Going Nowhere Fast

After dropping off my car at the rental place at the airport this morning, I boarded the shuttle bus that takes one to the terminal. The bus was pretty much full when I got on. I looked around and pretty soon realized that I was sharing the bus with the Brigham Young University women's track team. Two coaches and a few of the students were discussing the new Rocky movie. The correlation between having a big head and having a strong neck was also a topic of discussion.

The bus arrived at the terminal and I left the BYU track folks behind. To my dismay, I quickly found out that my flight from Albuquerque to Dallas was cancelled. So were almost all other flights into or out of Dallas, or into or out of Chicago. Weather had pretty much shut down both airports for a while. This led to a chain effect where a vast many travelers had to rebook tickets. The net result is that I am still in New Mexico, and the earliest flight I could get home is Tuesday. So I'll miss two additional days at COA, which I hadn't planned on at all.

But I'm trying to view this as a gift. After all, there's nothing I can do about it, so I might as well put my mind to enjoying a few additional days in Santa Fe. (And I might not even get that far behind, as there are less little distractions here than there are back home, so I can probably get a ton of work done.) Right now I'm sitting at the Santa Fe Institute, listening to a Blank and Jones mix, and watching an absolutely amazing sunset. Life could be worse.

After dealing with my cancelled flights and getting rebooked for Tuesday, I re-rented a car and spent a while poking around Albuquerque. A used bookstore that I like was having a 40% off sale, so I bought a few books. And I also got a few CDs at a store near the bookstore. For lunch, I had some bad Chinese food, which was nevertheless oddly satisfying. There was a little Chinese kid, presumably the son of the person working at the register, who spent a long time staring at me. Kinda felt like I was back in China. Although if I was in China the food would have been much better.

Albuquerque is a weird place. It was sunny today, and there was a slight haze. This gave the city a peculiar glint -- like slightly over exposed film. Driving around, I must have seen at least one of every fast food chain. I noted that Arby's was advertising free high speed internet. Interesting. I wouldn't have thought that fast-food roast beef and the internet are a natural pair. It's somewhat sad to realize that an Albuquerque Arby's has better internet connectivity than I do at my house back in Maine.

Albuquerque seems to have an unusually large number of tattoo parlors. I wonder what US city has the highest tattoo shop per capita. I bet Albuquerque is at least in the top ten.

The sun has been behind the mountains for quite some time now, and there is an intense strip of orange on the horizon. There are purple clouds and the sky is dark blue.

Time for me to do a little more work and then head out in search of food.