Baby B&E Time

Yesterday was a scary morning for sure. My wife went outside to keep the dogs from bothering the gas company workers relocating our meter, and locked herself out of the house, with the baby in her crib.

I was at school an hour away from home when this happened:

Thankfully the gas company had a big oaf on that day who could break the door, so mom and baby weren't separated long.

I got home to find the door jamb still undeniably busted, with the door knob's locking mechanism still engaged, as it presumably had been ever since before I left for work. The gas men, having relocated the meter as they were sent out to do, had long since gone home for the day. I wasn't about to wait around and see if "the guy" planned on making good of his promise to fix the door; I didn't expect him to, and I didn't have his contact information, so...

As of last night: it's fixed! Complete with a set of Kwikset doorknobs with smart key technology. Most importantly,  you actually have to unlock them before you can leave the house, then lock them intentionally to get locked out

 So hopefully this will be our last lockout at this place.

As for Lizzy:

She approves!

We'll vacuum up the debris and touch up the paint, and be good to go!

Where we're going... we still need roads

Notes and observations from the first weekend in 2015:

My wife and I watched the entire Back To The Future trilogy on Blu-Ray. Seems appropriate, given the fictional future year of 2015 depicted in the story.

Unfortunately, at present we still need roads where we're going, and aside from some very specialized equipment, hoverboards are still a pipe dream. Fortunately, the goofy futuristic clothes from that timeline are indeed fictional as well.

Saturday, we embarked on a trip up US Highway 191 to Alpine to get out of the house, play in the snow, and test our new tubes Santa brought us for Christmas. For those who are unaware, US 191 between Morenci and Alpine is known as the Coronado Trail, or simply "The Trail," and perhaps more famously as the "Devil's highway," owing the latter nickname partially to its former designation as US 666, as well as the approximately 400 tight curves within a 50 mile span, the majority of which are posted at 15 mph or less, and lacking in guardrails. It's a white-knuckle drive in the best of conditions, and can be downright stressful in snowy ones, but the views are spectacular.

If we had skyways and flying cars, I imagine the mountain would have been much busier than it was. Aside from a few hunters and a couple game wardens, we pretty much had the entire hill to ourselves. We also saw where a Game & Fish truck had slid off the roadway in a bad curve a couple days prior. It was resting against a stout pine tree about 5-10 feet down the embankment

My preferred method of sliding down snowy slopes still involves tubing, though the hobby has since evolved from truck tubes to these fancy canvas cased, purpose-built PVC christmas gift doodads I mentioned earlier... We managed to find a spot about 30 miles south of Alpine where I got to take my tube on its maiden voyage. The fun lasted all of 10 minutes until I fell off and bruised my thigh on a rock... ouch. I hobbled back to the truck, lashed the tubes down, and we continued north.

Dinner in Alpine could be considered an incentive to do the trail instead of Mt. Graham, as well as a much needed chance to let the blood return to my knuckles. We ate at Bear Wallow, where almost exactly six months prior, we rubbed elbows with the large crowds of people in town for the Independence Day festivities. Upon reflection, I believe we owe the relative solitude of this particular trip to my own bravery/stupidity in attempting such a drive.

We opted to return home via US 180 through New Mexico, which turned out to be a much safer option. Though the roads were clear, the surrounding landscape was blanketed in snow. The moonlight cast a faint glow across the white hills flanking the highway, a sight that was simply breathtaking, even if I was only able to behold it out of the corner of my eye, for fractions of a second at a time... Something about not having to navigate patches of ice 2 feet away from what seemed like an endless drop into the canyon below, made the New Mexico route much more pleasant than its Arizona counterpart, especially after dark.

We pulled into the Leopold Vista rest area near Glenwood after dark to find the facilities locked up, and a NMSP Officer stationed near the entrance. He never said anything to us, and I supposed he might have been catching up  on reports or simply taking a much needed break after a busy day or two when the snow was still fresh. Nevertheless, we journeyed onward and made it home incident-free. Unfortunately, I have little in the way of pictures to document the weekend, but will say it was an awesome start to what's going to be an awesome year.

Boldly Going

For our two year anniversary, my wife and I took a road trip across New Mexico and back, spread over the course of five days. The following is a log of our trip, along with pictures and observations of what we saw along the way.

Day 1 -  Sunday, August 31, 2014: 
"There's no such thing as a wrong turn, as long as it leads to Albuquerque" ~ Me

Yesterday was a lazy day. Normally I would feel bad about this, but the normal sense of urgency to make our precious day off worthwhile is happily absent. We've taken the upcoming week off to celebrate our two year wedding anniversary. Technically our anniversary isn't until the 8th of September, but the week of Labor Day works best with my school schedule and Laura's work schedule.

Church attendance has become an important part of my life since Laura gave me the push to return to the fold, so we attend sacrament meeting with a truck full of luggage and a change of clothes handy so we can hit the road as soon as the last amen is uttered and the organist plays us out. One nice thing about the size of our town and stake, is we are the only ward in our building, so church always starts at 9am. By the time we opt to ditch the 2nd and 3rd hours, we'll have plenty of time to make it to our destination

My original planned route, which I post to Facebook for my friends' and family's info prior to the start of the trip, involves making a loop across New Mexico, the first arc making its way through Glenwood, Reserve and Socorro to Albuquerque, where the Marriott awaits us with a prepaid room. Laura suggests a detour through Duncan to drop a gift off at a friend's house before we forget. (We have friends here. Yaaay!). We weigh the pros and cons of going through Duncan at the beginning vs the ending of the trip. Duncan it is. Our loop will end up looking like a figure 8.

We make a quick stop in Lordsburg to eat, a quick stop in Deming to top off the fuel tank, and then it's off to I-25 via the Hatch route. Just outside of Hatch, a town famous for its green chile peppers(Anaheim peppers given a distinctive flavor by the growing conditions in the ares) a massive traffic jam ensues due to the annual Green Chile Festival, which has packed an unusually high number of vehicles on the town's main artery to the freeway entrance as people clamor in and out of town for the food and fun. Could I stop to enjoy the festivities and rationalize that my ox was in the mire and needed a snack? Probably not. With the assistance of my cell phone's GPS, I find an alternate route to the freeway that involves a back road that passes through 11 miles of farmland. Villages named Salem and Garfield come and go along the way to I-25.

I should note that beyond Deming, the road to Hatch and all of I-25 north of Las Cruces are new territory for me. I've been curious to see what I-25 looks like, knowing little about it other than that its course roughly follows the Rio Grande from Las Cruces to Albuquerque and beyond. I find it's mostly flat, with the exception of the occasional large dip as the freeway drops into and out of large side valleys draining into the Rio Grande.

Truth or Consequences becomes visible off in the distance. We stop. I explain to Laura what I know about the history of the town's name, using google to fill in the gaps.

Socorro comes and goes. The Very Large Array is advertised on a Very Large Sign at the edge of town. We'll be seeing the array on the way back home, so we venture on toward Albuquerque, destination finally somewhat close.

We stop in Belen. Ten years ago, I considered buying land out here, as it was extremely cheap. Ten years later, land is still cheap out here, and I can see why. Beyond the farms, there's not a whole lot to see.

At last, we arrive in Albuquerque. My eyes behold the Big I for the first time. It's not as big as I had imagined it to be. Out of necessity due to surrounding buildings and development, the interchange is actually relatively compact. We check into the Marriott on Louisiana Bl, eat dinner at BJ's across the street, and take a trip to see the Albuquerque temple before retiring to the hotel for the night.

Total Distance: 385 Miles