New Mexico, I barely knew ye
Posted in Davis, Family, Food, Movies, Sacramento, Travel on March 30th, 2008Okay, I’m getting tired of people telling me that P.F. Chang’s is not “Chinese food.” Yes, I know that! I know that virtually no Chinese place in the U.S. is not actually “Chinese food,” I understand that authentic Chinese food is usually just rice, fish, and some sauces poured over to make things taste better. But you know what? It doesn’t matter to me. Do I call you out for referring to burritos at Chipotle or fajitas at Chevy’s Mexican food? No. Of course not, even though that food is actually New-Mexican, not Mexican. I think it is a well understood fact that when we say a food is X, we really mean the food is an American-bastardized form of X. Remember this next time you wish to be pretentious. If you don’t, you’ll probably just end up sounding sophomoric. Just some American food for thought.
I got up and got ready early Monday morning. Justin and Justine picked Amanda and me up around 0840. I got to the airport, checked in, and boarded fairly quickly. The flight was quite pleasant, I flew on an EMB-145. There was no real turbulence, and I was able to listen to XM while flying. Once landed, I headed to the rental-car pickup and made the way out. The car they gave me was a bit of a beast, a Chrysler 300. I stopped off in downtown Albuquerque for lunch at a local pizza joint, then headed to Santa Fe. I didn’t want to book any hotels in advance, so I had to drive around for a bit. Luckily the Hilton in Santa Fe had a big garage and good Wi-Fi signal. After looking up hotels, the new destination was the Old Santa Fe Inn. A quite nice place actually, fairly rustic but kept up well. The one problem was that the Wi-Fi signal there didn’t reach the room, thus I couldn’t look up any places to see or restaurants without going outside, a bit annoying. Once settled in, Santa Fe presented a new problem: being as the population is roughly that of Davis but with working professionals instead of students, everything fun to do closes at 1700. For dinner, the destination was a place on Canyon Road (the local art-gallery road) called Geronimo. The restaurant was recommended by the tennis coach. I can see why now. The food there is awesome, though definitely pricey. I think my meal was at least sixty-five dollars. Parking there was a bit silly. There was a small lot, and the attendant came up to my window and asked if we were eating there. I said yes. He then asked if we had reservations. I told him no. He informed that the parking lot was only for reservation-holding customers, so I drove off, went to the side of the road, and made a reservation for fifteen minutes in the future. Then I went straight back to the valet and had him park. Sigh… As for food, I had a wonderful salad with macadamia nuts, venison loin, and for dessert I had banana-cream pie. Yum.
Tuesday morning started with an early wake up and a short but very-scenic trip to Los Alamos. The Inn had a nice burrito bar, so that made for a good breakfast. I checked out of the Inn since I wasn’t sure I’d be back in Santa Fe that night. I met up with Pat McCormick at Los Alamos around 1000 and had a nice conversation with him and a few others. Pat showed me some of the clusters they were using, and explained some of the expansion cards he had in them. I had originally written a presentation, but it was much easier to just have a conversation and get the facts out in the beginning, then take a bunch of questions to clarify everything. We got lunch from the local cafe, then went back and talked a little more about my work. Pat dropped me off with a man named Scott Pakin who developed a small MPI for the Cell processor. I walked back to the cafe with him, then parted ways there after some discussion. After the cafe, the next stop was an old army-surplus store called The Black Hole. Nothing much was there to see, just a bunch of old-military junk (no, I was not surprised). After the store, I drove to Bandelier National Monument to do a small amount of hiking. Turns out they charged twelve dollars just to get in, pfft! Cave-dwelling Native Americans used to live there, and the bases of their structures were still around, though far from intact. Seeing the remnants was very cool, and the hike was far from strenuous. The last part of the hike actually reminded me a lot of the arboretum in Davis, except drier and no swarms of gnats. After the hike, I drove back to Santa Fe and again required the borrowing of a wireless connection. The Hilton said they were booked solid, as did El Dorado, so a place called the Hotel Plaza Real became my bed for the night. It was really nice, surprisingly so. For dinner, there was a well rated place called La Plazuela located in the interior of the downtown plaza. The food there was authentic New Mexican, and quite delicious. Of course, the meal ended with sopapillas and honey. The hotel was a warm welcome after the chilly walk back on a wonderfully-full stomach.
A local place called The Pantry Kitchen served breakfast to me on Wednesday. I had a breakfast burrito with green chiles. It was great, and the chiles were mild enough that they added flavor without hurting. After breakfast, we stopped by a place called Jackalope. It sold all manner of things, and generally came off to be a single-person-owned flea market. After Jackalope, the downtown area in Santa Fe was tempting enough to be the next stop. There wasn’t a ton to see there. Canyon road, a street somewhat far away, had a bunch of art galleries that did not get my patronage. The rest of the area was basically a bunch of shops for tourists. A nice area around which to walk, but not to spend money for me. There was one nice place, an extremely beautiful cathedral. After seeing that though, there was nothing left. Next stop, the Sandia Tramway! Up at Sandia peak, outside of Albuquerque, there exists a sky tram. At the time of construction, it was the longest tram in the world. It spanned a vertical distance of one kilometer and a horizontal distance of four kilometers. The cost to ride wasn’t that bad, so I gave it a shot. I’m somewhat afraid of heights, so being suspended so high up amidst the thirty kilometer per hour winds in a little box with twenty other people was nerve racking at times. At the peak there was still snow and people were skiing. The restaurant there was overpriced of course, but I was hungry and didn’t care. Once the descent finished, it was time to find a hotel. The choice ended up just being one near the airport. After checking in and finding local restaurants, a place called Sadie’s stood out. The place reminded me of a chain restaurant, but apparently it was the only of its kind. It served authentic New-Mexican food (again) and holy crap were the portions huge. The food was so cheap too, but it was very good. Afterwards, the malt shop I found online turned out to be closed, so no dessert.
Thursday morning saw the invasion of the Frontier Cafe and the UNM campus in Albuquerque. The cafe was awesome. Of course I got a breakfast burrito, but I also got a cinnamon roll. Oh man, that was a mistake to get both. The cinnamon roll was absolutely covered in butter and sugar instead of icing, but I ate the whole thing anyways, as well as the burrito. After breakfast, the UNM campus had to put up with me. I always feel a little strange taking pictures of everything, and I felt even more so while taking pictures on the campus. I just couldn’t help it though, every building everywhere was adobe style (well, not every building, but most). After the campus came the atomic museum and Old Town Albuquerque. The museum was really cool. There was an entire wall tracing the foundation of the atom bomb. There was of course more, but that was the most interesting part to me. Old Town Albuquerque was pretty lame. Just another shopping district, as most all Old Town areas tend to be. The downtown area of Albuquerque came next. The place was very touristy, and in all honesty, didn’t have that much to do. It seems like a happening place at night, but it felt like a less yuppy version of Santana Row. After visiting the downtown area, it was time to go to the airport. After taking forever in security, I sat down and watched the North Carolina game. I must say that I was saddened to see UNC run away the way they did, I figured Louisville would put up more of a fight. While watching the game, I had some food at the bar and sipped a caramel-apple martini. I didn’t even finish half of it. Once the game was over, it was time to board the flight and head back to Davis!
Come Friday, it was back to the grind. Luckily my brother and Brianna stopped by to provide some midday entertainment. Mike, being the picky-ass bastard he is, had a hard time finding something to eat at Cafe Mediterannee. Shakeh, Brianna and I had to order him something fairly plain. By the end of the meal, he was opening up though and trying the sides the rest of us ordered. The best part of lunch came when Mike ordered a dessert item. As it disintegrated to nothing, he would just pick up all the pieces and put it in his palm, proceeding to devour it like a horse with a carrot offering. We were all laughing at him, but he cared not. Funny enough, this is why I love the guy, always entertaining and completely unapologetic. After lunch, we all walked back to my place and I got right back to work. Shakeh continued to watch some of her shows, and I watched some basketball. We grabbed some Chipotle for dinner, then went to see 21. The movie was actually very good! Several friends were afraid the movie would ruin the book and try to be very flashy and action packed. In the end though, the movie was definitely more about the kid’s life and story then about guns and women.
On Saturday I woke up and got right back to work. Shakeh and I ended up going to Zia’s for lunch, but we had to walk back as there were no seats available. I somehow convinced Shakeh to watch Firefly, and after the second episode, she was hooked. We continued watching, and I also watched basketball, for the rest of the day. We wandered over to Pluto’s for dinner, but just took the food to go because Shakeh wanted to keep watching Firefly. By the end of the night, we were already to the third disc.
Same ol’ on Sunday. Get up, get to work. I started actually writing the paper and discovered that writing an abstract is much harder to write when the rest of the paper is not present. Sometime in the morning, we finished Firefly. Shakeh then went back to watching her shows. For lunch, we visited the 3rd and U cafe. The food was alright, and since no one else was there, the service was quite snappy. I can imagine though, based on what I witnessed, that the service during a peak time would be bad. After lunch, we went back to work. After bringing home Woodstock’s for dinner, we watched The Pianist without subtitles. Funny how the meaning of a movie or scene in a movie can be conveyed through acting, even without an understanding of the dialog.