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...

Day 3, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

My original plan to get an early ride in Los Alamos in the snow before heading to the airport fell apart due to lack of time and organization, so we had a nice long trip to Santa Barbara, stretching over much of the day. Including lots of drawing

and some walking on the best airport carpeting in the world in PHX:

By the time we got to SB it was really late and I was too pooped to put together the Bike Friday. We had a nice dinner with the parents, put Aida to bed and I snuck out on my mom's pink flowered Dahon Curve 3 speed. Nominally, I was hoping to head to Trader Joes and get some beers for the holiday imbibing, but I could not remember where it was exactly, so I headed over to campus and down to the beach

and back

and saw this excellent bike repair center near one of the infinite fields of bike racks at UCSB

After a bit of noodling around the maze-like bikepaths on campus I emerged next to the Isla Vista Habit Burger and was disheartened to see it closed, I would have emerged with a shake for sure.

All told it was a mighty 10.5 miles on the Dahon Curve 3, which even though it was kind of chilly, (high 40's and humid), and I was pooped, and the saddle was way too wide. it was by far the easiest ride of the week. That puts the total as of Wednesday 12/26 at 22 miles. Over three rides over three days...

There are quite a few more people in on the challenge, in addition to Andy BigDummyDaddy and David CycloTourist. Now we are joined by:
Scott 5 Toed Sloth
Jason Cyclescribe
BikeWRider
JLeddy in Vt.
Someone of parts unknown named Builder,
and I think Los Alamos JerryM is also on board unless I misread the comments.

Also the original pin art creator and TSBC founding member Mr. Jalopy is in on the Challenge as well. He and his Coco's variety crew are riding around the hills of LA:

Anyhow, welcome everyone to the challenge, I am pleased with the numbers. Have fun!

Phoenix Airport Carpet Redux

I went to LA last week and instead of having some time to go running on the beach or biking around with friends as planned I got trapped in 12 hours of airport hell on the way out and in existential airport hell on the way back.

The only high point of the trip was an unexpected visit to my favorite carpet in the whole world in Phoenix. I blogged this before, but this time I noticed, thanks to the setting sun, that the carpet is exquisitely textured.


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Here is what it looks like from above:

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