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Black Mesa – Gilligan’s Island with Dinosaurs part 2 – we arrive

15 October, 19:30

SANTE FE, NM – Just like the song says, the weather started getting rough, our tiny plane was tossed; if not for the courage of the fearless flight crew, we would have been stranded in – GASP! – SHREVEPORT! Everyone who left from the greater New York area was routed into Albuquerque through Dallas. Unfortunately, Dallas got slammed with thunderstorms, flash floods and hail stones the size of Srixons.

They could have been the size of Pro-V1s, but I just like saying the word “Srixons.” It’s almost as fun as saying the word “Sleestaks,” but our metaphor for this piece is Gilligan’s Island, not Land of the Lost.

Anyway, those that left LaGuardia on the 6:00 a.m. flight actually were rerouted to lovely Shreveport and had a chance to see this shining city’s sights from the tarmac. Those of us on the 6:35 flight just missed scenic Wichita Falls by a whisker, but the storm cleared just in time for us to land at 10:20 and show up at the gate as they cancelled our connecting flight outright. We then had a pleasant seven hour layover. In fact, everyone was delayed except Tony Korologos of Salt Lake City (and “Hooked on Golf Blog” fame), who caught his 2:00 p.m. flight and had clear sailing into Albuquerque.

But by 7:00, the sun’s warming rays were illuminating the golden irrigation circles and other geometric shapes of the West Texas farmland which lay below like ornate pieces of a geological jigsaw puzzle. As we continued winging west, we crossed over dry river beds in long forgotten defiles where nothing grows – not even scrub brush – and the only inhabitants are beetles, scorpions and other creatures that scratch their food from the rocks, we suddenly saw the fragrant pine-covered slopes of the brown mountains that heralded the welcome news that we had finally crossed into The Land of Enchantment. The mesas, shadowed purple by the setting sun, the russet-colored earth and the craggy tors at once both rugged and serene, soft in color yet forbidding in their desolation, put the “wild” in wilderness.

Albuquerque, nestled at the feet of the mountains, is a mere fifty minutes from Sante Fe, but the two cities are vastly different. While Albuquerque is a modest but affordable urban sprawl, Sante Fe is a contradiction in terms, offering up its old west flavor as a travel draw, but for locals, real estate prices are almost as unaffordable as New York City. Indeed, many government employees working in the capital actually commute every day from Sante Fe. But these concerns were far from my mind as our shuttle drew up to the Bishop’s Lodge Resort. All I knew was that a Kobe Beef Burger, a glass of iced tea and a soak in the Jacuzzi later, I was fully decompressed and as my head hit the pillow I was out, dreaming of Pro-V1s…oops, sorry…Srixons soaring over oceans of sand to a lonely pin silhouetted against nothing but the cloudless New Mexico sky.

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