just when i decide to give up

on this thing, somebody (other than me) posts.

Here I am in Belen (you remember Belen, don't you Scott?) New Mexico. Belen is another NM small town on I-25 (the "nucular highway") that, though larger than T or C, is in many ways even sadder. God Bless evil McDonalds (where I am right now), they've got freakin' wifi! When I get to Socorro later today, I'm counting on NM Tech to have wifi. NM Tech (official name: New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology) is the main reason that Socorro is less sad than the other dusty small towns that dot the Valley here. NM Tech is kind of the MIT of New Mexico, plus it's the home of the National Radio Astronomy Organization (yeah, I know, this is all gobeldy-gook to you guys). Anyway, I'm here to kill more vacation days and do some mountain biking around Socorro and get away from the fucking fog. In did Amtrak again, and got into Albuquerque around noon yesterday. But I was only able to do 32 miles, stopping in Belen, cuz I was feeling like shit. I've done this enough now (3 times) to know that the change in altitude from sea level to 5000 ft kicks my but the first day I'm here. I checked into the Super 8 and slept 15 hours. I feel a lot better today.

The trip here was pretty wild. My train was scheduled to leave the Emeryville station at 7:40 am Sunday morning, and I figured I would take BART over to the east bay at 6am, then walk from the Ashby (Berkeley) BART station to the Amtrak station, which takes about 40 minutes, and arrive with a few minutes to spare (which is what I did last time). My assumptions, however, fucked up the plan: BART doesn't open until 8 am on Sundays! What kind of major city public transportation system opens at 6am on Saturday but 8am on Sunday? I didn't call Winston to drive me over, because I'm trying to break up with his negative ass at the moment. So I got to the Amtrak station 2 hours late, just in time for the NEXT train to Bakersfield (there's no direct train to LA, where the Southwest Chief boards and departs for Chicago (and points in between, including Albuquerque). The usual plan is that I get on a connecting bus at Bakersfield that takes me to Union Station in LA, where there is a 2 hour layover until the Southwest Chief boards. I had already lost that 2 hours, so I was fully expecting to spend the night in LA and get the NEXT chief leaving at 6:45am Monday (Union Station is right next to LA Chinatown, so at least I was looking forward to a good meal). But as I was boarding the bus at Bakersfield, the ticket agent tells me to go to the ticket counter and tell them to call a cab to take me to Victorville so I could catch up with the Southwest Chief. WHAAA?! So indeed, the agent calls a cab (no expense to me) to take me and 2 other folks trying to get to Albuquerque to Victorville (or "Ville" as they call it down there); apparently they do this all the time! So I took this crazy 150 mile cab ride across the Mojave desert to another crappy dusty small town where the cabby "babysat" us until the train showed up at around 10 pm (the train station is 'Ville is dinky and shuts down at 5pm, so basically we just sat in the parking lot for 2 hours). We stopped in the town of Mojave for dinner at this weird little mom and pop diner. The walls were decorated with photos of various celebrities from Judy Garland to Alfalfa of "Our Gang" fame. There were two autographed celeb photos near the entrance: one of a young Tom Cruise, which I cvan understand, since "Top Gun" was filmed in and around Mojave; and one of Adam Sandler, and why Adam Sandler was in Mojave, I have no idea. There was also a rather well done fantasy drawing of Elvis, Humphry Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean all lounging in and about a circa-mid-50's convertible cadillac. A freaking masterpiece!

At any rate, the Chief finally showed up and so I ended up not losing time on my itinerary after all. Kudos to Amtrak for blowing all that money on cab fare so I could take a fancy short cut! And the trip through the desert was like a stroll down memory lane, because that was the same route I used to drive (usually) when going from T or C to San Francisco way back when!

So the lesson here is: in the future, if I'm catching the 7:40 train out of Emeryville, just sleep over at the BFC.


Well, I've been lingering here too long, gotta get on the road.