Saturday was the last day for work, at least in El Paso. After work today we started our drive. We planned to be in Albuquerque Saturday night and we need to be in Huntsville, AL Monday evening where Chris has work next week. Jackie had the unique opportunity to go out to the site where Chris was working and see a live missile firing. We actually saw two firings, both of which were open to the public but are not advertised. You kind of need to know someone in the know. Maybe 10 or so years ago we had this opportunity but due to overcast skies we really couldn’t see much. Today the weather was clear. Where we were set up was probably 2-3 miles from where the missile was launched from and maybe 20 miles from where the target (a drone) was hit but you could still see most of it with clarity. We ended up leaving McGregor Range where Chris was working, and heading north towards Albuquerque at around 3:30. We made a quick stop for gas in Alamogordo and had our sights set on green chile cheeseburgers at the Owl Moon Bar & Café in San Antonio, NM. Along the way we stopped for our obligatory immigration checkpoint about 50 miles from the border. We were treated there with a brief conversation about travelling with an unusually friendly border patrol agent. We made two other stops along the way. First, we pulled off on a dirt road to see a nice view of the evening sky and we also took advantage of the privacy of the remote place to change our clothes since we were still wearing dress clothes from work (Chris had to perform a demo for a three-star Japanese General today). Second, we stopped quickly at Valley of Fires Recreational area which is an area of lava flow from 5,000 years ago. The ground is covered in lava rocks for miles around, yet it is different from what one might expect in an area of lava flow because there are plenty of trees and other plants growing up through the lava. While we were still in Alamogordo we saw an interesting sight along the way. A van had a house air conditioner hanging out of the back window. We wondered if it were cheaper to install that than it was to just get his van’s a/c fixed.
We made it to the Owl Moon Bar & Café around 6:45. For a really small town the place was pretty busy. We ordered our green chile cheeseburgers and a couple of beers. When we finished our cheeseburgers we ordered two more because we were still hungry and because they were so good. We could not take any pictures inside of the bar because it was very dark and it really didn’t look like the type of place where one takes pictures. We could describe it as something out of a movie. It was dark, there were wooden booths around the perimeter of the room with a large bar to sit at. There were pictures of cowboys, farmers and other random stuff on the walls. The menus were in picture frames screwed to the walls. The place also served as a takeout beer and liquor store because as we sat there people kept coming in and going up to the cash register for 6-packs and liquor. Just about everyone who entered the place seemed to know each other. While we were sitting there we could not help notice that the guy in the booth behind us, who was there with we assume his wife, seemed to be quite popular. Nearly everyone who came into the bar and just about everyone who was leaving stopped by to say hi to him. It seemed like maybe this guy was an important person who could get things for you, or a guy who you wanted to stay friendly with. Chris couldn’t take it anymore, he had to ask this guy who he was. We figured he might be the mayor or some kind of local politician. As he was leaving, Chris stopped him. We were half expecting him to greet us as if he had known us his entire life, much the way he was greeting everyone else, but instead he had a bewildered look on his face. Chris asked him, “Sir, sorry to bother you, but who are you? Everyone in this place for the past hour has stopped by to say hi to you, we are just wondering who you are?” The guy smiled and said, “I’m not important, my name is Glen, I am a farmer and I live just up the road.”. So that was it. We met Glen, the farmer from San Antonio, NM.
We left the bar and headed back onto the highway for the remaining hour drive to the airport where we would be either turning in our car or just swapping out contracts and keeping the same car. We had initially hoped we could just keep the same car because it would be a pain in the neck to repack everything. But since we bought our chimeneas the back area of the car no longer had any room to store things because there were two clay fireplaces sitting there now. The backseat now had two suitcases stacked on top of each other along with all of our other stuff. We realized we needed a bigger vehicle. We parked outside of the rental car place, Chris walked to the parking lot to see what was available. We are National Emerald Club members so we have the ability to pick any car from the Emerald Aisle, which for most people means you pay for a certain car class, in our case an intermediate car, but you get to pick pretty much anything that is available in the two or three aisles of cars. Since we rent cars more frequently than most we are Executive level Emerald club members which means we also get to pick from a larger selection of cars than the emerald club people do. Usually this results in us renting a larger car, or an SUV or sometimes even a large SUV for the price of a small car. This allows us to buy things like used whiskey barrels and Mexican chimeneas to take home. So as Chris was out in the parking lot looking at our options an employee came up asking if he could help in picking out a car. Chris explained we were looking for something a little bigger. Unfortunatley this weekend was the International Hot Air Balloon Festival in Albuquerque. They get over 100,000 visitors and this was the opening weekend. That meant our car pickings were slim. There were two SUVs there but they were specifically being held for people who had SUV reservations. The only thing available larger than what we already had was a Honda Fit. This car/SUV is a boxy car. Chris turned it on to see what kind of gas mileage it had gotten so far over its life (you gotta love technology), and it had only been averaging 18 mpg. Also it smelled and looked very used inside. The wear and tear on the car plus the low gas mileage meant it would not be coming with us. Chris found the guy in the parking lot again, who was very helpful, and asked if we would be allowed to keep our same car and just open a new contract. He said if we went into the office we should have no problem doing that. So Chris went inside to swap contracts and was only half surprised when the lady behind the counter gave us a hard time. This was somewhat expected. We had a mid sized SUV but we paid for an intermediate car. She said sure, we could keep the same car but we would have to pay more. Chris tried telling her that there were other SUVs on the lot that we would just end up taking anyway if she refused us and we would be doing them a favor by keeping our same car. It would save them from having to wash the car and service it. She wasn’t having it. She said we could either pay more or we were out of luck. She said we could ask the people out in the parking lot if they would make a deal with us but she would not. So Chris told her thank you very much, we’ll just keep the car we have now and extend our contract. Chris walked back to the parking lot where there were still no cars and started eyeing the Honda Fit. As he was standing there, a Chevy Suburban pulled up which had just gotten serviced and it was immediately parked in the Executive Aisle, which we are very much entitled do under National’s own rules, so Chris grabbed the keys from the guy parking the car, got in and drove out to the gate. The funny thing about these rental car places is that the people in the office do not talk to the people out in the parking lot, who do not talk to the people at the gate where you get your paperwork. So the guy at the gate had no idea we had been trying to negotiate for a better car and he didn’t even blink when we pulled up in the behemoth Suburban. Chris pulled back around to the front of the building where Jackie was waiting with our previous car. We unpacked, repacked and were on our way. The Suburban is big. We could probably fit our first car in the back of this thing. It will not be good on gas but it will be comfortable and it has plenty of room for our chimeneas.
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| Our route |
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