As of this point, Albuquerque is my favorite city of the trip (and possibly of any trip I've ever made). The general spirit of the people here is a unique combination of west coast relaxation, east coast open-mindedness, and midwestern friendliness. Yeah, needless to say a lot of hipsters call this place home too.
Right now I'm in a cool coffee shoppe located in the same strip as the bar last night, just off of UNM's campus. The atmosphere is nice (a BIT on the hippy and hipster side, but it is a southwestern college town) and the internet connection is solid. The coffee is pretty decent too, and comes with free refills (which are soon to be the death of me, having re-sensitized myself to caffeine due to deprivation thereof this trip). I can dig it.
This morning I awoke around 10am well rested and ready to take on the day. Walking out of my hotel room for the first time during the day, I was walloped by the view of the mountains through which I had passed last night. Since only the southwestern most quarter of the city has tall buildings, you can see the mountains to the east jutting-up in the background from almost anywhere. You can see many different reds and browns in geological strata working their way up to the tops, and boulders or other rough-looking rocks gives a rocky texture to them.
Hungry, I walked across the street to a burrito shop named Twisters (a local chain) that had a large sign stating "THE Best Breakfast Burrito in Town!" As a burrito lover, this excited me for two reasons:
1: Since they seem to market their breakfast burrito competitively, breakfast burritos must be particularly rampant in Albuquerque.
2: Since they're claiming to be the best, they're probably at least very decent.
I guess back home when somewhere offers a breakfast burrito you don't have to make any further decisions than bacon vs. sausage. This place was significantly more advanced than that.
And that's just the breakfast selection!?!?! I'm pretty sure Nick is now rolling-over in his grave (while at the time of the writing of this post I do believe that Nick is still alive, I'm sure that the breakfast burrito lover he is will promptly kill himself and roll over post-mortem upon finding out that he's been missing out on this place). I got a #5 (gimme that chorizo baby!) which came with eggs, potatoes, ground chorizo, red chile salsa, roasted green chilies (a favorite of mine which you cannot get at most places) and cheese. It went down quickly and smoothly.
After breakfast I went back to the room and showered, packed, and checked-out. I had previously looked-up skateparks in Albuquerque on the interwebz, finding that the city boasts 6 or more free parks, all funded by ABQ Parks and Recreation. Each was reported to cater to different styles of skating, and I conveniently found that the two which appealed to me most (long lines with ledges, quarter pipes and transitions) were the closest two to my current location.
The first park was all concrete and specialized in transitions. It's apparently the largest park in the southwest, which I can believe based on this view:
Now I'm a pretty decent bowl and transition rider (most skaters would say "tranny rider," but I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here), but this park was obviously set-up for people who eat, sleep and shit transition, and as such had their boards set up with huge decks and wheels to handle the occasional sketchy cracks and rough spots. I busted out my old-school fish board with soft polyurethane long board wheels to handle the terrain, which was a lot of fun, but you can only do so many tricks on a 12 pound board.
I ended up moving-shop to a park that was a bit further north, which was much more up my alley. This one blended fresh concrete ramps with metal and plastic rails and obstacles, and even had a masonite 5' mini-ramp with spine (which at my ripe old age of 23 is about the only thing I'm ballsy enough to try and impress anyone on). The mountains to the east could be seen more clearly from here too, so I skated with some of the local guys (very cool people!) for a couple hours (yes, of course with my shirt off... gotta fight the trucker's tan and woo the soccer moms somehow, right?).
Driving back towards college town, I noticed more about the terrain of ABQ. The entire city seems to be set on a 1% down grade from the mountains in the east to the flats in the west. Looking west, south, and even north, you can see the ends of town (many miles away, as this is a big city) fade into desert, with the occasional lonely mountain way off in the distance, almost giving the impression of the Pyramids of Giza. To the younger crowd, it looks like Albuquerque was set-up as a Grand Theft Auto map, with natural barriers in every direction as a way of keeping you in the city and believing that the world continues past your own limits but without your being able to get there yourself (since you can only program a map to be so big, you've got to do something to help suspend the disbelief).
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, the links to all of my videos since day 4:
In chronological order:
From the streets of New Orleans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hpk_uAr50w
The AWESOME jazz street band, with 8 year old female drummer and mad shredding on the clarinet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrnBjZuk14U
The human statue in the NOLA streets:
Updates on the Texas highways (when I boast about the beauty of nothingness, which gets WAY overshadowed by my New Mexico video):
Mountains of Carlsbad Caverns, from drive-up to climb:
Inside of Carlsbad Caverns (poor lighting for video, awesome lighting for spelunking):
Chasing the freight train in the New Mexico sunset (much prettier than Texas):
I'll probably update the back-half of the day tomorrow, in combination with my day trip adventures. Keep posted!
Holy hell that jazz is awesome.
ReplyDeleteAlso, typo on the URL of the first video, should be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVrWog_b1zU
ReplyDeleteHow far west are you planning on going?
ReplyDeleteThe plan is to go to San Diego then see how far north I head from there before turning back.
ReplyDelete