This is a rather extensive (hey -- how *did* it get to 3000 words anyway?) account of a trip to Albuquerque for a sort of a long weekend from October 11-15. It was a company trip, for the annual meeting, but that was in some ways just an excuse, as Epilogue did not choose the week of the annual Balloon Fiesta by accident as a time to gather in Albuquerque. And they even paid for Kristin to come along. * Arrived Wednesday. We (not just Kristin and I, but also four other engineering types and one other spouse) arrived at Albuquerque's airport on Wednesday evening as the sun was setting. I had my usual experience of not feeling the time differential (two time zones, in this case) at all. In this case, what that meant was that I was only mildly hungry. But restaurant reservations were already waiting (courtesy of the corporate office, which is located in Albuquerque), so we headed straight to dinner without even waiting to check in to the hotel. Dinner was at Assets, one of Albuquerque's brewpubs (not its best known, I'm told, but the one that was recommended by another homebrewer here in Boston). I had a pale ale and an Octoberfest (a respectable contrast, I thought), both fairly good. We pretty much filled up on delicious deep-fried appetizers before getting our food, leaving some impressive pasta dishes almost untouched. Unfortunately, the tone for the week's meals was set by the quantity of cigarette smoke; we were next to the bar and seem to have more smokers than we did at the last company get-together. We got back to the hotel and checked in some time after 11. Guaranteed held reservations are a wonderful thing. I took a shower to get the cigarette smoke out of my hair. It could've been worse; I'd gotten a haircut just before leaving on the trip. * Thursday ** business meeting. Thursday was set aside for Epilogue's annual business meeting. This meant getting up at a businesslike hour. This was less of a problem for me than for some of my coworkers, but it still involved being assembled in the hotel lobby by 8 in the morning to collectively take the van over to the corporate offices. The couple of hours of time-zone shift should have helped, but as I said earlier, I had adjusted by the time I had gotten off the plane anyway. Kristin politely declined the considerate offer to let her sit in on the meeting, on the assumption that she would rather spend the day at the pool. Good call. I did manage to get some fruit for breakfast from the concierge suite, figuring I'd be looking at doughnuts and coffee when I got to the meeting (an incorrect assumption, it turned out: there were, instead, some quite acceptable bagels). The meeting took the morning and most of the afternoon. Albuquerque offices, having an annual meeting. The closest thing to an adventure arose after the meeting when we trundled into the van to return to the hotel to find that the headlights had been left on and the battery was dead. AAA is conveniently located in the same building, but we waited for the company president to run home for jumper cables. I sort of wonder about a guy who drives a Land Rover but doesn't keep his jumper cables in it. ** Mexican dinner Dinner was in a Mexican restaurant a ways outside of town (at least, it seemed out of town to me, but I'm from -- and accustomed to -- the densely populated East). While better than any example of that cuisine I've ever experienced in Boston, this place wasn't that far ahead of them. To be fair to the restaurant, though, I'm not really used to sitting in a smoking section. One interesting note was that the "mild" sauce seemed to be substantially hotter than the "spicy" one. I figured that the people who'd ordered mild were just being wimps until I tried a piece of "mild" burrito from the person next to me, and noticed the discrepancy. * Friday ** balloon Fiesta Friday was our first day to actually go out to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which was the centerpiece of the trip in the first place. My first lesson on ballooning was that the best conditions for takeoff tend to be around dawn, which is not a time of day I'm terribly familiar with. Those of my coworkers who ARE familiar with it seem to regard it as a backstop bedtime rather than a wakeup time. We had been warned that our van was leaving the hotel for the Fiesta grounds at 5AM, so I had set the alarm clock for 4. I had laid out clothes and gear (flashlight, camera) the night before, so I didn't really need my brain to get up and get dressed, and Kristin and I were down in the hotel lobby with several minutes to spare. The concierge breakfast didn't open until six, but I did get OJ and coffee in the lobby. At five in the morning, it was not yet 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I was told this made me fortunate, for it was noticably warmer than at the same time last year. I managed to work up the proper feelings of gratitude, although I was heavily enough dressed that I think I was probably prepared anyway. The traffic going out to the Fiesta grounds was not yet overwhelming (considerable sarcasm intended). We cruised right through and got out there by 5:30, then walked over to the sponsors' tents, where we found not only coffee and pastries, but the additional luxury of a heater. The caffeinated coffee had not yet arrived, due to a screwup by the caterer, but as I said earlier, I had already gotten some at the hotel. Besides, it was still well before dawn, and I didn't yet see any need to get my brain working anyway. At this point we began to... hang out. Within the next hour, "our" balloon crew showed up and began joining us in said hanging out. To get the proper mental picture of this scene, remember that the point I'm describing is still before sunrise. The Fiesta's schedule for the day included the "special shapes rodeo" featuring balloons in unusual shapes and the "key grab" competition which involves balloon crews literally trying to grab a set of keys off the top of a pole. As dawn approached, the ballooning experts began to mutter that it seemed a little too breezy for ballooning. Sure enough, although some of the special shapes started inflating shortly after the sun rose over the mountains, the morning's events were eventually cancelled. I got some decent photos of the special shapes that did inflate, but since they weren't allowed to take off, the day was a ballooning bust. And so it was: that around nine in the morning, we suddenly found that we had no plans for the day. The balloon crew headed off to a restaurant for a real breakfast, while the rest of us started thinking about what to do with the day. I got talked into taking the tram up Sandia Peak and hiking down. Kristin was less enthused by this than I, and headed off to Santa Fe with another couple. ** climbed mountain For my part, I joined seven other people in taking the rented van over to Sandia Tramway. We took the tram to the top, had lunch at the restaurant at the top (which was operated by the brewpub where we'd had dinner the night we arrived). Six of us then hiked down instead of taking the tram back. The trail was less than 8 miles long, but the vertical drop was substantial: nearly a mile of total altitude. We did the hike in about 3-1/2 or 4 hours. Some of the other guys later claimed that we could've done it somewhat faster if we'd wanted, but given the often narrow and slippery trail, I don't think I could've walked any faster -- and saving time by reducing the breaks we took would've defeated the purpose of hiking in such a beautiful place to begin with. In my opinion, of course. One of the other programmers has started talking about hiking *up* the mountain next year, but I'm not sure about that idea. I could probably handle a hike like that here in New England, where we start from a lot closer to sea level, but that kind of exertion at two miles of altitude is another matter for us flatlanders. Admittedly, I didn't notice any problems from the altitude on this trip, but going up takes a heck of a lot more oxygen than going down. ** dinner at Karen & Dave's The hike took a bit longer than we'd figured, but somehow we still made dinner on time. This was good, because it can be an embarrassment to be late for dinner at the boss's home. And in this case, the home of the *two* top people in the company. After making proper admiring noises regarding the (truly gorgeous) house, appointments, and view, and even the adjoining golf course, I proceeded to go in search of something to drink. Since our hosts hadn't calculated on having half a dozen guests just back from a mountain-climbing hike, the ice chests were quickly stripped of everything suitable for rehydrating a human body. Showing the resourcefulness and creativity that are the hallmarks of a true engineer, I found... tap water. Eventually I felt sufficiently rehydrated to grab a beer from the impressive selection, which included my all-time favorite American beer, Anchor Liberty Ale. I also had some really good vegetarian lasagne and watched a videotape of the balloon crew flying a small balloon inside a large one -- something that had never been tried before and, according to them, will probably never be done again. * Saturday ** up early again Saturday morning was our last chance to actually see a balloon in the air. The morning's scheduled activity was a mass ascension, in which as many as five or six hundred balloons would take off from the Fiesta grounds. We once again met in the hotel lobby at 5AM, but this time I set the alarm clock for only a half-hour or so before that and skipped my morning shower (after all, I'd taken one right before dinner the night before anyway). The winds weren't quite as high as they'd been the previous day, and the balloons began to inflate for the mass ascension. There was a bit of a complication, though, in that I had arranged to meet Brian and Sue Borchers at my company's tent at eight o'clock, which turned out to be right in the middle of the ascension. Kristin stayed behind to wait for them, while I went out to the company's balloon with my camera. The field at the Balloon Fiesta is a madhouse during a mass ascension. The balloons are lined up in rows, as close together as they can manage without getting in each others' way. Before a balloon can be inflated, it is laid out along the ground in a straight line. Since you can't walk on the balloon silk, the whole area becomes a complete maze to get through. What makes moving about *completely* nuts is that the general public is welcome on the field, too. On result of these peculiar crowd dynamics was that I got my foot trodden on by an elderly and confused (but rather massive) gentleman. Combined with sore knees from the previous day's hiking, I was limping pretty seriously. But I'd never seen anything like the carnival going around me, and I ignored the pain on the basis that it was relatively uninteresting. ** balloon ride I managed to get to the balloon by going around the edge of the field to the perimeter point nearest the balloon, and then walking through. I had only taken a few pictures when a waiver form was flashed under my nose. Feeling bad that I'd left Kristin behind to wait for Brian and Sue, but knowing this was my only chance, I signed the waiver and got into the balloon basket. After all the hours of waiting for the balloon, all of a sudden things happened really quickly, and before I knew it we were aloft. Intellectually, I had had a pretty good idea of what flying in a balloon would be like. Somehow, though, I was still surprised at how motionless it feels. You move literally with the wind, so you can't hear or feel that wind at all. Once you gain enough altitude, you don't even have strong visual cues to movement. But once you start approaching the ground again, it can get exciting. Especially if there's no one waiting down there to catch the basket and hold it in one place. So anyway, this particular ride ended in a field where many of the other balloons were also landing. Our chase crew hadn't caught up to us yet, so another crew helped hold us down while we waited for our own crew. When our folks arrived, I (and the other two passengers) swapped out of the balloon basket and were replaced by others; then the balloon took off for another hop. I got into the balloon crew's pickup truck, which spent the next half-hour or so dashing along roads large and small trying to get to the balloon's landing site before the balloon did itself. Of course, no one knew where that would be, but we were able to take better and better guesses until eventually we got to the right field before the balloon even did. Then we packed up the balloon,loaded it into the back of the truck, and headed back for the Fiesta grounds. I got to ride in the balloon basket on the back of the pickup truck, a cold and windy ride, although the day was clearly getting warmer quickly, as days are wont to do in the desert. ** day with Brian and Sue When we got back to the tent at the Fiesta grounds, I found Brian and Sue talking to Kristin. I still had some more things to deal with, the most important being an initiation ceremony. It wasn't a particularly interesting initiation ceremony; in fact, I had a certain sense of deja vu, although I can't remember of what, exactly, it reminded me. I got my "first flight" pin at its conclusion. Finally free (until late afternoon), Kristin and I piled into Brian and Sue's new car, and headed off to do Albuquerque. The 50's-nostalgia diner that Brian and Sue suggested for lunch hadn't opened yet, so we hit the bookstores instead, ending up buying books and killing more than double the 45 minutes until the restaurant's opening time. I also purchased yet more film, this time getting 1000-speed film in a (vain, as it turned out) attempt to get good pictures of the balloons' "night glow" after dark. Following a lunch that saved me from starvation (or at least from complete blood sugar collapse), we headed into the old part of Albuquerque to do the important tourist stuff. Parking being unusually scarce, we put the car in the lot at the Albuquerque Museum, and stopped inside just to use the rest rooms. Close to an hour later, we'd seen most of the museum, which in retrospect was the high point of the tourism for the day. The next stop was took us a block or two over, to Albuquerque's "Old Town." This is an attractive area of historic adobe buildings, completely dedicated these days to the tourist trade. It was also, on this particular day (and probably all of that particular week), populated by a voting majority of the nation's retired population. This was so exciting that when we headed over to the University area for coffee and cake, we agreed that we probably would've had at least as good an afternoon just sitting around a cafe and talking. ** glow As the afternoon ended, we headed back to the Fiesta grounds in time for the night glow. The balloons start going up before dark, so I got a good opportunity to get some good pictures of the Epilogue balloon, but by the time dusk itself fell, I found myself hanging on to the side of the balloon basket helping hold it down. Brian and Sue got to help, too, before they took off for home. ** party afterwards After taking the balloon down and packing it away, it was time to party. Epilogue had ordered two half-kegs of beer from the brewpub at which we eaten the night we arrived. That was already considerably more than we really needed, especially since those of us from out of town were pretty conservative about drinking anyway; allegedly the lack of oxygen makes it hit us lowlanders harder. The crowning glory, though, was that in preparing to deliver the beer, apparently the order got mixed up. To make up for not delivering the right style of beer, they gave us a full keg instead of one of our half-kegs. Phenomenal amounts of beer failed to be consumed. And it was good stuff, too; a kolsch and a porter that were both fairly accurate to style, although maybe a touch sweet. After sampling a glass of each, I was ready to join the general exodus to the parking lot to take the van back to our hotel. Kristin, not surprisingly, shared the sentiment. * Sunday Since we weren't heading for the airport until 8:30, Kristin and I actually managed to get some breakfast. Since *someone* had to return the van at the airport, I tried to check in one of my coworkers at the airline desk. Nothing doing: they were requiring *picture ID*, the first time I'd ever seen that. Of course, this is just days after the Amtrak sabotage crash... And, yes, I have pictures. But no scanner, so they won't be on the net.