Gallupping Toward Phoenix

Last week was a little insane, getting ready to move, both physically and emotionally. To take a break from all the tension, we decided to treat ourselves to a visit to the Albuquerque Bio Park.

The park is a combination of botanical gardens, aquarium, zoo, and a unique chain of very use-specific lakes. The lakes are designated for radio-controlled boats, children's fishing, adult fishing, catch and release fishing, etc. The aquarium is small, but interesting-they have some really nice jelly fish exhibits. A small train connects the aquarium and botanical gardens with the zoo and lakes.

Lacking the physical ability to see everything, we chose our favorites; the aquarium and the zoo. The aquarium took only about 30 minutes to walk through, though we could have taken longer if we had little kids to "experience" the exhibits. It was interesting to see a couple of real seagull-like birds perched at the end of the stingray/shark exhibit. I found it kind of strange that they had that exhibit in a shallow tank that was easily reached into by little hands, though it was not a hands-on display. There was a docent present at one end, but as the picture shows, a little girl was persistent about dipping her fingers in the cold salt water.

The aquarium and zoo are about 3 miles apart, so the 20 minute train ride made sense. Besides, how often do you get the chance to sit in a small-scale cattle car, pulled by a bio-fuel driven little engine?

The zoo is my personal favorite and so I took over the camera duties. It's a fairly small place, but was plenty for my knee to handle. (It was still a little sore from a previous, all-day ride to the Taos area.)

Check out the wrestling polar bears and the bizarre little snow-crested...somethings (I have got to start carrying a pad to write the names of animals, etc. on!)-they are a type of marsupial. Only about a foot or so tall, they look like some kind of fantasy warriors-really cool. We were, also, lucky enough to arrive just at giraffe feeding time, so I was able to get some good face shots. That's one advantage of the smaller zoos. Often the animals are closer and there's more hands-on activities.

Here's the link to the slide show from our little excursion.

A little bit rested, we resumed packing the following day. By Saturday night, our place looked like a warehouse and the animals were all freaked out. Their condition only worsened Sunday, as items were carried out to the u-haul, and the place was emptied of its familiar contents. We had a problem with the truck, though. Torn between which size to reserve, we, of course, chose one that was too small to hold all our stuff and both motorcycles. Being a holiday weekend, there wasn't another truck to be found, so it was decided that Cameron would ride his bike and I would drive the truck with the trailered car.

Cameron started loading the truck, first thing in the morning. It's funny how people seem to scatter when someone they know needs help moving. It looked like we might have to load the truck ourselves, something neither one of us was up to.

We've been so fortunate to have fantastic neighbors. (Tim and Kyla, both just starting to explore their lives, both as new parents of a rambunctious chocolate lab puppy, and as adults in the world of work and college.) They saved the day by helping us load the truck and keep an eye on Tuesday, who wanted to stay near all the activity; hanging out with the "pack".

It was an exhausting day, so the four of us wrapped it up with a delicious meal at a highly recommended steak house. Before the meal was over, we were invited to have dessert at Kyla's parent's place. I had wanted to meet her parents for a while, at least as long of a while as you can have when you've only been someplace for a couple of months! Well, her mom is just as friendly and warm as she is; it was a really nice evening-a much needed change of gears.

It's times like this that make it so hard to leave this place. Albuquerque has a warmth that is hard to describe. At every turn, there are people I want to pull into my life as friends and they quickly take root in my heart. Leaving her parent's place, that familiar knot caught in my throat and I had to pull myself back from the sadness of leaving all this. Hugs goodnight, and goodbye, since we were planning on leaving early in the morning, and the day was over.

This morning, we set about to finish the remaining odds and ends that needed to be taken care of before we vacated our apartment. Cleaning the refrigerator, stowing the last items in the truck, finding more that had been forgotten about, etc. took much longer than expected, of course. Thus, our early morning departure turned into an early afternoon one.

Since we didn't want to deal with the car trailer until the last minute, we picked it up on the way out of town-I drove the truck and Cameron drove the car, we had left his motorcycle at the rental store earlier. With the car loaded on the trailer, we started our new journey.

Our rocky start got a little rockier about 2 hours down the road. With Cameron following behind me, to make sure I had the trailer and truck under control, I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw him briefly waver on the freeway. Shortly after I looked again and he had pulled off to the side of the road, though was still moving. I continued a little further to a wider part of the shoulder and stopped, concerned about what was happening.

Well, his throttle cable had broken, causing him to lose any ability to accelerate. Luckily, we were only about a quarter of a mile from Gallup, NM, so I called the auto club for a tow truck (I'm so glad I opted for the motorcycle coverage) to take the bike to a nearby hotel parking lot so we could figure out what to do next.

That brings me to now. It's late and Cameron's asleep, but I needed to get this, "down on paper" so to speak, before there are any more additions to this adventure. The plan, so far, is to contact a BMW dealer in the morning to find out about getting a new cable. We'll probably leave the bike at the towing company's yard (they offered to store it for a minimal fee), go on to Phoenix to unload, then return for the bike once the part arrives. We're still 6 hours from our destination so that will entail at least an overnight trip to accomplish.

I will write more as things evolve.