a little hike

I was just re-reading the recent blogs after my dad wrote me an email, and it reminded me of this past weekend somehow.

Janey was in town during the weekend, so on Sunday after a breakfast of eggs and bacon and toast with the strawberry-rhubarb jam we bought on Saturday and after church we met Janey and went on a short hike along Piedra Lisa, which is near the La Luz trail in the Sandias. The first part is a dirt road, almost a half-mile. Jackson brought his water pack, with a few essential things, and it wasn't long before I was carrying it. But you know that's going to happen. Rylee was running on the road, and he was sure to be tired soon. The trail itself was much steeper than I would have thought, and very gravelly, which makes it slippery going down. It was a very rocky, narrow trail, bordered by pinon and fir, cholla and yucca. Jackson hiked with Janey and Cyndi, and he would occasionally stop so Ry and I could catch up. As the trail became steeper, Rylee and I would sing songs. The songs we know don't really drive us to march up the hills, as a cadence, but they distract us. Rylee forgets that he just asked me to carry him up the hill, and it's way too early to be doing that. There was "I've been working on the railroad," "Take me out to the ballgame," and the Alphabet Song. On the way back, we sang songs again, holding each other's hands to keep from slipping on our butts, but Ry didn't want to repeat songs, so we had to think of others. We do our own variations of "Numbers Rumba." Ry appreciates the new rhymes. (Ariel and I would do a variation of this on our hikes when she was young.)

Later that night, we learned to play hearts and uninstalled some gadget apps that Jack had placed on his sidebar and were causing some havoc on the computer.

A different weekend of sorts. We went to Great Wall on Friday night. The food is very good, we were able to avoid the Balloon Fiesta crowds, and the bill makes me happy. I sound even to myself like a curmudgeon when I get on this soapbox, but it's really upsetting me these days to pay up to three or four times the amount I paid on Friday night, get food that the owner thinks deserves to be charged the same as the food prepared by a chef in a fine dining restaurant but is almost always suspect if not horrid, or too much is served, and then you end up tipping three or four times the amount I tipped for my Friday night bill for service, let's be honest, that was the same, or worse. It doesn't seem right. The problem I see when taking family out for dinner is that there are very few places that are reasonable. The simple family restaurants are long gone. I can count good, affordable restaurants on one hand. The franchises are charging near high end these days and they don't even make the food. I suspect that even locally owned places must operate like franchises to stay in business and share the same high overhead. Fast food costs about the same as a night out at the affordable family restaurants, unless all you're getting is a bean burrito, but unless you only ate a bean burrito you feel sick afterwards. Still, when we do have a very fine meal out, ahh, it is so good.

I was a curmudgeon at the arts & crafts show, too, and it got to the point where it embarrassed Cyndi, but when we got in it really was a good show and worth some, but not all, of the price of admission (including the exorbitant on-site ATM fees). We ended up having fun that morning and enjoyed a little lunch there. This was the day we went to the balloon fiesta, where I'm sure I complained about the coffee. But that's all.

No, I also complained about the carnival atmosphere at the balloon park. The carnival is a half-mile strip of tents selling baubles and trinkets, pins and calendars, candles and every sort of balloon ornament imaginable. Before dawn, half awake, it is a strange world lit up by flood lights from above and from television crews, with the smells of pork and hot oil, coffee, burnt sugar, and barbecue, crowded with hundreds (growing to thousands) of the other undead wrapped in blankets wandering about with styrofoam cups and wearing jester hats. There is an inane commentary going out over the P.A. speakers. The carnies are present, too: "get your programs," "get your memory cards." This is great stuff but only before dawn. All of a sudden, the entire crowd is silent. A woman sings "The Star Spangled Banner", a cappella, as the mayor, up for re-election this week, floats above the hushed crowd, their upturned faces gazing at the flag draped from his balloon. One man behind me dares to sing it loudly, but the crowd doesn't join in.

The real magic of the balloon fiesta comes when you walk on the field, the grass of the park is lush now, and go among the balloons just starting to inflate. If it is cold, you find a gondola for that moment when the propane burners are ignited. You listen for the whistles permitting lift off. You are surrounded by colors and the sky is now blue. It's just past seven in the morning, and your day feels complete already. It wouldn't matter what you did the rest of the day. A nap is in order.

I have to say that the drive to park was not bad. We picked the right streets, maybe, or maybe we were just lucky when we left. We watched a full moon setting as we drove. We were in lines a mile deep, but the lines moved quickly and we were directed to a space to park three rows from an entrance.

Later in the day, we cooked hamburgers for Janey, her daughter and Kristina, and Elley and Lauren came over, too. We tried out a new vending machine at the supermarket to rent DVDs for a buck. There are no clerks at check out any more. Jack and Ry run the packages through the bar code scan and key in the produce numbers stuck to the tomatoes, which now have vines still attached to them. The Blockbuster, we discovered, has closed. (The end of that era. What a racket. Banks are next.) Yesterday, I downloaded a bunch of stuff on Bennie's new IPod after having to install a new version of software and marveled at the podcasts, audio books, movies, shows, and even educational courses that you can now download.

This is really enough.