Flying Los Alamos to Albuquerque

Pacific Airways operating as New Mexico Air introduced a commercial flight (reintroduced really, maybe third iteration of commercial flights out of Los Alamos) back and forth to Albuquerque airport. I took the flight in late May amid light rain and cloud cover. Flights are $50 and 30 minutes each way, which beats the hell out of the 100 mile 1 hour 45 minute drive. The schedule is still getting dialed in but if it works for your connections, it is a fun little trip. Flight seats 9. Pretty much takes off and from Los Alamos and follows the Rio Grande down to Albuquerque, banks around a bit and you are there. See all the photos here If you like little planes and flying photos, check out a post about the last flight I took out of here
Update! Sharp memoried former Los Alamoosan Chad recalled the following incident related to Los Alamos airport history: airplane fornication

Handsome little Cessna 208 Grand Caravan

Taking off from Los Alamos County Airport (LAM)

Looking back over the town,lab and ski hill

White Rock Canyon and the Rio Grande

Jumbly Badlands in Cochiti

More Rio Grande in Cochiti Pueblo

Planned Sprawl North West of Albuquerque

Rio Grande Closer to Albuquerque

Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque

Landing at the Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)

Anyhow, I will take it again. I urge you to as well if it makes sense for your trip. The flight was pretty smooth, certainly smoother than the times I have flown from Santa Fe to Denver. The air service is heavily subsidized, likely at numerous levels, and I am not super confident that this will last in the long run at this price, but it probably makes some financial sense at some weird level for all of us to use it as we probably paid for the subsidies through our taxes as we do for all our transportation. So don't worry about it and enjoy the flight...

Riding in the wet and dry

A couple of coincidental trips put me and my buddy Charlie riding about in Seattle and Albuquerque in the span of a week.

First there was some of this humid stuff.

Then some rainforest shredding with Charlie and his oldest

Then there was a bunch of this dry stuff.

Probably about 5000 feet altitude, 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and 70% humidity difference between the two.

Bike rack scares baby

See her flee?

It merely hurts my head. In Albuquerque off of Paseo del Norte somewhere.

I bet this is sold as a 8 bike rack. Maybe only a 4. In reality this is a two bike rack with one of the positions unusable due to the proximity to the street. At least it will still be there when western civilization collapses...

more dumb racks in albuquerque

Stupid Racks in Albuquerque

Popped down to do some shopping in Albuquerque over the weekend and saw a really dumb bike rack, a somewhat dumb bike rack and a couple of bus loads of smoke jumpers. See if you can figure out which one is which!







Click pics for more info...

NM Ibob Ride in a few pics and a video

Here is the short pictorial report:

It was along the riogrande


There was dodging of tumbleweeds, some of them car sized


It was windy

click for big video of blasting wind

Tarik, Chad, Ryan, Patrick, Jamie, Tumbleweeds


Goatheads were present and Patrick DOES get flats


It was dusty, Ryan won the dirt mask competition


It was a good ride. Don and his shiny new legolas turned around early on as the "flat easy ride" we had planned was a struggle against the gale wind and dust for the first 15 miles. Sorry Don, maybe next time the ride will be as planned, I hope. Spring in NM is really really windy. The 15 miles back was really fast and fun though. A good time was had by most. I am now exfoliated and my teeth are grit blasted. Good times. The rest of the pictures are here

Musings from the airport

On the road again. Sitting in terminal B at ABQ waiting to board the minijet to SLC and then connecting beyond.

I live about 100 miles and 1:45 from the Albuquerque airport. This is, for the most part, the main way to get out of NM. I drive by both the Los Alamos and Santa Fe airports to get here. Los Alamos no longer has commercial flights and Santa Fe is severely limited. Hopefully that will change soon.

Near as I can tell Albuquerque is no one's hub. It really should be. It has free wireless internet and possibly one of the best local dishes ever available in the airport. I can't vouch for any other foods here, but the Green Chile Chicken stew at Comida Bueno is just sublime. If you ever find your self in ABQ, try to get some. It ranges from slightly spicy to almost brutal, but it is worth it.

Ahhhh. Green chili chicken...

All that and an octopus

for just 6.99?


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Sandia Crest Snowshoe race report

So before the report a bit of a preamble...

SO no fooling there I was in the hospital last night bleeding away happily when the doctor comes in and looks over the wound. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So, can I do a snowshoe race tomorrow?
Dr: I don't see any reason why not.

The good doc pokes around a bit and then looks up thoughtfully, conversation continues:
Dr: So, where do you go to race horseshoes.
Me: Uh..
Dr: er snowshoes...
Me: Up in the mountains, usually where there are hiking trails covered in snow.

some more poking about:
Dr. What kind of horseshoes do you race in.
me: Uh...

Me: Smaller snowshoes than the backcountry ones, which are lighter...etc.etc.
Dr. Hmm, horseshoe racing..
Me: Uhhhh. So if I go SNOWshoe racing at 10,000 feet tomorrow and my heartrate gets to 200bpm there will be no problem, right?
Dr: no, should be OK.

Doc leaves me, a RN comes in a bit later to clean the wound.
RN: So what kind of race are you going to tomorrow?
Me: Snowshoe
RN: Ah, because the Doc told me that you were horseshoe racing...

So in conclusion I was definitely allowed to race horseshoes at 10,000 feet today, but I am in still unsure whether snowshoeing was OK. Onwards to the longwinded report:

So the race was up there at the very tip of sandia mountain overlooking Albuquerque. Zach and I left Los Alamos at just before 7 and made it up to the top of the peak via 14 (the Turquoise trail) in well under 2 hours, not too shabby and a beautiful drive. I had never been up there before, it was pretty damn cool, but cold as crap. Maybe it hit 20 by racetime, but not too much more. The peak is pretty bare sporting an impressive array of radio towers:


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and a damn good view all over the place, looking SW over the fog enshrouded ABQ:

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Looking east, or north east, or something:

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Me and Zach prerace overlooking ABQ. We should form a band and use this as a cover photo. It turns out we both play Ukelele a bit, so keep an eye out:

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Anyhow, the race. Lets see, cold, maybe 100 people (going by the bib numbers), pretty great turnout. The race consisted of a wide start, and then essentially singletrack snowshoeing in a big loop around the top of the peak. It was beautiful and there was a ton of snow. The race started fast, but I got a good start and ended leading the race briefly when Zach postholed and nearly bit it.

A short time later, two really fast guys blew by us and dissapeared up the trail with zach shortly behind. I was feeling OK in 5th or so for the first kilometer or so. We dropped down a fairly steep offcamber hill and I noted that without heel crampons, I could not go down as fast as the rest as I was sliding off the trail. Then, essentially, I exploded in a big mass of falling down repeatedly. I think what happened was that the trail was off camber and my snowshoes were pivoting on the toe spikes and getting the tail of the uphillside over the nose of the downhill side causing me to fall suddenly and violently often up to my elbow in snow. I was cleverly protecting my wounded hand, by landing on my right forearm and left hand. Getting up was harder than one would expect. Needless to say, I started going backwards. I may have fell 30 times over the next few km. Sheesh.

After the top 5 or so, the guys who were passing me (digging myself out of snow) were not faster than me, they just were not crashing to the snow. So I caught and passed a few of them a bit as the race ended with a long gradual up hill. The last hill was relatively level, so I finally went full throttle and only fell once. I think the final position was 10th-15th in a time of 41 minutes, results might be here at some point.
Zach finished at 36 minutes in third a few minutes back of the really fast guys, well done Zach!

I am a little disapointed in the race, I think I would have been easily in the top ten, maybe duking it out for a top five without the repeated falling, but overall it was a good workout at 10,000 feet on a beautiful course and a pretty good morning. They had a nice spread of coffee, hot chocolate, bagels, Odwalla juices and bars and a hilariously frozen cheese platter at the end.

Some more photos from the rest of the day:


The guy in the car next to us was kicking it super old school:

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From just south of Madrid, NM, some good use of boxcars:

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Frozen Carnivorous Insect

Found in Elena's Dad's backyard when we were stranded in Albuquerque just before new years:

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It probably was styling in the usually mild Albuqerque winter when mother nature decided to drop 14" of snow on it. Lights out, bam.

Snowbuquerque

Snowbuquerque

Got back from NJ in the beginning hours of a storm that seems to have parked itself over NM.
A day of travel plus 60 hours wating for the storm to pass in a house in Albuquerque with no internet access means no blogging for a bit.
Thankfully we were in far better digs and company than the Motel 6 I got stuck in last time I got caught on the wrong side of the closed highway.


Went for a nice walk at inches 4-6 in albuquerque on the first day we were stuck ther. Albuquerque is at a mere 5500 feet altitude and is pretty far south, so it does not get all that much snow. Los alamos and Santa Fe got 2-3 feet in the same storm,
but for ABQ this is a big deal, the 11 inches made the "snowiest day ever" in Albuquerque, whatever that means. Plus an additional 5 inches the next day made it pretty darn good.


Click for inadvertant movie demonstrating epic snowbuquerquetacular!






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I saw a two seperate groups doing this, I am not sure if this is a local or national trend, but boy did this look like a bad idea



Elena, her pop, and lobo:




I have more photos from the second day stuck in ABQ when we skied in the streets and the drive home and the two feet or so we got here in Los Alamos and some back log from the holiday back in NJ. Stay tuned blog readers.

Cross and Truth in advertising?

Made it down to albuquerque saturday for a cross race that went much better than expected. Saw some good stuff on the way back.

Burger king is apparently breaking ground in the breakfast department:

Yum!

Also a nice lumberjack derived vietnamese food further north:


The race:

All told it was a good race, I remained whole, did not trip and was pretty competitive for at least the first 45 minutes of the hour race. The course was actually a really good single speed course despite having approximately 5 feet of elevation change. Lots of soft grass, hairpins and a long ridable sand section and a long sand running section. Good stuff. They ran the A's and B's simultaneously which actually was pretty cool, it filled in the back of the A pack with B sandbaggers, which made it alot more fun for me, being in the back of the A's and all. I almst did not get lapped, but a few untimely chain derailments and final lap tiredness on my part let the top four guys blow by me in the last half mile. Oh well, the upside was I got to watch the top four guys hammer each other until they all dropped off but the victor. I even remembered how to get on and off the bike at high speed by the fourth lap or so. I was sand spattered, happy and really hungry at the end, the perfect mindset for the ensuing huevos rancheros. 10 years of cross in the bag. Woo!

Bike Culture ABQ

Had a nice little trip down to Albuquerque last friday to pick up the flying pigeon and intersected with some of the bike culture in town.

I ran into Rick and his really nice tall bike outside the Flying Star on RioGrande. It was pretty clean tall bike work, pretty tall and had a nice chainline. This apparently allows the chain to stay on despite flexiness when riding the top. It also allows the lower pedals to ghost turn. And possibly allow a small person to hunker inbetween the tall and small bikes and ride. Anyhow, I guess rick has a bunch of nice bikes, see a super chopper here.


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Also saw this guy with his poor chopper strapped down to his truck. It must have been unruly.




Finally some where on the west side i saw this nice floyd landis tableau.