The 2026 World Cup, So Far, So Good...ish.

 I love watching the World Cup. I hate the unparalleled greed of the organizers, the ridiculous price-gouging for everything from beer to seats, and the way they blithely "rename" venues with little regard for anything connected to the local area ("Mexico City Stadium"? Oh, come on, everyone knows it's the Azteca, a traditional name relating to an ancient empire that was almost as voracious as FIFA, being technologically limited to mere human sacrifice); the way it passes costs to others while reserving profits to itself; and the irresponsible way it drags teams and fans unlimited distances so it can spread the costs to as many suck-up polities as possible, the better to fleece them. Only Gianni Infantino himself has a larger carbon footprint than a World Cup team. 

It's a mark of just how big this event is that so many localities are still willing to foot the bill for mere exposure, even if they have to massage the numbers mercilessly to appear to break even on the deal. Too bad there aren't more cold-eyed cities like Chicago, which refused to participate. And I'm grateful my hometown doesn't have a stadium large enough to even consider joining the party.

The football almost always shines. I'm one of those people who believed that the expansion of the Finals to 48 teams would produce a noticeable decline in the quality of the sport. I was wrong about that: except for the hapless Curaçao team, whose moment of glory was drawing briefly level with a surprisingly wretched German team, before having six goals put past them in the second half of play. The other low-ranked teams, the ones that Shouldn't Have Been There, performed with remarkable ability, capped off by the exploits of the team from tiny Cabo Verde Islands.

There's always a question about the officiating in these games. Every four years, the organizers toss out a few too-precious variations in the rules, in the expectation that it will ... I don't know, improve the game? It rarely does; more often it amounts to additional expenses for local club teams with no genuine improvement in results. Video Assistant Review (VAR) is the biggest such boondoggle, requiring club teams to invest in pricey equipment, and leagues to construct elaborate facilities to review plays remotely from across the country, just so the matches can be held up while officials, now on the verge of being replaced by further expensive electronic machinery, parse photons to determine whose toe is closer to the end line, and whether a ball skimmed across an attacker's hair before being played into the net. It robs us of unwinnable arguing points, not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd say no one has ever done a cost/benefit analysis of it. Yes, milliions of dollars turn on every decision, but if that's the criteria, the games should be played like the NFL: run a seven-sedond play, then talk about it for a minute or two while a team of referees debate the action.

VAR was intended, they said, to rectify "clear and obvious errors" by on-field referees, to give the center ref a way to correct him- or herself. I always think of the time when Manchester United's goalkeeper, Roy Carroll, threw the ball into his own net (by accident, of course) and no match official saw it. That was a "clear and obvious error." They happen maybe once or twice in a 380-game season. (This year VAR was given the power to review awards of corner kicks, the latest bit of Mission-Creep. They can't award corners, but can take them away, which is an OK distinction, because corners can lead directly to goals, while goal kicks can't.) 

VAR was allowed to check for fouls by the attacking team "in the buildup" to a goal. The disallowance of what would have been Egypt's second goal against Argentina, because of a foul a hundred yards away and who knows how many touches before the shot, demonstrates that the VAR officials are unable to discipline themselves. They need limits placed on them that don't require interpretation.

Here's one: do not show the video in slow motion or stop-frame. Show it from as many angles as you like, but at speed. If a center ref watching the screen next to the pitch can't see the purported foul that he or she supposedly missed, then the mistake is neither clear nor obvious. 

Here's another: set a time limit. How long does it take to cue up a digital image of a play? That's your starting point. Add to that the time to watch the play from each angle (at speed), and throw in a few seconds for brief communication between the match ref and the VAR outpost. ("Hey, girl, you need to go over and take a look at this, I think." That's it.) Let the match ref watch whatever VAR has to offer, and then he or she can make his or her decision without further prompting. 

Neither referees nor VAR officials are perfect. (In the leagues I watch, they occasionall admit the more boneheaded failures, and we all move on.) We don't expect them to be. If they were, Cabo Verde would likely have beaten Argentina in the Round of 32, and Egypt would likely be in the quarterfinals now. If referees were perfect, Cabo Verde's player, Pina, would not have gotten a yellow card at around the 67th minute for, it appears, leaving greasy fingerprints on the shoulder of Lionel Messi's sacred jersey. The Video Assistant Referee would have noted the foul in the box on Cabo Verde's Borges, during extra time, and would have recommended the award of a penalty kick to the little African nation's team. And finally, at the death, the referee would not have allowed Argentina's player Tagliafigo back on the pitch after treatment until after a corner kick had been taken. It may have changed things, even at that point, but it certainly would not have reinforced the suspicion that Argentina is getting special treatment at this World Cup -- a suspicion made manifest in the quarterfinal by VAR's expansive view of its remit.

 

2026 Condo Week: Ruidosa & Santa Fe, part 3

This is part three of this post. You should read 'em in order. Here's a link to part one. And here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

Fifth Day (Wednesday) 

We didn't have a lot of plans for the day. We needed to do laundry, and we wanted to see the Scotland:Brazil match in the World Cup at 4pm ... well, some of us wanted to. Yeah, okay, I was willing to watch it, too, even though I knew as well as anybody else that Scotland had not a prayer in that matchup. So we kind of took it easy. I had some leftover pasta for breakfast -- who knew such a thing existed? Pasta, left over! -- while Sherry and Nancy had their usual porridge and Jeff had a frozen breakfast sandwich that he seems to actually like. (I tried one once; not to my liking at all.) Then Sherry took the laundry up the hill and sat with it for a while. When I finished whatever I was doing -- I don't remember what it was -- I went up and relieved her until the clothes were done. By then it was getting on toward lunch time, so we went into "Midtown" -- what locals call the central part of the village --to a place called the Village Buttery to get something.

 

Here's the TL:DR version: this is absolutely the best meal we had in Ruidosa or Santa Fe. I had a roast beef sandwich piled high on excellent sourdough bread, while everyone else had some kind of quiche. All fantastic. The place is a little bit of a madhouse, with only about four tables inside and two or three on the patio out front, and customers lined up waiting to order at the counter and employees gossiping and joking around with the customers. Every town needs to have a place like this. And the desserts! OMG, the desserts! Nancy and Jeff each had a slice of caramel cheesecake, and Nancy got some cookies for later. I don't remember if Sherry had anything; I'm inclined to say she didn't. Meanwhile, I had a slice of buttermilk pie. But not ordinary buttermilk pie. Ordinary buttermilk pie is like what God would eat if he couldn't get a proper peanut butter pie (which is often the case; I've found two in the last 40 years, and one of my sources went out of business when I wasn't looking; the other one died). No, this buttermilk pie is so good that God would order it in preference to a proper peanut butter pie. It was absolutely the best anywhere. I cannot imagine a better buttermilk pie. It just can't exist.

 

Just down the street from the Village Buttery is the Wingfield House Museum. This modest 1920s-vintage house was the home of a locally prominent family who owned a great deal of land in the area, and several businesses. The museum contains interesting old maps of the area and the state, photos of the town and people in the early 20th Century, and some period furnishings. It had, in essence, something to interest everyone in our group.

Next, we drove back out to the Mescalero reservation south of town, to revisit St Joseph's, the Apache Mission church. This large building was erected in 1920 and is undergoing preservation efforts now. It forms an imposing space, and has all the typical accoutrements of a Catholic church, but done in a style consistent with the local community's architectural sensibilities. It was deserted while we were there, but we could sense that it was at the heart of a vibrant group.

 

 

Oh, and by the way, Scotland's performance against Brazil was utterly dismal, as I expected it to be.

Sixth Day (Thursday)

 

I was awake early, lying in bed listening to screaming outside. It took me a while to realize I was listening to foxes in the woods surrounding our condo; I had only ever heard them on Midsomer Murders before. It was a kind of magical experience. 

 

not sure what this is

Our plans called for a walk along the Ruidoso River path, looking for fairy doors, before breakfast. We found the river -- hard to miss, after all -- but the fairy doors all seem to have been washed away in the flood that went through this area a couple of years before. We could see there had been substantial damage in this low-lying area; nearby houses were deserted, half-destroyed, and piles of brush remained to be collected and removed. Pilings supporting the riverbank were pulled away and had not been repaired. 

 

Or maybe the fairy doors had just been relocated, because at our next stop, Wingfield Park, there were a dozen or so of them scattered around on trees for kids to find. There was also an enclosed botanical garden which was nice without being spectacular. 

Amazon MGM Studios

Having seen that, we repaired to the Cornerstone Bakery for another excellent breakfast, then back to our condo for a viewing of the movie The Sheep Detectives, starring Hugh Jackman as the dead guy; Patrick Stewart as the Old Fogey; Emma Thompson as the solicitor; Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Lily, the world's smartest sheep; and Bryan Cranston as Sebastian, the sheep who doesn't forget anything. It's a mix of live-action and some kind of animation, maybe computer-generation? I don't know, don't care. It was a wonderful, imaginative murder mystery, and fun to watch.

Then, continuing our theme, we watched half of the Ecuador:Germany match from the World Cup, before taking a nap in preparation for dinner at a place called Rio Grande. My notes on this trip tell me that I had a beef stew. I remember ordering it, but not eating it. In fact, despite having looked at all the photos of the place posted on Google Maps, I have no recollection of anything about it except the skull on the sign outside. No idea why. My notes also tell me that we watched two World Cup matches there (presumably at the same time; I can't imagine that even we would sit there for five hours to watch soccer, World Cup or no.) We were back at the condo to see the US play Turkey in one of the most exciting, if disappointing, matches to that point in the Cup.

 

 

Seventh Day (Friday) 

Unfinished church nave at Gran Quivira

After checking out of our condo, we headed up the road toward Santa Fe, stopping along the way to visit Gran Quivira, one of three ancient villages that make up the Salinas Pueblo National Monument. Gran Quivira was the largest of the three. It started out as a collection of kivas, then the Spanish came along and started building churches to go along with that. Gran Quivira had a church and a half: the second one was started but never finished. 

 

What's left are just ruins, but are impressive nonetheless if only for their scope. The settlement occupies an entire hilltop, more than 600 acres, with vistas stretching off into the distance in every direction. It hasn't all been excavated, but one part that has includes a pueblo with over 200 rooms, mostly small (probably storerooms) that just go on and on. Some of them were used for religious purposes kept hidden from the interfering Spanish priests. We spent above an hour at the place in the heat of the day. 

 

We drove from there up to Mountainair, a small town that is home to both the Salinas Pueblo National Monument Visitors' Center and, more importantly, the Shaffer Hotel, which as a reputable dining room where I could get the "Annie Oakley," which is essentially a Philly steak sandwich served in a tortilla and smothered in some kind of cheese sauce. Not bad, not bad at all.

 

Whenever four people spend essentially every hour of every day together, there are always going to be some nerves rubbed raw. I think we all recognise that, but to help us over those occasions, I decided to get one of those king-sized Snickers bars, with two candy bars in the package. There was a problem with paying the bill -- a long and not very interesting story -- so the waitress just comp'd me the candy bars by way of apology. I wanted Snickers bars in particular because of those commercials they used to run with the slogan, "You're not yourself when you're hungry." I planned to save them for when somebody -- hopefully not me -- went off the rail a little. But I made the mistake of leaving them in the fridge in Santa Fe without my name on them, and one of them disappeared during the night. Just vanished. (It magically reappeared in slightly altered wrapping two days later.). 

 

There was a nice rain while we were having lunch, so it was significantly cooler when we came out of the Shaffer and went a block over to the Visitors' Centre. There we watched a video about the pueblos and the history of Spanish interference in the local community, and browsed through the little museum the Park Service has put together. I had planned this route to Santa Fe just so that we would have something to see along the way; I hadn't realized it'd be so very fascinating. 

 

But a word of advice if you're thinking of visiting the place yourself: make sure your gas tank is full. It's a looooooong way from there to anywhere.

 

 

The Santa Fe add-on (Saturday and Sunday)

 

In Santa Fe, Nancy had booked us into a VRBO unit, a casita -- not quite one of those tiny houses you see on unscripted faux-reality shows on TV; just a little apartment in the central part of the city. It was the smallest, least expensive unit she could find that had two bathrooms. And let's face it, that is an overriding priority in our experienced travel group. 

 

The whole two-bedroom, two-bath unit, with kitchen, dining area, and living room with fireplace would have fit easily into the three downstairs rooms at the front of my house. It was snug. But not uncomfortably so. In fact, as travel lodging goes, it was kind of nice. I liked it; I think Sherry did, too, and Nancy. Jeff didn't say a single word about it, so I don't know his opinion. But for cost and location, you really couldn't beat it. And it had hooks all over the place, to hang things on. And the hot water heater was somewhere nearby. And it had a hand-held shower head (although Sherry told me later that she couldn't figure out how to detach it from the mount: it was magnetic, and the magnet was surprisingly powerful; I struggled with it too, until I figured out the secret of the design).

 

Another great feature was the neighbourhood it was in, within walking distance of the main plaza of the city. Though we were more interested in the businesses surrounding us on the road. Next door was a terrific bakery-cafe called Boultawn's, where I had breakfast every morning (the first morning I just brought pastries back from there); a few doors down was another bakery, but they didn't open until nine. What kind of bakery doesn't open until nine? I never went there, because of that. There was also a trattoria called Lino's, where we ended up having a very nice meal on our last evening in Santa Fe. And there were a host of coffee shops and music shops and some interesting-seeming other restaurants that we just didn't have enough time to check out (though we did go to the Salvadoran place across the street, and Nancy and Jeff got takeout from the Chinese place on the corner one evening, when Sherry and I had leftovers to feed on. 

 

So we had Saturday and Sunday in Santa Fe. We had a plan for Saturday that involved a lot of sightseeing in the central area of town. Sadly, we had not figured on the gay folk of Santa Fe. There was some kind of Gay Pride event taking place, and the downtown streets were closed off and there was no parking available. So, Plan B: we drove out to a place called Teseque Glass, a glass school and studio some distance from the town center. There are several pieces that I liked very much, but I don't think I'm going to buy any. My collecting days are, I think, pretty much over, along with my county-counting and solo-travelling days. (I could be wrong; last time I visited SiNaCa in Fort Worth, there was a very nice piece in their gallery that I still think about buying -- if they even still have it -- and I keep thinking I just might take a quick trip up to Ft Worth to see.)

 

After Teseque, we started for a scenic route up a mountain, but we got sidetracked, what a shock, by food. It was lunchtime and we were all hungry, so we got wraps at a place called The Wrap. Jeff seemed to be having some kind of medical issue, so we decided to take our lunch back at the casita, so Nancy could check to make sure she'd given him the right batch of meds that morning. She had not, it turned out, and they were putting him to sleep. She did some chemical thing to ameliorate the situation, but we decided that instead of going back out we would stay in to watch England play Panama in the World Cup. No arm-twisting needed there.... And we got to watch the game without feeling selfish. 

 

Jeff was all better the next morning, and went with me to Boultawn's for breakfast. I had an excellent breakfast burrito, with deliciously soft, fluffy eggs and a really nice salsa verde. Jeff got avocado toast on a bialy, which is like a bagel but without a hole in the middle. On top of the avocado paste was some kind of sliced food that looked like a peeled grapfruit. The baker, when he came out to see how everything was, said it was slices of watermelon radish, which I have never heard of. Jeff said it tasted pretty good and that he liked the texture of it.

 

I also got two biscochito bagels to take back to the casita. "Biscochito" is a local thing, a particular type of twice-baked cookie with cinnamon and sugar crust. Boultawn's makes bagels with a similar flavour, and we split a couple for the local experience. It wasn't as good as it sounded, but at least we tried the local dish. Sort of.

 

gay pride mascot

Sherry and I took a long walk, from our casita down to the southern edge of downtown, past the Basilica and through the main plaza back to our casita, a total of about two miles. Mainly it was intended as a physical challenge for me, to walk so far (especially at that altitude), but it was also a chance to check out the center of town after all the partying had ended. Then the four of us went up to a place called Fort Marcy Hill -- where the US Army had placed a garrison during the Mexican War in the 1840s, because all of the city was in range of their guns from there. There's nothing left of the fort but some barely-visible remnants of its foundations, but the hill is a popular spot for watching the sun set. That's what we did up there, and it was magnificent.

Sunset over Santa Fe from Fort Marcy Hill

We went sightseeing on Sunday morning. I was doing the driving now; I forget why, except that I like driving and Nancy doesn't. I had found riding in the back and staring out the window all the way from Colorado oddly relaxing (even while Sherry was afraid we were going to drive off a cliff on the way up to Monjeau Lookout), but I also found that the lack of floor-space in the back seat made my feet and knees hurt in an unusual way. It was much better up front. 

 

Our first stop was the Loretto chapel, probably the most famous site in the city. It was the church of a group of nuns in the 19th Century, and it had a choir loft that they could only get to by ladder. There was no room for a regular staircase. So naturally, they prayed to St Joseph (patron saint of carpenters), and whaddaya know, a carpenter turns up out of the blue, builds them a magical spiral staircase that has no structural support, and disappears without taking any kind of payment. This shows that God loves Catholics (and Donald Trump) more than other people, because other people have to pay for what they get.

 

Now, I had seen the magic stairs on an earlier visit, so I dropped everybody off and went to park. Since we were so close to the casita, I said I would probably just go back there. But I spotted big empty parking lots just across the river from downtown, at State offices, and sho'nuf they were only reserved on weekdays. So I parked there and waited to hear from the others. 

 

When I did, we arranged to meet up at the next site on our list, the church of St Michael, which is the oldest church in the United States. There was another State parking lot across the street from that, so I moved the car there and waited for them to walk the three blocks or so from the Loretto. In that time I ascertained that St Michael's was already closed for the day. We looked around the outside a little, and then moved on. We walked over to the main plaza, checking out art galleries along the way (I'm interested in acquiring a couple of Western-art sculptures or maybe a couple of busts) but it was all ugly, overpriced or, simply, too monumental. I have no desire to own a garishly painted bronze Apache chief, a $50,000 elephant, or an eight-foot-tall copy of a Remington warrior-and-eagle sculpture. Guess I'll stick to the weekly sales at the auction house back home.

 

When we were done sightseeing in the plaza, I went to fetch the car and picked everyone up at the corner. We had lunch at the Salvadoran place I mentioned, which is just across Guadalupe Street from the casita. We had some leftovers to stash, so we went across the street to store them, and somehow -- I can't begin to imagine how we might have found this out -- discovered that Canada was playing South Africa on television at that very moment! So we stopped a while to watch before heading out for our last sightseeing ventures in the New Mexican capital.

 

Gunnison Prairie Dog

There's a national monument located on an Indian reservation some thirty miles southwest of town that reportedly has some unique rock formations. It sounded like a good place to go, but first we had to put some gas in the Dog Show Leviathan. While doing that, I noticed some little tail-less animals cavorting on the edge of the gas station's apron, and called out to the others to take a look. Turns out they're Gunnison Prairie Dogs. There's apparently a large colony of them in Santa Fe.

 

Ethel

Next we stopped off to see Ethel the Blue Whale, on the campus of the local community college. It was constructed a few years back by some students as a sort of environmental consciousness-raising exercise. It's made entirely out of recycled materials from the landfill, and has become something of a local landmark. Easy to see why. 

 

 After a half-hour drive down the freeway and another fifteen or twenty minutes negotiating two-lane state roads, we arrived at the entrance to this National Monument. Not only was it closed; it required reservations and the purchase of timed-entry tickets, with the last entry at 1pm before a 4pm closing. And the tickets can only be bought from the tribal office a mile or so up the road leading to the entrance. Obviously, the tribe desires that outsiders not bother visiting this particular beauty spot.

 

So we went the other way --  to another beauty spot some miles northeast of Santa Fe. There's an overlook up in the mountains, in Hyde Memorial State Park, from which you supposedly get a very nice view of the city of Santa Fe. And yes, there was a nice view of the city from up there. We stopped to look at it briefly, and all of us expressed an interest in visiting the bathroom that undoubtedly existed at the trailhead just a short way farther up the hill. A few minutes later, I noticed that Jeff was already halfway there. I told Sherry & Nancy I would drive up there and give him a ride, because I needed to go too. They seemed uninterested, but it turned out they hadn't heard.

 

 There wasn't a bathroom at the next trailhead, but there was at the one after that, and we found what we needed. And while I was in there, I got text messages that I just knew were from Sherry (I was not going to even look at my phone while standing over an open pit), saying they needed a ride, too. And I was right. They were waiting at the first trailhead and were so relieved when I got back down to them. The walk to the upper trailhead would have been pretty long.

 

 

Pueblo, Golden, Fort Collins, & Home (Monday through Thursday)

 

We had decided to break the return trip into two parts, because of what happened a year ago when I drove up to Fort Collins. I got a blood clot that lodged in my kidney, and now half of one kidney is dead. My doctor says it was likely caused by sedentary living, and when I mentioned that I had just driven for two straight days before it happened, he thought that was likely why. (They don't really know what caused it, that's just kind of a best guess. Whatever indicators they can read to show the cause are uninformative to them.) So now, I try to stop every hour or so, get out of the car and walk around for a while. Sometimes the weather makes it unpleasant -- wind, rain, heat or cold -- but there's been no recurrence. That wasn't possible on the drive from Fort Collins to Ruidoso, because of scheduling issues (and I found that I could barely move my legs at all in the back seat, which is surprising in such a big vehicle, but there it is.) But on the return trip, we had time for a more relaxed pace, so we took the opportunity to visit a town we otherwise would never spend time in.

 

fire west of Pueblo

The main attraction, if you can call it that, was the series of wildfires in New Mexico and Colorado. There was one southwest of Santa Fe as we left; another west of Taos as we passed through there, and a big one just west of Pueblo, which had us pretty concerned for a while. We kept an eye on that one the whole time we were there.

 

Nancy goes sometimes to a dog show in Pueblo, so she knows of some interesting places in the town. She pointed out the bridges across the Arkansas River in the town. Each ethnic neighbourhood had its own bridge to allow the workers to get across to their jobs at the big steel plant. Some have been replaced now by road bridges, but a few pedestrian bridge crossings of the river still remain. 

 

Ethnic neighbourhoods used to be the rule all across America; that's how we ended up with Chinatowns and Koreatown and Little Italy, even though now most of the people living in those neighbourhoods aren't Chinese or Korean or Italian. But the names have stuck. And like in those neighbourhoods, the shops that are there have often been there for a hundred years, and reflect the original ethnicity of the place. Thus in one neighbourhood of Pueblo, there's a place called Dutch Lunch. (It's probably German, like Pennsylvania Dutch is German.) And Nancy took us to an Italian market called Gag's (short for, I think, Gagliardo's). It reminded me strongly of the old Central Grocery on Decatur Street in New Orleans, that I used to go to with my mother: the prosciutto and salami hanging over the deli, the elaborate selections of olive oils and bottled garlic; all kinds of pastas. All kinds of kitchen gadgets. All kinds of unidentifiable products imported from the Old Country. It took me back. But I knew I wouldn't be able to get the things I most wanted back home in good condition: after three days in the car, I wouldn't trust any of those things to still be good. So I took my trip down memory lane, and left with only the reminiscences and a container of pizelli ... which didn't last a day anyway.

 

cool sculpture at PCC

We also went down to the convention center in town, where there was an exhibit about the four local men who hold the Congressional Medal of Honor. There were statues of them outside the building, and a short film explaining their histories was shown on a screen in the hallway. Always moving stories, tales that you have to get a little choked up on hearing. 

 

The last thing we saw in town was an old railroad locomotive turntable. It's right next to the river, and we saw it as we passed over on the Main Street Bridge. I had Nancy go back, after the convention center, so I could take pictures, because I've only ever seen them on TV and in movies, despite having heard about them all my life. I think they're kind of cool, and I wanted a picture. 

 

The next morning the wind had shifted and the smoke from the local wildfire was heading well to our south, so the drive up to Golden to get Carly back was much less concerning than it would have been otherwise. We had lunch with the Zimms; Kaylie was back from Scout Camp, but Jeramy wasn't home; at work, I suppose. Ali was at work, too, but she often works from home and so was able to take some time out to feed us (and her kids, who would probably have had to eat anyway, even if we hadn't shown up) a nice smorgasbord of sandwich-style options for lunch. 

 

The drive from Golden to Fort Collins was uneventful, as was the drive home from there. If anything out of the usual happened, it wasn't unusual enough to leave any trace in my memory. Glad of that! 

2026 Condo Week: Ruidoso & Santa Fe, part 2

2026 Condo Week: Ruidosa & Santa Fe, part 1

 The drive up to Colorado went without incident. We left San Antonio very early (by our standards) on Wednesday and made all our usual stops -- breakfast at Mar's Kitchen in Comfort; various leg-stretching stops across Texas, gas and lunch in the park at Sweetwater. There's a mom-and-pop ice cream shop in town that we see every time we pass through there, but it's usually winter and they're closed. This time, though, we stopped and indulged. Sherry had a half-scoop of mango gelato topped with a half-scoop of green apple gelato. I got a half of Oreo and a half of White Chocolate Birthday Cake. Carly got a half-scoop of vanilla, which she promptly turned over onto the ground. So I had to hold it for her. When Sherry noticed my ice cream was melting all over the table, she put Carly's between her feet to hold it while we ate ours. Naturally, ice cream infused her shoe laces, which later caused a little problem in that the Colorado Cairns found her laces irresistible.

We spent the night in Amarillo, with dinner at the Coyote Cafe on Grand. I like their burgers but not their fries. Should have gotten onion rings instead but didn't think of it until too late. Their burgers are proof of the maxim I learned young: a sandwich's quality is directly proportional to its messiness, and the corollary that the best sandwiches must be eaten over a sink. These burgers are definite sink-quality sandwiches.

Breakfast as usual in Dumas at our regular stop. It was cloudy and fairly cool still, despite the previous afternoon's 107-degree heat, so it was OK leaving Carly in the car while we ate. The drive across the Oklahoma panhandle and eastern Colorado was also uneventful. We got out and walked around at the beautiful little city park in Springfield, Colorado, and had a picnic lunch at the city park in Hugo, then drove up to Golden. With the time change, we got there in mid-afternoon, and had a nice but too-short visit with Jeramy and Ali and Benny (Kaylee was at Scout Camp), then left Carly, who was very happy to see the family and especially her cousin Aspen. She wanted to leave with us but was persuaded to stay for an extended visit, which was the whole point of our drive up to Colorado. 

After last year's pneumonia episode following her stay in a kennel for our Condo trip, we've decided never to board her again. We had first arranged for some good friends down the street to watch her for us; but then the wife of the couple learned that dogs are one of the many things causing her severe allergy responses. Maybe some medication change can overcome the issue for her -- fingers crossed -- but if not, we will gladly take Carly to Colorado rather than board her again. We know it's something of an imposition on the Zimms, as they always have so many things going on with their kids and their work, but if they can't keep Carly, and the neighbours can't, then the bottom line is we will just not go on Condo Week trips anymore. 

We shall see. 

 

 

First Day (Friday & Saturday) 

We got away from Fort Collins around 9AM and headed through Denver and Springs into New Mexico. There was the appearance of severe weather ahead at one point, but we managed to miss the worst of it, only getting the tail-end of the rain on a two-lane highway south of Las Vegas, New Mexico. It was about 9PM when we pulled up at our condo in Crown Point, on the southern edge of Ruidoso. On the way we listened to the US-Australia match in the World Cup (US 2, Australia 0; yay) on SiriusXM radio. It was a simulcast of the Fox TV coverage, so the announcers often forgot that Sirius listeners couldn't see what was going on. As usual, they did a lot of yammering, instead of describing the action, but we could follow along well enough. (It was a little different when, in another game, Morocco scored in the 2nd minute against Scotland, and all the announcers could say was "Oh, wow! What a goal! That was fantastic!" And they never did say what had happened. We watched the highlights when we got to our condo.)

Our condo is pretty comfortable, even if the build-quality isn't the best. The floor slopes between the front door and the kitchen, which Jeff found particularly disorienting; and the walkways and staircases leading to the apartments are on the shoddy side; and the front screen door wouldn't latch (though the management fixed that almost immediately). The ceiling fan in the living room had no switch or pull chain, so it was useless, but we didn't need it anyway. The bathrooms had no hooks, nowhere to hang anything, and the towel bar is a long way from the sink. Also, the hot water takes a long time to arrive from the heater in, I assume, the next town over. My only real gripe, though, was that the shower head was too low for comfort. I carry a hand-held shower head in my car just for occasions like this. Unfortunately, it was still in my car, in Nancy's garage back in Colorado.

 

the view out the back

Our bedroom looks out toward the city, but all we can see from our window is the next mountain; the town is on the other side of that, so it's like we're miles away from civilisation (except for the chain saws that start up at 7AM as the city tries to cull trees for fire control. It was only disturbing when they were working on the hills immediately around us, and only in the earliest part of the day.) When the sun rose Saturday morning I looked across to that next mountainside and thought, "Why is that it striped like that?" before realising it was the shadows of the trees making lines on the ground. 

 

We had gotten in after office hours on Friday, so I had to walk up to the office to check in on Saturday morning. Before I went, while I was fixing myself a cup of coffee, I noticed an odd-looking black electronic device on the kitchen counter. It had a tag on it saying "Ultimate Ears." I was somewhat incensed. Assuming this was one of those Siri- or Alexa-type devices, I was irked at the apartment complex's effrontery in placing a listening device in our unit. I mentioned this to the desk clerk when I checked in, but she said she didn't know what it was; maybe it was left by the previous tenants? She said I could bring the device up to the office and they'd hold on to it, or something. I told my group about this, and learned that the device was a Bluetooth speaker that Nancy was charging to use in the truck. So glad I didn't take it to the office...or smash it to bits, like I felt like doing. 

We had breakfast that morning at a popular bakery-cafe called Cornerstone, which was excellent. The service was top-notch, as was the food, and the ambience was very pleasant. We had a table outside on the dog-friendly covered patio. Prices were a little high but not outrageous. Sherry and Nancy also bought some things for the Lake house -- coasters and a little sign celebrating the lake-house lifestyle. They both wanted the quiche on the menu, but the kitchen was out of it, so Sherry got some kind of sandwich on jalapeño bread while Nancy got caprese avocado toast. Jeff had huevos rancheros. I got a bagel with lox and cream cheese. All were very good.

After that, we drove up to Grindstone Lake, which our desk clerk had recommended as a place to walk and see birds; but it was so incredibly crowded (and really too late for what we wanted to do anyway) that we decided to save that for another day.* We came back to the condo, where Nancy and I planned our week while Sherry and Jeff watched a World Cup match.

In the evening we drove over to the Noisy Water Winery's local shop (one of two, across the street from each other) and had about a two-hour wine tasting and snackfest. We went from there to dinner at Michael J's, an Italian restaurant in town. The ambience was okay: parking is tight, you have to pass through the kitchen to your table and it's very hot there; the patio door next to our table was open so there were some flies in the dining room. Service was officious and a little unpracticed, but good enough. The food was satisfactory, no more. I found the salad interesting and the dressing (house-made) very good, but the greens were not cut down to an appropriate size for a salad. My lasagna was mediocre. Sherry had an eggplant dish (called simply "eggplant" on the menu) which she didn't have a high opinion of, mostly because, she said, the eggplant was too chewy. I didn't try it, so I can't elaborate. The prices were just slightly higher than I would have paid back home, but there were also upcharges for the salad and bread trays (after the first), which would not have been charged back home, so the total bill ended up being noticeably more than we would have paid for the same meal (of better overall quality) in either of our preferred Italian restaurants in San Antonio. Make of that what you will.

Our planned next stop was a place called the Monjeau Lookout, which is about 15 miles west of town, up 6 miles of dirt roads, but we decided to save that for another day, as it was getting kind of late. Instead we went to Pillows Funtrackers for a round of mini-golf. The course was well-designed and challenging, but the lighting was poor and the fumes from the adjacent go-kart tracks at each side (not to mention the noise) were unpleasant. Some of the walkways between holes had deteriorated to the point that Jeff couldn't get his walker over them. Still, we succeeded in having our Once-A-Year Athletic Club event. Sherry and I tied for first, while Nancy had an unusually poor round and brought up the rear. Jeff was feeling a little dizzy -- and frustrated, I suspect, by the state of the walkways -- so he just watched. 

 

* Never did get around to that.... 

 

Second Day (Sunday)

 

 So we piled into the megatruck for our Sunday expedition before 9AM. Something of a record for us, or at least a noteworthy accomplishment; kind of like when the USMNT beat Brazil in the Confederations Cup in South Africa in 2009 -- memorable, but fairly insignificant.

I pulled up our itinerary on my phone's mapping app. It being the Summer Solstice, it seemed particularly apt that our first stop would be the Sunspot Solar Observatory, half an hour south of the resort town of Cloudcroft. The mapping app warned me that the observatory might be closed. I searched its hours on the Internet and found that they open at 9. Not a problem, since it'd take us over an hour to get there; they should be open by then.

The drive to Cloudcroft was certainly scenic: through National Forest most of the way, a winding two-lane mountain road with little traffic. Just the kind of road I used to ache to drive in my convertible. The town of Cloudcroft itself was a little less than picturesque, it being all Gen-X'ers in their oversized pickup trucks (as opposed to our oversized SUV) with weak mufflers, and tourists in yoga pants climbing in and out of Jeeps that, I suppose, make them feel like nature enthusiasts. 

The pretty, relaxing road continued south to the observatory. As you approach it, road signs give you the relative positions of the planets in the Solar System, with the observatory itself occupying the place for the sun. Sadly, Pluto did not have a place, even in memoriam, in their little roadside schemata. It started with Uranus and ended with ... I don't actually know; I assume Mercury.

But it turns out that the Sunspot Solar Observatory actually is closed, possibly permanently. Ironically, because of a mercury leak six months ago around the Winter Solstice. Yes, it turns out their Web site says that on the home page, but the hours are still posted on the plan-your-visit page that I went directly to when I checked. We arrived at the entrance ("Earth," it said, "Closed, No Public Access." Wish I'd thought to get a photo.). We drove on slowly, trying to figure out what had happened. Everything looked quiet, mundane even, like in one of those Sci-Fi shows where everyone has vanished without explanation. We found only another "closed to the public" sign. A car came up behind us and Nancy turned around, intending to ask those other tourists if they knew anything about the situation. It turned out to be a security guard, who told us about the toxic chemical spill.

 

 We turned back and headed for Cloudcroft, intending to stop at every overlook and scenic spot, in order to feel the drive hadn't been wasted. (It actually hadn't; it was that nice a road.) 

Our first stop was at another observatory in the area, though not a solar one. Apache Point, though, was just a scientific research installation, with nothing of interest to the casual visitor. (According to the website, you can get a walking-tour guide map of Apache Point ... at the Sunspot Solar Observatory visitors' center.) We came, we saw, we left and went up the road until we saw a sign indicating wildlife viewing off to the right at an unspecified distance. We drove down that nearly-deserted road until the pavement ended, without finding anything but a sort of loading station for small livestock (like goats or sheep). At that point we turned back.

Driving back to the main road reminded me of that scene, early on in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, when Brad and Janet, newly engaged and going to share the good news with Brad's mentor, Dr. Scott, drive through the rain while groups of motorcycles appear suddenly out of the darkness and zip past them. The road was too narrow for our giant vehicle and a similar commonplace oversized American pick-up truck to pass at speed, so every encounter with opposing traffic was something of an event. In the end, we decided that there was a coven meeting to celebrate the summer solstice, and that, because of the unfortunate toxic-waste spill that occurred at their Winter Solstice celebration, at their usual druidic location, they've had to relocate their ceremonies to some remote spot down this little park road. I suppose those ceremonies include an animal sacrifice? Because one of the trucks we passed had a horse trailer.

Tularosa Basin overlook

But the drive was worthwhile. The most interesting spot we stopped at gave an overview of the entire Tularosa Valley, where White Sands is located. In the foreground are the outskirts of Alamogordo; on the horizon are the mountains; in between, in the middle distance, is White Sands, standing out clearly from the surroundings. 

 

Back at Cloudcroft, we visited the Mexican Trestle, which I'd seen a few years ago, and then stopped at the Tunnel View. I'd seen that a few years ago, too, and only remembered that the signage about the anthropological importance of the cliff face across the small canyon made no sense at all. On this trip (already knowing that the name "Tunnel View" referred to the location, not the object of the viewing -- a distinction which had confused me on my first visit because, let's be honest, there's nothing in the least remarkable about that particular tunnel) I figured out that my confusion last time was entirely due to the fact that the signs explaining the discoveries and research at this location did not relate to the cliff opposite, which the sign faces, but to the lower cliff some short distance to the right, behind those trees, where there's a little bit of an overhang. Prehistoric natives used to camp there.

It's not a really exciting tourist spot, but it was crowded with Fathers' Day celebrants (or possibly solstice enthusiasts who didn't get the memo about the new location for the coven's celebration), which gave us the chance to do a little people-watching. And dog-watching; there were lots of people with dogs.

We then drove down into Alamogordo, where I'd chosen a German restaurant for lunch. This met with everyone's enthusiastic approval, especially after we'd eaten (three weissbrauts and a bratwurst) and indulged in a spot of dessert while watching a soundless broadcast of a World Cup match. By the time we'd finished it was after 2PM, and we just had time to see the New Mexico Museum of Space History. It had a planetarium show that fit our schedule, too, and it had a relationship with the Denver Museum of Science, which Nancy and Jeff are members of, so our admittance for both the museum and the planetarium were covered. 

Jeff had to wake me up twice during the planetarium show. It was exactly what was needed: a cool, comfortable dark space for a nap. I imagine the show was good, but I can't swear to it.

We closed the museum, of course, keeping the staff there until long after their 5pm shift-end, and headed off to the big draw in the area, White Sands National Park. 

 

Continued in next post. For all the pictures from this trip, click here.