January 10, 2007

• New Years, Philmont Style

  Here it is: the New Years account, with lots of photos (sorry if you don’t have broadband).  I’m writing from the AAS Annual Meeting in lovely (cold, rainy) Seattle, WA, where I am staying with the Deeds Sisters and Molly (Nixon) Whiddon, some good friends who I don’t get to see nearly often enough.  Seattle blogging will come soon, as well, I promise.  But first, New Mexico…

  I was supposed to fly out to ABQ at 7:30am on the morning of the 30th.  However, due to the ridiculous weather, my flight got cancelled.  Luckily, I was able to be rebooked onto a flight later that afternoon that actually made it into ABQ during the few hours that day that planes could land.  The airport was pretty desolate, although there were a few other travelers landing, a few more whose flights had been cancelled, and random news crews reporting on conditions at the “Snowport”.  I picked up my rental car, and as anticipated, was stuck in Albuquerque, which is not my favorite town in the country by any means, but is really pretty when blanketed in snow that shuts down the whole state:

  

  I majorly majorly lucked out and managed to get a hotel room at a reasonable price, ordered a pizza, and broke out my knitting, crossing my fingers for open roads the next day.  Here’s the view outside my hotel room:

  

  and my projects:

     

  Next morning I woke up early to watch the one-hour news special on the weather, road conditions, etc.  Imagine my surprise when I was actually on TV!  It was a total of about six seconds, of me and other passengers walking by one of those TV cameras I had seen at the airport – so cool!  Not so cool was the fact that the roads were still closed up to Cimarron.   I waited until checkout time and then decided to go ahead and start driving.  25 was open up to Santa Fe, so I made a hotel reservation there and figured I’d see how far I could get.  Well, when I got to Santa Fe, the signs still said 25 was closed north of there, but there were no barricades or cops blocking the road, and about half the cars drove on, so I figured I’d drive on too.  I did swing through a gas station and stocked up on survival food, just in case I got stuck and ended up sleeping in my car.   We made it all the way to Las Vegas, NM, with no problems, but found the road still closed up there.  I stopped and got some lunch, then got back on the freeway to wait in the long line of cars waiting for the northbound lanes to open (southbound had opened about an hour previous).  I figured I’d turn off my car and break out the knitting again, but never had the chance, because traffic was moving very very slowly at first, and then made it up to a normal speed because the road finally opened!  Yay!  I think that the delay was caused by the fact that Monk was in charge of the project, because by the time they opened, the roads were spotless (on the interstate at least).  No snow or ice, two lanes, and even the shoulders were clear most of the way:

  

  Finally made it to the Ranch (scouting dot slash dot org dot philmont slash htp semicolon…) just in time to find my friends, put on some more layers, and head over to New Years Eve dinner!  It was delicious, and tons of fun.  They had a bunch of crews in for Kanik that weekend, all of whom were back in base, and got to come to dinner as well, which I think they enjoyed.  Most of the crews were from Texas, which is of course, awesome.  After dinner, we went over to the Deuce’s for a while (where I did my best to lose my hat from Jackie…but luckily found it the next day!) and then to the James.  *shakes head*  Only in Cimarron, NM, where there is only one bar, do you have only one bartender working on New Years Eve.  ONE.  And then, Roger called last call at 12:15 – yikes!  (Ok, that one was probably the State because it was Sunday, but whatever.  No fun.)  It took 30 minutes of waiting to get a drink, surprise surprise.  Oh well, it was still fun, because there were tons of people there:

  

  The next morning, I got up early and went to breakfast, where Mark announced that there was “Extreme Snow Danger EVERYWHERE” which pretty much made our day, haha.  Went back to Kate/Anne Marie’s and talked with Kate and Jill for a few hours, mostly about camp and reminiscing about Fish.  Then Kate and I took naps and headed over to Doug’s (Jill had to go home).  Doug has a New Years fiesta every year on the afternoon of the first and it only makes me love him more.  There was tons of good food, all of it in honor of people.  The best was of course the Texas Chilli, in honor of Bob Gates (WHOOP!).  (Doug went to WTAMU back when it was just West Texas and happily adopted the Ags when they took over his alma mater. )  I also had elk sausage, which was so yummy (shot by Doug himself, of course), but avoided the rabbit because that freaked me out a little too much.  After Doug’s, Bucko and Kopsa and I went over to Dave’s place to watch football – what else do you do on New Years???  Watched SC beat the crap outta Michigan which was awesome, and watched the beginning of the Boise State/OU game (yay for the underdogs, but embarassing for the Big XII…), then they all had to go take care of a crew for a bit.  After that, none of us really wanted to go out (so tired) so I just hung out with Kate, Anne Marie, and Bucko since it was my last night.  Here are some more pictures from around the ranch, including the bonus that came with my car (which was very useful!):

   

  Next morning, I got up early, took care of some business stuff, turned in my contract for this summer!!!, took some final snow pictures,

  

  and headed back to Albuquerque on the still-cleared roads:

   

  I had anticipated road problems so I left plenty of time and got to Abq. waaay early, but luckily I had scoped things out ahead of time and knew exactly where to drive: Village Wools!  Perhaps the most impressive yarn shop I’ve ever been in, VW is huuuuge.  They had tons of yarn that I’d never even heard of and amazing colors.  I managed to restrain myself (I’m on a yarn diet right now, after the holidays…) and only bought one skein that is a third of the way to a super-cute scarf, which I sadly don’t have any pictures of yet.  Finally went to the airport and flew home, mostly uneventfully.  They did manage to leave one of my bags in Abq, but luckily got it back to me the next morning!

  I think that’s about it!  I hope you enjoy the pictures!  (I will try to post more details about the knitting later…)

  • 6:15 pm
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