth, Juan found some pieces of ancient Paquime pottery in a nearby cave and set about to teach himself to recreate it. After much trial and error, he began to produce beautiful, authentic pots in the old way and with old materials;local clays and pigments, firing them over an open flame. He decorated them intricately, painting designs with human hairs. Juan is now 72 years old and has taught about a third of the village to make beautiful pottery, which has become world famous. You wouldn't know it from looking at the modest town.
Jack, Kim and Gary bought a few pieces and I got one small bird-shaped pot.

Back to Casas Grandes... many guidebooks don't even mention this area in Chihuahua, which has lots of interesting sites and history. The Casas Grandes ruin is now a UNESCO site, with a very good museum and preservation efforts. Here are some pictures.

The light wasn't good, but look closely (click twice) and you can see a jack rabbit in the doorway here.

These are pens where macaws (big red parrots brought from South America) were raised, their feathers collected and traded with tribes all over this part of the world. These feathers, along with shells from the coast and precious stones from this area were also found at Chaco in northern New Mexico. Macaw in Spanish is "Guacamayas," hence the name of our hotel.

Jack, Kim and Jose at Hacienda San Diego

Back at the hotel, Gabriel, 10 yr. old son of the housekeeper and cook, was very fond of my motorcycle. He taught me the name of every part of the engine in Spanish and perched his constant companion, Carmelita, on the seat. I could hear him walking around the bike and slapping the sides of it that night and I waited to hear it fall and hit the gravel (if he'd decided to climb aboard), but fortunately that didn't happen.

Saturday morning I had breakfast at the hotel and said goodbye to the boys and the hotel staff. Back through Casas Grandes, up to Janos and through La Ascension, where I stopped for gas and men gathered around to admire my "moto." While they chatted about the bike, I pulled off my helmet and shook out my hair and they cried: "Es una senora!" My Katherine Hepburn moment. With all the winter clothes and helmet, nobody in Mexico ever guessed that I was a girl.

Made it as far as Truth or Consequences, NM that day, where I stopped for the night. The next day, north to Albuquerque from T or C (about 2 hours) was the hairiest part of the whole trip. Sharp gusty winds smacked the bike from one side and then the other, making handling very squirrely. I leaned to one side, then would suddenly be tipped the other way. Big trucks, also battling the wind, whipped by me, swirling up a sudden wake when they passed. I passed through a sandstorm that reduced visibility and got in my eyes. Finally, at Bernardo, I pulled off on side roads where there was slightly less wind, but lots of debris littering the way and I had to dodge huge rolling tumbleweeds.

But I made it home all in one piece with a very muddy motorcycle. Everybody seemed happy to see me, and we went out for Indian food.

ps - Note to other bikers headed to Mexico... you must get Mexican motorcycle insurance to ride in Mexico. I checked around but did not find a company that would provide comprehensive insurance for my particular bike model. So I contacted Adventure Mexican Insurance and they graciously added my Honda 599 to the list for full coverage. I was able to print out my policy on the computer and they sent me a map of Mexico in the mail. Great insurance company for motorcyclists.

2008-11-22T23:35:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, unless it's snowing, I plan to ride my motorcycle south to Casas Grandes, Mexico. Everyone is telling me this is a really bad idea; that I'll be slaughtered by drug cartel warfare on the border, hit by a truck and left by the side of the road to die, or algo similar. The only one not discouraging me is my husband, Byron, who is either a really good sport, is trying to get rid of me, or is just resigned to the fact that he can't talk me out of it, anyway.

Will make Thanksgiving dinner for my family before I go.

Nov. 18th

2008-11-18T10:30:00.005-07:00

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that I was in a motorcycle race, but instead of a bike, I was riding on one of those metal carts they have at Home Depot, but with an engine. It didn't corner very well, and it was hard to keep up. In the morning I wondered where that dream came from. That night, the phone rang and it was Spencer, the guy who pushed a hand cart in Port Antonio, Jamaica when we were there in the Peace Corps! First we'd heard from him in 18 years.

Spencer, with few teeth and one good eye, built the cart to transport heavy goods for people on foot. Practically nobody had a vehicle. The main part of the cart was built from scrap wood and metal. The wheels were solid rubber; he cut up discarded tires and glued the pieces together until they formed round wheels. It had a little steering wheel. Then he painted the whole thing blue, added some spangles and painted the name in ornate script, "Blue Thunder." I met Spencer when I needed to fill the propane tank for our stove. We walked up and down windy roads across town with my empty cylinder to the refill place, and back. He helped us when we had too many groceries to carry home, too. We have a god son in Port Antonio and his mom had given Spencer our number. After the usual catch up pleasantries, came, "Times, dey is tough ya so, and you know, if you sen' me a likkle someting, me would get it."
So I did.

Jamaican Buses

2008-11-04T15:56:00.004-07:00

Byron and I were in the Peace Corps in Port Antonio, Jamaica 1989-1991. Our modes of transport were 1.)on foot, 2.)bicycle (sometimes One bike: Byron on the seat, me side-saddle on the bar and baby Nigel in a pack on Byron's back!) or, if over ten miles, 3.)country bus. We wrote a lot of stories about Jamaican country buses. It will take another post to describe them. The bus owners/drivers named their buses, and the names were ornately painted on the windshield visors and on the sides. I'd love to know if any of these are still around. Here is the list of names I collected:

Jamaican bus names
Zebra Force
Living Daylights
Ayatollah
Blue Ranger
Wild Orchid
Two Pole
Secret Lover
La India
Blue Star
Illustrious Rat Fink
Uncle Zack's Holiday Tours
Iron Teeth
Flying Bomb
Luxury Liner
Explosive Don
Fatherless
Sunbeam
Life Boat
Return of the Don
Jamaican Dream
Gospel
Conquerer
Nuff Said
Faithful
Goodwill
Flipper
Street Bomber
Silver Hawk
Wild Eagle
Jesus Saves
Genus
Nigger Star (on the back it said, "Every Nigger is a Star!")
Retaliator
Champion Bubbler
Funland
Mountain Queen
Jet Set
Power of Love
Royal Rose
God's Gift
Top Celebrity
TDK Chrome
Sweet Mikey
Sir Lloyd
Israel
Professional Boops
Goldfinger
First Blood
Playboy
Super Hero
Rubber Duck
Midas Special
Disco
Hamlet & Heather
Courageous Girl (our usual beach bus)
Progress Transport
Bud Spencer
Harmony
Light Brigade
Eastern Queen
Flight
Bushmaster
K Sons
Chin's Transport
Shade's Transport
Innocent One
Terminator (almost died on that one a few times)
Eliminator
Love Train
Foreign Mind (driver liked to race other buses around blind mt. corners)
Fedder's Transport
Shaka Master
Popsickle
Intersepter
Road Master
Importunity
Morning Ride
Jah Love
King Stereo
Shaft
Roots
Mr. Majestic
Indian Flames
Eastern Warrior
Miss Thatcher
Dynasty Part I
Doctor Bird
Crystal Palace
Courtesy Transport
Cool Running
Street People
Third World
Hot Runner
Ninja
African Queen
Miami Romance
Rude Boy
Super Bob
Sheik
Street Smart
Caribbean Girl
True Love
Northern Lights
Snow White
Expendable
Sir Viv
Skank Special
Uncle Sonny's Transport
Secret Agent
Yellow Bird
Atomic
God Love Pickney
Teardrops
Flash
One Blood Style
Miami Vice
Bullet
Upseter
Upsetter
Big Sparrow
Favourite
Computer Special
Hot Number
Shiny Star
Golden Prince

A Yarn yarn (knitting in la vida loca)

2008-10-31T08:43:00.011-06:00

Went by the biggest and best yarn store in Albuquerque on my lunch break today to redeem a gift certificate I got for my birthday. You have to know exactly where you're going in order to find this place, and that's how they like it. Fabulous assortment of yarn and other soft touchy stuff from all over the world.

It's always all women in there, except also always one man comes in who is a closet knitter/weaver and there's never anything sissy about him... you wonder if he has any guy friends at all he can share his hobby with and how the hell he happened onto this diversion. The guy in there this time was returning a wooden weaving loom he had rented for a class. Looked like your every day butch kinda guy you would never guess did this sort of thing. Couldn't decide whether I should find this attractive or repellant.

The women there are all part of a kinda knitting/weaving cult. They wear quilted or woven vests - either handmade or from somewhere like Guatemala - elastic waist jeans and sensible slipper-type shoes and they speak a different lingo (like surfers, but different). There is a "membership" haircut: a super short white/gray severe little helmet-bowl pageboy with straight-cut bangs. Was it Georgia O'Keefe in her pueblo Indian stage who had that haircut? Or did they get it from some Japanese anime girl? Here's the closest picture I could find. I'm not exaggerating here: there were five women in the store with that haircut. Go there if you don't believe me.

I looked at, touched and destroyed displays all over the store (pull one skein out of the pyramid and the whole fucking lot comes tumbling down. I did it like fifty times) and finally ended up once again at my favorite assortment of yarn from a collective of women in Uruguay.

The women in this village shear the sheep, spin the wool into yarn and vat dye it wonderful colors, doing it all themselves. Then they roll the yarn into these twisted sausage things (there's a word for this, but I won't know it until they give me my official hair cut) that are tied with little pieces of yarn to keep them in the cord.

But to actually use the yarn, you have to turn it into a ball (sure there's a name for that process, too, that they share with you after they award you with your vest), and this balling process involves a complicated procedure that I don't know why the fuck they don't do this to begin with in Uruguay (but if you suggest this to the Yarn Women, they look at you like you're nuts. You carefully uncurl the sausage of yarn and loop it onto this round Amish sort of contraption with spindly wooden arms that splay out like the bottom of an umbrella, then you cut the little yarn ties, find the end - usually not an easy task - and run the end through several curly things and onto a spool with a wooden handle.

Once you get things going, it's quite fun to crank away and watch the yarn roll through the the curly thing and onto the spindle into a perfect ball.

But before that, you have to remove the little ties that hold the yarn in the thick cord. Some of the little ties are separate pieces of yarn that you can simply cut when you find the knot (#1. - why do they use a tight little knot?). Of course the ties are the same color as the bulk of the yarn they're tied to and are hard to find (tip #2. - use a different color of yarn for the ties). And a special little piece of sabotage, courtesy of the mujeres Uruguayanas; some ties are not separate little pieces but are pulled from the main bulk of yarn and if you cut them, you've severed one or two strands in the middle of the sausage. The clerk told me that no two are assembled the same, so you can never guess whether what you're cutting is something important or not.

To get help, I had to interrupt several conversations between clerks and customers about gauging swatches and complicated instructions on the conversions of numbers and measures (using various charts) and that kind of thing. I showed one clerk my skarf and said I want enough yarn to make another skarf just like it. She started translating European measures to American ones and talking about test swatches to me when another clerk walked up and grabbed my skarf and put it on a scale, then weighed the balls of yarn and sold me the amount of yarn that weighed the same as my skarf. I'm sure this aborted the whole fun ritual the first clerk tried to suck me into, but I really liked the scale solution.

Anyway, the little ties caused pain-in-the-ass delays in the whole process and there were a couple of disasterous cuts, but I finally got my yarn all balled up nice. It is beautiful stuff.

As I pushed my yarn into my motorcycle pack, I said to the clerks, "My dream is to someday go to Uruguay." They smiled. "I want to go up into the mountains and find the village where they produce this wool and make this yarn. I want to find the woman who spins, dyes and rolls this yarn into a coil and knots those little invisible ties...

And then I'm going to slap her hard across the face."

Couple of little titters from the Yarn Ladies.
And with that, off I went, a final sharp backfire from my pipe as I squealed out of the parking lot.

The Quemado Loop

2008-10-18T22:21:00.007-06:00

Joined the biker buddies today for another epic New Mexico loop ride - this time west to Grants, south through El Malpais to Quemado, east through Magdalena to Socorro and north home to Albuquerque. If I knew how to create a map in Google, I'd post one here!

Just before the start of last week's ride, I announced in the parking lot that I was gonna run to the bathroom and would be right back and came out to find that everyone had just left without me and I had to go screaming through the canyon to catch up with them. So this morning when I got to the coffee shop where the group was meeting, I parked perpendicular in front of a couple of Harleys in the parking lot, blocking them in. Those bad boys weren't going anywhere until I was ready to go. I just hoped they were part of my group.

About 17 riders (Harleys, Goldwings, an assortment of really fast sportbikes, one 650cc Bergman scooter, plus me on my cool Honda Hornet) headed west on a fast freeway full of dueling semi trucks - what used to be Rt. 66. Cold and windy. Unfortunately no smokers in today's group, so I couldn't depend on a stop at the reservation casino so I could use the bathroom and put on my windbreaker. To be sure I wouldn't be ditched, I flew to the start of the line and took an exit. It's fun to pull off the freeway and make a big line of bikers turn off to follow you. They all yelled at me when they saw my windbreaker, "Get Leathers!". Bikers.

Just before Grants, we took a turn-off south through El Malpais National Monument, where things start to get interesting. I noticed the trailhead for the Zuni-Acoma trail, a thousand year old path that linked the Acoma and Zuni pueblos crossing several lava flows. It is apparently marked with rock cairns that are hundreds of years old and lava bridges built by native people before the Europeans arrived. Definitely on my list of things to do.

We stopped at the Ventana arch, where I took the above picture. The trail to the base of the arch only gives you a straight-on view, and the first picture I took was disappointing because the arch blended in with the cliff behind it and you couldn't really differentiate them. Then, a lucky shaft of light hit the cliff behind the arch and I got this shot!

Other than a few occasional ranches, this land is uninhabited and pristine. Some miles before reaching Quemado we passed a guy shooting a rifle out the passenger window of his parked truck - not sure what he was shooting at - but it seemed very unsportsmanlike (Palin-esque?), not to mention simply a stupid thing to do. Later, a truck passed us with a trophy-sized set of antlers attached to a garbage bag-covered elk's head emerging from a box on the back. Hunting season was already livening up this part of the state.

We arrived in the small, isolated town of Quemado ("burnt" in Spanish - one account has it that the first settlers to the area found the banks of the river blackened by fire, probably from one of the common lightening strikes. Another account is that an Apache chief burned his hand in a fire here. Or something. I'll make up something better).

After Quemado comes Pie Town. so named because Clyde Norman staked a mining claim here in 1922 which didn't pan out. But he liked to bake and his pies became famous on the route. They still have a Pie Festival every year, of course. I heard that there's a bed and breakfast there with a powerful telescope and, out on the plains so far from any city lights, on a clear night there is an excellent view of the universe from this place. Another entry on my "To Do" list.

Beyond Quemado, the road passes through the VLA, which stands for the Very Large Array (which attracts a lot more visitors than the PBA, the "Pretty Big Array"). It's an eerie and beautiful place; these alien looking satellite dishes lined up on the Plains of San Augustin, their faces searching the universe.

Then into Magdalena, my favorite little mining town in New Mexico, where we argued about lunch and I threw a little tantrum because I was hungry, but lost out to those who wanted to push on for Socorro. Finally stopped for good Mexican food then raced north to Albuquerque, our gang leapfrogging lanes with an enormous semi-truck packed with recycle cardboard. Dude passed me going almost 100 mpg.

Nigel's TV show

2008-10-06T11:42:00.014-06:00

Update: The Show was cancelled after they filmed all the episodes. They are rerunning the first three and then we don't know what happens. Someday we will see the episodes that feature Nigel, we hope!

My son Nigel has a small speaking role in a new TV series being filmed in Albuquerque and the cast party for the premier show was at a downtown Albuquerque bar last Sunday night. I decided to go with him because, you know, he's under-age and I was afraid they wouldn't let him in ::cough:: I wanted to people-watch and get free drinks ::cough::

It was easy to spot the non-Albuquerque (NY/Calif./Hollywood, etc.) types at the party, here in town as cast members or working on the production:

1.) Excessive embroidery and piping on the "trying to look like a local"cowboy shirt
2.) jeans tucked into cowboy boots (whew, how wrong is that)
3.) freakishly tall girlfriends
4.) hey dude; a mullet, no matter how much you paid for it, is still a mullet
5.) expensive frosted hair on a man; not common in Albuquerque
6.) backwards French baret (quite a number of those)
7.) of course, some men still wearing skarves around their necks

But lots of free drinks and food and fun people watching, so hey, I'm good.

A dwarf in the show (and in real life, of course) handed me a drink and asked if I was in the cast. I said no, I was Nigel's mom. He asked who Nigel was, so I pointed him out across the room and he said, "Your son is ... Black??" I said yeah.... and told him that Nigel was born in Jamaica, so the "little person" put on a bad Jamaican accent; "yeah mon, he's from de islands!" (and I did NOT reply by singing "Ding dong, the witch is dead") He sported the backwards beret and told me he wasn't sure if he would be in the pilot and he wasn't, so watch for him in later episodes of the show. Boy was he working the room. But I got a crick in my neck looking down at this Cornish Game person (I know... I'm going to hell), so I moved on to go "accidentally" stand next to the David Becham-look alike star of the show "Morgan" standing at the bar.

"Morgan" was very nice and down to earth and gave Nigel a big hug. I sat by him while we watched the opening scenes of the show on the big screen, which I loved because I'm a Burqeña and it was all local scenes. They were obviously focusing on the podunk aspects of our city, although the Sandia Mountains made a few grand appearances. Sleazy strip malls, dusty low income apartments, depressing McMansion "Tuscan" style houses lined up on the Westside. Got the sense that they were laughing at us, but "Morgan" told me that's a good thing, because we don't want them to move here, anyway. Es la verdad.

Nigel didn't appear in the pilot but will have a role in later episodes, in some cases even doing a little slapstick, so I hope they show those. The pilot seemed a little slow-moving in places (probably partly because the sound was poor in the bar and I couldn't hear much of the dialog), but reading the later scripts, it picks up a lot more interest in later episodes. So be sure to keep watching. The cast seemed to particularly like the scene where Morgan beat the guy up in the bathroom. They howled and applauded at that.

I chatted with one guy with a semi-(manufactured?) British accent and asked if he lived here. He said, "well, ONE of my houses is here" (did you ever read the David Sedaris story where he and his mom run into a woman in a dry cleaner who said that: "ONE of my homes..." and they liked how that sounded so much, Sedaris and his mom practiced saying that over and over?). But this guy I was talking to complained that it's too expensive to live in New Mexico full time. Turns out his house is in Santa Fe. I said, "Well, there's your problem right there. Albuquerque is the place to be." I caught his quick roll of eyes, but I reminded him that Judge Reinhold (also in this TV show) has a house in Albuquerque blocks from our old place in Nob Hill (and I dare say, my good man, that JUDGE REINHOLD is a bigger star than you, sir!). I was really popular at this party, as you might imagine.

Nigel has become friends with an actor named Jesus (20-something Hispanic guy - he was in the pilot, working in the office) and he is quite adorable and has a lot of charisma. He was wearing a skarf on his head and HE at least, gets away with that. He and Nigel have some goofball scenes together in later episodes.

After the show was over, the disco lights came on in the bar and everybody hit the dance floor. Nigel and Jesus were disappointed by the tame, formulaic dance styles of the others, so they jumped in and showed them how it is done. God, Nigel can dance. He didn't get it from me. The girl who played the pretty grad student (who gave DNA tests in the mall) in the show danced with Nigel and then Nigel left to dance and "wine" with the chubby girl who plays the office worker. Nigel prefers the girls with meat on their bones, I've noticed.

We left around 10:30pm and, walking down the Central toward our car, Nigel did a little saunter and said to me sideways, "Do I look like a guy who just came out of a club?" He's not kidding when he says dorky things like that either, which I think is one of his most endearing qualities.

This morning he was off at 7am to fight the Balloon Fiesta traffic to get to the set for more filming. Stay tuned, even if it's just another friggin TV show!

Bright Ideas and New Inventions

2008-09-05T15:13:00.006-06:00

Today I was sitting in a business meeting busily taking notes, but they weren't about the subject matter of the meeting; it was a list of new inventions. These have been in the back of my mind for awhile, so I thought I'd write them down. And I want to hear yours.

1. - I don't know who came up with the exercise wheel for hamsters and mice, but I think it's a brilliant idea, and how the hell did they know this would work? It seems like it would be an easy thing to add a ticker to the wheel that charts how far the mouse runs in a night. Is it miles? You could monitor the fitness progress in your hamster, race two different mice, create charts and graphs, etc., maybe even harness energy to power a light. I'd like to have this, anyway.

This is a picture of a pygmy hedgehog running on a wheel. The site said, "pygmy hedgehogs are nocturnal and can run eight miles a night." But I'm not sure how they know this.

1.a - We have a maniac dog that runs patterns in the backyard and sometimes does figure 8s in the house when he didn't get out on a run with me in the morning. I want to make a big wheel for him to run on. Could I train him to do it if I had one? I think other people would buy this invention, too.

2. - Big problem in Africa, Sumatra, Java, etc. is the poaching of rhinoceroses (rhinoceri) for their horns, which are used, primarily in the Far East, for medicinal purposes. The horn is worth over $60,000 a pound in Taiwan, so people aren't going to stop killing them soon. Most species are critically endangered.

Here's one strategy to combat this problem, but it only targets the medicine salesmen and not the poachers, so wouldn't have an immediate effect. Of course they have rangers policing the reserves, but they can't do much when there is so much money to be made. And educating the buying market that horns are just made from keratin, the same type of protein that makes up hair and fingernails and not likely to have any real medicinal value isn't going to happen soon, either.

Here's my idea: You drop the wild rhino with a sleeping dart and saw off the horn(s). That sounds drastic, but these things are going to disappear soon, so drastic measures are what we need. We start a company that makes prosthetic horns that look like the real thing (Hollywood does this kind of thing all the time) and superglue them on the rhino and send em on his merry way. And then we sell the real horns to the Chinese. Big game hunters can buy permits to shoot the rhinos with the sleeping darts. It's a money-maker all around and we save a species. It would work for elephant tusks, too.

3. I heard about a great invention recently - a universal remote you can get that will turn off any TV, including the annoying one above and behind your head in the bar that your barmate keeps glancing at while you're trying to tell an interesting story. I love this, because I hate all TVs and especially ones that interrupt me.We need something like this for other people's cell phones. If it causes a loud blast in the ear or an electric shock before it turns them off, all the better. Especially if the person is driving a car. I think there are probably related inventions you can come up with here too, to sabotage appliances and technology that get in the way.

4. Another already-invented idea that interests me like the hamster wheel (and I wonder who came up with this and how they knew it would work) is the hummingbird feeder. I'm looking for similar inventions to attract weird species.Okay, your turn.

Ramblin' Virgen de Guadalupe

2008-08-26T16:53:00.013-06:00

Aug. 26, 2008

Some time ago, our neighbor cut a tree down in his front yard but left the trunk, painted it white and sky blue,and carved a nicho in it for an altar to la Virgen de Guadalupe. Then he built a platform around the trunk and put a roof over it and hung open curtains for added effect. And then he propped a Spanish Conquistador coat of arms there as a guard too, for good measure. (You can click on the picture to get a close-up) Very nice. I saw this when I was first looking at buying our house, and it kind of sealed the deal. That, and his herd of sheep at the end of the block.

Then, in a very un-Catholic move, his wife suddenly divorced him and even plucked the Virgin statue out of the tree on her way out the door! It was sad to see that empty hole-in-the-tree altar, kind of representing the dissolution of their marriage AND the loss of the other lady in his life at the same time.

This guy has lots of pets: sheep, rabbits, chickens, dogs, an elderly turkey (who knew turkeys got old)... I wonder if his wife just got forced out, or fled.

Here is his side yard with the dogs and some sheep.

Anyway, about 6 months later, the house next to his (3 down from ours) was suddenly vacated. The family there had several weekend yard sales, then all of a sudden they were gone, leaving a carport full of what looked like abandoned stuff and junk. I didn't see anyone there for a couple of weeks and the house looked empty. I think it was a foreclosure deal.

They had a shrine to La Virgen de Guadalupe too; next to the abandoned house sat their Madonna looking very forlorn in her little wooden shelter, surrounded by blackened candles and swimming pool noodles (?).

So late one night, I stole her, carried her over and set her in the empty tree shrine belonging to the divorced guy next door.

She was too big for the tree nicho, so I just set her on the platform, leaning against the tree.

Then the people who I thought had left came back and put up a "For Sale By Owner" sign on their house. They've been back a few times to load their stuff up.

(This is a picture of their altar, sans stolen Madonna)

I have no idea if they have noticed Our Lady is now next door or if the guy who has suddenly acquired her knows where she came from.

I'm sure they all just think it's a miracle.

Motorcycle Diaries - Chama

2008-08-03T19:14:00.006-06:00

July, 2008

The Albuquerque Motorcycle Riders Group trip description for Saturday, July 26, 2008, was ambitious; ride up through Cuba to Abiquiu, then north to Chama for lunch near the border of Colorado, then back down side roads south through Madrid and back to Albuquerque in one day.

The leader, Jim, who probably has gear and a bike built for trips to Tierra del Fuego, apparently experienced four drops of rain after leaving the house, so he turned around and bagged the trip. He “doesn’t do rain,” he said later. I hope he does do endless chiding, ridicule, girly nicknames and other humor at his expense, because that’s what he’s going to get from that group. Any credit for the last fifty trips he’s organized and led will vanish.

But about ten of us did show up to ride and Johnny took the lead. At Cuba, we turned east on a little road heading up into the Los Padres National Forest. It was a beautiful forest road, but the wrong one, as we found out when, after crossing a cattle guard at around 50 mph, the road suddenly turned to gravel. Whoa, lil doggies! I fishtailed the bike a little when I braked, but managed to save it. We turned around and found the right road east through the little towns of Regina (pronounced to rhyme with a certain female body part) and Coyote on the way to Abiquiu.

This is the area of gorgeous red and white cliffs made famous by the artist Georgia O’Keefe.

We had lunch at the Abiquiu Inn, very nice and a little swankier than we’re used to. I felt like maybe we shoulda busted some stuff or started a fight at least to keep our reputations as bad ass bikers, but we resisted the temptation, conversed cordially and enjoyed our $9.50 green chile cheese burgers. Everyone decided that Chama would make it too long of a day, so some headed back down through the Jemez mountains, others headed back through Madrid to Albuquerque. I said goodbye to the others and headed north alone.

Red, yellow and white cliffs, spires and boulders; thunderstorms in the distance adding a glow to the rocks... hard to keep my eyes on the road! I stopped at the Echo Amphitheater that Georgia O'Keefe painted.

Just before the town of Chama, the imposing Brazos Cliffs appear to the east. In another lifetime, somewhere around the early 1980s, I climbed this cliff – 18 rope pitches – with the adventurous Los Alamos physicists who originally pioneered the first climbing routes up the face. I can’t believe I did that. We also did some excellent fly fishing on the Brazos River back in the olden days.The rain was coming down pretty good by now and I had already decided that this wasn’t going to be a one day trip.

So I found a motel in Chama, just like the one I pictured in my mind, with a portal porch and a bench in front of the room where I could read my book and a view out the back window of a green field with horses grazing.

They have had a LOT of rain in Chama, so it’s shockingly green. And it was such a heavy winter that the one grocery store, many other buildings and barns were crushed under the snow.

I had an early dinner at the High Country Restaurant and Saloon, which I remembered from that other lifetime when I used to come here after XC ski races on Cumbres Pass to drink beer. “Didn’t this place used to be bigger?” I asked the bartender. “Did they add walls to separate it into the restaurant and bar?” The bartender said no, it’s always been like this. “How old are you?” I asked him. Gulp, he was 24 years old, so I was remembering a time from my young adulthood, before he was born.

After dinner, I took a ride up over Cumbres Pass and crossed into Colorado. Like Switzerland, it looked. Now here is the problem with having a camera on a trip. If you see something beautiful or interesting and you don’t happen to have your camera with you at that moment, you don’t appreciate at all what you see. You only get pissed off that you aren’t able to RECORD the scene in your camera. I stopped my bike to look at the river, then noticed a small herd of elk grazing in the meadow right next to the road; three cows and a large bull elk with a trophy-looking rack. He raised his head regally, munching grass while the evening light glowed on his antlers. And the river tumbling alongside, the green green meadow sweeping up to a pine forest… it was like one of those color-by-number paintings. And all I could think of was my camera back in the room. Shit.

I got packed and on the bike by 7:30 am and rode west to the Jicarilla Apache reservation. After some spitting rain, I dropped into fog so thick that I could hardly see the road. And then a sign that warned of road work, specifically warning “Motorcyclists Use Extreme Caution.” After a mile or two of squirrelly road and weather conditions, I got to Dulce where I stopped for breakfast and looked at the map.

There was a route south through Jicarilla Apache land about 65 miles to where it met the road to Cuba. No towns, no markings on the map to show anybody there at all. I mulled this over. What if I crashed my bike and nobody found me? “She died doing what she loved to do” they would say.

Yeah, right. Just for the record, nobody wants to die doing what they love to do. We want to LIVE doing what we love to do, which is why we love to do it. And why we want to live. We want to die a long time later, if ever (preferably quietly in our sleep after we're done doing what we love to do). So unless you know somebody who “loves” to jump off the roof into a pit full of rattlesnakes and spear points, don’t try to comfort their survivors with that inanity.

That being said, I decided to take that isolated road south. I stopped to take pictures of flowers and explore a couple of canyons on foot. Gorgeous scenery, puffy white clouds in the sky. Not a soul anywhere around. I loved it and I loved that I didn’t die doing it.

I joined the road to Cuba and somewhere on the highway just past San Isidro, a small truck passed me in the right lane. Since I was in the passing lane already, I decided I should go ahead and pass him, too. I sped up, he sped up, and I got my bike up to 105 mph. That’s the fastest I’ve been on a motorcycle and, more importantly, I beat the truck.

Here's a church I saw in Cuba that celebrates the motorcycle brethren (sistren?) and the sky and landscape behind it.

After work ride to Madrid

2008-08-03T18:29:00.004-06:00

After work, Colin and I met at PJ's Triumph/Ducati motorcycle dealership, where they tried to lock us in and make us buy new sportbikes before they closed. We didn't fall for that old trick. But when they told Colin that "his" Ducati GT1000 wouldn't be imported in the two-tone cream color in 2009 (when he planned to be able to afford one), he almost started crying. Way embarrassing for me, so we hit the road through the canyon to Madrid on the old road to Santa Fe.

Charcoal-colored tufts lined the ridge of the crest with steamy fingers creeping down the canyons (this is called "piadjamo" in the Laguna Indian language) as we headed across the plains behind the Sandia mountains, but we dodged the rain. It was cool and gusty with those special rosy early evening colors found only in this part of the world... I tell you, if Dexter McStyles had been riding bitch on the back of my bike, even HE would have been thanking God he lives in New Mexico.

Colin mused about the sign on the road that warned of deer crossing if the lights were flashing, wondering if the deer knew to press a button or something to make the lights flash. On the way back, he slowed to let a deer cross illegally where there was no sign.

(I took this photo off the web; those aren't our bikes!) We parked the bikes in front of the Mineshaft Tavern, where we saw a purple martin on the telephone line and a rainbow overhead. Languid locals lolled on the lounge lookout and labradors loped down the lane (i.e. the main street through town). Another big black dog mingled table to table inside while we had green chile cheeseburgers and dark beer. I wish I was on a trust fund and could live there, too, shooting the breeze with the raggity guys out on the veranda as the sun goes down. Gettin' up late to paint pictures all day.

Heading back to town, orange, blue and pink shot through the cloudsover the mountains.

August 4th update! Colin happened to call PJ's (like he wasn't probably calling them every day...) the other day and found out somebody traded in a bike; HIS bike! Sweet.

Colin's new Ducati

Getting Away with Shit

2008-08-03T18:26:00.000-06:00

The down side of being a middle-aged, white female is that you are invisible. Clerks step on your foot on their way to help younger customers. Nobody suspects or accuses you of doing anything exciting or illicit. You become your own mom.So I let it work for me.When you're stereotyped, it's amazing what shit you can get away with.One year - I think Al Gore was running for president - there was a big rally at the Hispanic Cultural Center

and all kinds of dignitaries were there. Bill Clinton, Gov. Richardson, other bigwig politicians and celebrities and tribal chiefs, etc. Linda Rondstat was playing. Thousands of people showed up and the whole place was packed. Lots of people crowded the plaza, but my friend, son and I managed to get seats up in the (outdoor) ampitheater.

Of course, as soon as we sat down I needed to pee, and where to go? Somebody said there were portapotties out by the parking lot, but I didn't want to weave my way all the way back there, so I went up the ampitheater steps to the second story plaza, where there was an entrance to the building.Outside this entrance were four serious, all-in-black, sunglasses, weapons, communication devices and other esoterica around their belts, knee-high boots, etc. scary federal military SWAT police security guard-guys. I approached the building and they widened their stance, put up their hands and said, "Sorry, ma'am, the governor and president are inside; no one is allowed to enter." I gave them my most reassuring Donna Reed look and said, "Oh, thanks for being here. It's okay. I work here." (which I don't)

They parted like the sea for Moses and one even opened the door for me. In the hall, Bill and Richard were chatting and I greeted them cordially on my way to the bathroom. When I got back to my seat, a pregnant woman sitting next to me said to her husband, "Oh shoot, I have to go to the bathroom and I don't want to walk all that way." "Why don't you go in the building upstairs?" I asked. "Oh, I tried that. They wouldn't let me in," she says. That's okay, hon, I'll let you in.We went up the stairs and the feds looked at the pregnant woman and I said, "It's okay. She's with me." And in we went! Hah! What power. And how scary for the state of our national security, but anyway.

So last week, there was a local election in Albuquerque. There were a few candidates I really wanted to support. I knew Dede Feldman was going to win the primary, but I still agonized about the time she lost a local election by like six votes. My husband left town last week and didn't submit an absentee ballot. This bugged... that his vote would go uncounted. UNLESS. What if I go vote in the morning before work, then come back after work and vote in his name? The folks at the voting table would either be a new shift and wouldn't know me or old enough that they wouldn't remember me - yet another middle-aged white woman, y'know. Only problem is that my husband's name is Byron. Would this fly? A girl named Byron?The night before the election, while I am mulling committing this latest federal crime, I am in Bookworks on Rio Grande and find this book by an author named Byron Katie. A woman named Byron! Hah! Maybe she was my aunt and I was named after her? So I bought the book as evidence to carry along to the voting booth.Well, I didn't end up committing voter fraud and all my candidates won, anyway.But, btw, the book by Byron Katie is really good! A Thousand Names for Joy; Living in Harmony for the Way Things AreIt's one of those Buddhist-based self-help books with simple ideas for re-framing the way you see things, which may even help me stop and think before going over and bitch-slapping my co-worker who is endlessly playing Celine Dion in her cubicle right now.

The Motorcycle Princess

2008-08-03T18:14:00.004-06:00

My significant others left Thursday morning, driving to Pittsburgh. A few hours later I am damsel in distress who can't handle simple mechanical issues with my motorcycle, right before a planned weekend to ride to Carrizozo.

There is a reason why I never learn - because there is always a, uh, knight around to do it for me. Pathetic is right.So I came out of a neighborhood association meeting to find my motorcycle with a dead battery. Can't quite flat-foot the thing and no hill nearby, so I gave up on the push start thing after a half-hearted try. Not too far from home, so I walked back to the house and got the van.

I "kind of" know how to jump a battery: clamp positive to positive and negative to negative and start the bike (but don't start the car). But I also know you can blow yourself up, or at least that's what I heard. I'm really not into any chance of battery acid spraying into my face or exploding machines or anything like that.It was about 8:30pm, but I had noticed in the past some guys working late in an open-fronted Harley chopper shop down on 4th St., so I headed down there and met Ernesto. He's this grizzled old tattoed guy (probably my age, unfortunately) with a ZZ Top beard and grey braid down his back, a black tee shirt, smoking a cigarette, torqueing spokes on a Harley rim. His customer is due any minute to pick up the wheel and then I show up, asking him to leave the shop and come jump my battery over on Griegos St..

Well, 'Nesto doesn't have transportation. And he doesn't have jumper cables. And, not only that, he's not even sure how to find the battery on a "metric machine." And then, he warns, there was the time some guy on a Honda stopped by and Ernesto broke the seat on his ("rice-burner") bike trying to get it off...

But I didn't leave. Don't worry your pretty little head, 'Nesto, I know where the battery is and how to get the seat off; you just have to hook up the cables and do the fireworks part.

Next thing you know, the barred shop door is rolled down and locked, there's a "be right back" note on the door and I've got my "knight" in the van, cruising down 4th St.!I got the seat and side panel off, Ernesto jumped the bike engine from the van in no time (and of course I didn't watch to see how it's done, because there are Nestos everywhere, in my experience), then he followed me home; me on the bike, him in my van. Dropped off the bike at the house and we headed back to the shop to drop him off. "So, you drink beer, Nesto?" (DUH) and sure enough he does, so I left him there with his customer and came back later with a couple of six packs of Dos Equis. It would have been rude of me to leave, so I hung around, sitting on a box under a Boobies calendar, drinking beer and watching these guys do their thing.

So I still can't use jumper cables but I know all about how to true a spoked wheel on a Harley (or to use enough of the lingo to pretend I do) and that this guy Carlos is the best in town at free-hand painting flames on gas tanks and that his uncle's cousin, Dave Campos, held a motorcycle speed record for, like, 16 years. A souped-up Harley, no less. So I guess I came out ahead in the end, with a story.

You know, just in case you have an opportunity to mention that a friend of yours you know online had her battery jumped by a guy who works on a bike owned by a guy whose uncle's cousin held the motorcycle land speed record on a Harley. I'm not sure if there's a Kevin Bacon degrees deal for this kind of thing, though.