we're on highway 60 to clovis and we're still reeling from the smell of the cow factory, but at the same time we're all excited about going to roswell.
we get lost in clovis, but eventually we find our way on to highway 70.
on our way to roswell we stumble across a deserted bar, the pioneer's inn. it's weird to think that one day, cowboys looking for the gold would stop here at the side of highway 70 for a quick ale. maybe the ghosts of them cowboys still haunt the bar. put it this way - if it were night, we would of been shitting usselves.
roswell. in june 1947 a craft containing a bunch of space aliens crashed here. what will we find?
the town is deserted. we wander around for a bit and see no-one: no space aliens, no humans, nowt. we locate the visitors' centre and that's shut. we walk up the high street and find a souvenir shop what's open and take a picture of a large inflatable alien. i buy a t-shirt and a shot glass and then we get out of there.
roswell is the worst place i have ever been in my life. i used to worry about what space aliens were doing knocking about in the new mexican desert. now i actively feel sorry for the poor sods. i mean, if you're going to crash your spaceship somewhere you could pick about a billion better places. yes: even maltby. we get out of there as quickly as humanly (or even space alienably) possible.
we speed off on highway 285 to rejoin the mother road in santa fe. the sun starts setting and despite our disappointment with roswell, we keep an eye out for space alien spacecraft. ben keeps seeing tarantualas in the middle of the road. nobody else sees them. ben keeps shouting "look, look" but nobody else ever sees them. suddenly we see the headlights of a car in the distance and the next thing they're not there anymore. we all agree that something well weird is going on. suddenly there's an eerie green light all around us. i turn around to ask colin something and he's just not there. there's a flash of light and colin's back, complaining about a sore arse. we put it down to the overwhelming dissapointment we've all suffered today. thank you roswell.
this put us totally off going to area 51 i tell thee.
santa fe is an incredibly beautiful place and we all felt like we driv into a clint eastwood film. we drive round looking for a hotel and try to stay at the hilton. no chance. it's well expensive. the travelodge is full. there's something going down in santa fe all right. eventually we find some room at the budget in which is further out of town. we freshen up and head out.
the place is buzzing - there's people all over. we eventually reach the town square and there's some sort of festival on. there's loads of food stalls so we get some food and we're told that this is in fact the festival of the zorba. the zorba is a papier-maché man what get's burnt on the thursday night (it's now friday) and then it's party all weekend. not ones to miss a party, we buy some corn and it's the best corn i've ever had in my life. mmm mmm i love corn me. everyone out on the square is well young and we assume that people our age have gone into the surrounding bars so we head back into down.
there's a bar with blues music playing but colin talks us out of it saying he wants to go somewhere quieter so we head to plaza mercado. this has to be the worst bar we went in all trip. it were $5 in and then we went upstairs, straight through the bar and outside to the balcony. this is all right, the bar bloke is quite funny, but you can't buy more than one beer at once. the beer costs $3 a bottle. we try to go inside, but the music is ragga all night long and all the birds are bloked up. eventually we all get totally pissed off and leave.
we're walking down the street argueing about nowt and then i burst out laughing. the boys are like "what?" and i just pointed at the window of the shop we were outside. in the window is the worst art we have ever seen. there's a horse with it's eyes right forward like a person, a leopard sat on a cliff playing a pipe and a wolf sat in a river with a fish in it's mouth. we're all pissing ourselves at it, it's the funniest thing ever. once more, you probably had to be there.
all cheered up we go to a club that we noticed on our way into town, the paramount. after queueing for ages, undergoing a security check and paying a fiver for to get it, they call last orders. we sit and have a beer. again all the birds are bloked up. then they kick everyone out. we're too pissed off to do anything except go to bed. ben points out that your entire status in santa fe is determined by the size of your car and the accessories it's got. santa fe? totally gay.
in the morning, me and ben go for breakfast at el comedor across from the hotel. i had the best breakfast i have ever had in my entire life: steak, two eggs, sausage, hash brown, toast, juice and unlimited coffee and santa fe totally redeems itself. i'm a simple man at heart me.
we leave town after breakfast on interstate 25 up to albuquerque.
we park round the corner from galeria de mesa and pop inside for some coffee and a laugh at some more crap art. after we're tooled up on caffeine, we stroll down route 66 aka main street and find another brewsters and pop in there for a swift beer. we walk a bit further down the road and find hotel blue so we check in there and ben goes back to pick up the car while me and colin enjoy a few beers in the sunshine at villa di capo, an italian restaurant across the street from the hotel. when ben returns, colin goes for a bit of a kip so we have a few more beers and then go across the road into the hotel.
in the hotel room we watch the most mentalist sport i've ever seen - slamball. it's essentially basketball with the addition of trampolines. we get ready for the evening's entertainment as we watch the slamball and then head back into town.
first stop is the launchpad who are hosting some sort of charity event. it's a fiver in (for charity) so we convince the aussie bloke on the door to let the three of us in for a tenner. bargain. and it's rocktastic inside, so we have a couple of beers and quite a deep discussion and then we rock out for a bit.
next up is mcgilvrays where colin has the bright idea of starting on the tequila. get in! a few slammers later and we have to leave because there's more ragga on. i dunno what it is about new mexico and ragga. anyway, after a few tequilas i'm getting into it but eventually i relent and we piss off out of there. outside the bar we run into a bunch of ladies on a hen night. the bride-to-be is offering a 'suck for a buck' - an offer me and ben are hardly likely to refuse. she's got all sweets stuck to her top and we had to eat them off her yam.
we're back in brewsters and starting to feel a bit pissed up. more beers and we're talking to some more lasses on a hen night. this time the bride-to-be's t-shirt has a list of stuff that she has to do/get. one of the things is a johnny and the other is the number of a 'hot blonde'. colin gives her the johnny, i give her me phone number. ok so it's not exactly natural but she weren't to know that. after a couple more beers i try my luck with one of the other ladies with my best line: "do you like liver?" she laughs and claims she had never been asked that before, but i very much doubt that. eventually we're pissed and dancing with all the girls until we stagger out of the bar at closing time.
once out on the street we see a few people across the road including a bunch of ladies so we stagger across the road. i get talking to a well fit bird called alyssa and it turns out that they've all just been done for jaywalking by the massive amount of policemen across the road. we slowly turn around to see a line of police cars and a couple of officers walking towards us. shit. the policeman asked us whether we were aware that we had just jaywalked. "we're terribly sorry officer, but we're british and we're not really sure what that entails exactly."
being british rocks: we totally got away with it. so i get back to alyssa and she's telling me that she's got a citation (waving a pink piece of paper in front of my eye) and that she has to go to court. i tut and say "fuck the police". unfortuntely the officer who spoke to us in the first place is still stood be him me. he says, "sir, you're going to have to go home otherwise i'm going to arrest your ass". i don't even get the chance to say goodbye to alyssa as policemen drag us off in opposite directions. fuck the police.
we're feeling absolutely awful the next day so we head towards the old town to get some chilli dogs. they aren't exactly enough, so we walk all the way back into town to get a proper breakfast.
we pop into a diner called lindy's for a breakfast of eggs and hash browns (and of course a beer for to level usselves out). as we're paying the old man who works the till he's asking us about where we're from and ben says he's from london. the bloke says "london? what is it they got in london?" a long pause follows while we wait for him to remember. "oh yeah! toobs!" he'd been on holiday to london and all he'd remembered what that they had an underground rail system. heh heh.
after eating we go back to the hotel and decide that albuquerque is a cool place and we'll stick around for another day. the boys go to check out the swimming pool and gym while i stay in the room and watch stephen king's rose red while is an absolutely dreadful film. it's not highlander ii or owt, but you get the picture. after we freshen up, we head back out.
back to brewsters to watch some sport: dallas cowboys v houston texans. one of our plans is to watch the texans playing the week after. the texans win it: they are the first exansion team to win their first game since 1961. despite the free food which isn't all that (it's all right like) we order some burgers and jalapeño poppers. after we've ate and drank us fill, we head back to us hotel and watch once upon a time in the west.
we get up the next morning, pack and check out. i make my only phone call of the entire trip and ring me mam. me mam asks me where i am and i say albuquerque. me mam says, eeh you're joking aren't you? we know people in albuquerque. me mam sorts us out with the address and we decide to pay eric and greta a visit.
eventually we find the house and i step up and ring the doorbell. eric answers and looks puzzled. i explain that he hasn't seen me for twenty-six years but that he used to know me dad when we lived in idaho falls. he invites us in and we sit there listening to greta's war stories and looking at her artwork. ironically they've just got back from a holiday in holland. the whole thing is quite an overwhelming coincidence. mental in fact. we stay for a while and then get back on the road.
we drive back through the old town of albuquerque and then up nine mile hill. we're back on route 66 which is also interstate 40. we stop off for petrol and dinner at an indian place and then we head off towards arizona, taking photographs as we go.
acoma pueblo, aka sky city, is the world's oldest inhabited city. it's also not worth visiting at all. when we went we had to pay the indians to visit there. and then we had to pay extra for the car. and then extra for the photographs. so we said balls to it. these photographs were taking from a distance. they're a bit crap.
