Things I Learned on a High Plains Desert and in a Cop Car

6/11/11 11:13am

I've been here for about 48 hours now and I've learned a few things. First off, Albuquerque is high. Really high. Like Denver high. I'm about a mile above sea level. Ten miles out the window of the coffee shop I'm sitting in is a mountain that's easily another mile up.
        Second, cop cars handle like boats. When the guy I'm staying with said he had an old cop car I could use I thought he meant he had something similar to a cop car. You know, the old Crown Vic that has enough living space for a family of four. What I didn't expect was the very visible outline of the word SHERIFF across the front doors where a decal had been removed and the same thing with the car number written across the back of the roof. This thing is unbelievable. After seeing it I was very happy I brought my cheap, gold rimmed Aviators.  License and registration please. Check out the two pictures of it below. It's cool. What wouldn't be cool is trying to pilot this tank in anything resembling a high speed pursuit. This thing bounces and chugs along,  fighting you the whole way. The only thing its missing is the saddle. You don't drive this car, you ride it.

        Third, we do not have Mexican food in Alabama. We think we do but we don't. I had blue corn chicken enchiladas with green chile sauce on the recommendation of a person that used to live here. Wow, much better than Taco Casa. And I really like Taco Casa. (Actually they don't here apparently either. I was just corrected. It's New Mexico food on account of the fact that they use chili peppers instead of jalapenos.)
        Fourth, the world physically expands the further west you go. In Alabama a 5 hour drive was the upper limit for weekend trips. Anything longer than that required a significant time commitment to justify. If that were the case here I could go to Santa Fe or the barren wasteland of the New Mexico high plains desert to die. Okay, that's an exaggeration but you get the idea. In five hours from Birmingham you can get to Altanta, Panama City, Orange Beach, New Orleans, Tuscaloosa, Auburn, Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Huntsville... The southeast is a small, densely packed region apparently. I didn't know that. But there's more then that. In Birmingham I lived on a hill and the farthest I could see on a clear day is about 20 miles, to the steam towers of the West Jefferson Steam Plant. The first day I got here I could see the outline of  a mountain that is about a hundred miles away from my backyard. I could see a mesa that was 30 miles away quite clearly. It's incredible.
        Fifth, wild fires suck. There is a very bad wild fire in the mountains to the south west of Albuquerque and the winds are blowing the smoke through the city. It isn't that bad but it makes the air hazy and breathing more difficult if you have something like asthma. I have asthma. Lovely. They say that it will probably burn itself out fairly soon.
        Sixth, finding a sports bar in a new town is impossible without the internet. It is made infinitely harder if the town you happen to be in is filled with hippies and hiking/outdoors people. Apparently these people are not interested in watching and would prefer doing. Losers.
        Seventh, Albuquerque is great but Albuquerque is weird. On the way here I passed a van parked on the side of the road selling beef jerky. It wasn't selling beef jerky and other things, just beef jerky. That means that somewhere there is a man here that decided that he would start a business with the model being he would make his own jerky and then market his product with yellow signs on the side of the road. At some point the cold realization probably set in that these signs require some sort of physical support and his hopes for financial independence through salted meats were almost dashed till he remember that the van that he was probably living in could support said signs and an empire was born. He now lives in as many as three vans and scatters them along the roads of Bernalillo County to sell his wares. A true American success story. On that same road that I saw the beef jerky van(s) I also was a plexiglass walled, homemade trailer with a sign over it that read "REAL INSECTS AND BUTTERFLIES". I must give that guy credit. I didn't know there was a market there.
        Alright everybody, thanks for reading.
Later
Madison