Everything comes with Green Chiles in Taos

We just went to Taos this weekend to commemorate eight whole months since RL's incident with the rock. The main point was for RL to talk to the ski patrol who untangled him from said rock and tell them about brain injuries and to reassure them that he was doing quite well thanks to them.

We stayed with two different sets of friends, both of whom have built amazing houses down rutted out dirt roads. These people know how to build a house...it's all about captured rain water and solar maximization and wood-burning stoves and they're just so fricking cozy that you don't care that you're in the middle of nowhere (spoken by a true city girl).

We first stayed with AO and Jenny (AO's on the ski patrol), and they made us amazing chile rellenos before we tucked into our comfy bed for the night; next up was Dan* and Liza, who made delicious fajitas (actually, both the men cooked, which I made a point of mentioning to RL). Great hospitality, these folks (AO even made us freshly baked cookies and tea for our ride home on Sunday).

Aside from the welcome, the thing about Taos is that it's enchanted. Right next to town is the oldest continually inhabited community in North America (Taos Pueblo), and I'm pretty sure there's something to be said for that. One of the weird enchanty things is the Taos Hum, which I read about last time we went down there. It's supposedly a low, vibrating noise that only like 2% of the population can hear. Liza said she hears it all the time (they call her a "hearer"); Dan said it's gotta be one of the mining operations in the valley; AO was insistent that people who hear it are just tripping. All of them got really revved up when I mentioned it, though! The speculation abounds, and still no one knows what it is.

The other enchanted story we heard was about a piece of pottery that was found in the Taos Ski Valley (actually, on Kachina Peak, where RL's rock is). It was apparently put there years ago by the Taos Puebloans as an appeasement to the gods of snow. When it was found in 1996, the owner of TSV took it and placed it into his private collection. That year was the worst snow year on record for years, and the drought continued until 2003 or so, when the owner finally decided enough was enough. The owner took the pot, along with some Puebloan elders, back to its rightful place, and voila: snow that year. I'm sure local legend goes a long way in encouraging these stories, but I really like the idea that history is present in Taos (what do we know about the people that lived in our community hundreds of years ago?)

Anyway, another important part of the weekend was a hike up to Kachina to pay our respects to the rock that took a little piece of RL's brain. We were totally unprepared for there to be snow already, so it's a good thing AO lent us some poles and pants for our trek. Our first stop was at Honey's Huck, which we've so named because it's the biggest rock I've ever skiied off of. We took lots of pictures and marveled at its grandeur (and later I casually mentioned to AO that they might want to name it after me).

After Honey's Huck, and a lot more hiking, we got to the bottom of Kachina. It's impossible to see in pictures how steep this thing is, and I was a little hesitant when RL suggested traversing across the steepness that was covered in snow. After some falling and cursing, we finally made it to the bottom of his rock. He went on by himself, chisel in hand, to give the rock the old what-for (as I said, that rock's had eight months to think about what it did). It was good closure for him, I think, and AO said the ski patrol is going to name it after him (suggestions?).

After our hike we went and checked out the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which spans the 650-foot drop into the tiny Rio Grande below. What's shocking is how long this river has been flowing to have created such a ravine (similar to the Colorado, I guess). As a side note, the gorge bridge, which still features graffiti from the 1970s, was awarded some Best Steel Construction award in 1966. That's it's claim to fame. We're hoping that even though they haven't cleaned up graffiti in 30 years, they've done some other preventative maintenance).

Taos is cool, and it helps if you've got locals to hang out with. We went to breakfast at this amazing place called Gutiz, which had a dish called Taoseno that I could eat for the rest of my life (scrambled eggs, pinto beans, rice, green and red chile). We're excited to go back and check out the other good stuff!

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*Interesting side note: Dan's a musician, and he often practices when he's on the road. One time he was actually pulled over for playing a harmonica and a mandolin while driving.

Dreams

I really should just start a dream journal blog because I have really complicated dreams all the time. Lately I've been dreaming a lot about babies: one time I was pregnant (scary), another time I was pleading for my life and for my niece's lives, and last night RL and I were taking care of our newly married friends' (non-existent kids). What's the deal? I also dreamt that Britney Spears and I were being kidnapped and she kept taking her shirt off to distract the kidnappers.

In last night's dream RL was deftly feeding our friends' infant, who then threw up on our bed. The parents were around somewhere and they vaguely apologized, then handed over the next kid, who was actually like 20 and a BIG kid, but for some reason he was supposed to be in preschool.

Anyway, in the midst of the weird kid madness, there was a secondary story happening in the background. Apparently I knew this guy who had just set off to track down a woman he knew (loved/was stalking, who knows?). He started sending text-message updates back to me with news and pictures of the this woman. The texts were coming rather frequently, and I remember thinking, sheesh, this guy is a little insistent on sharing his news! They're coming every two seconds!

The funny thing is that I had actually brought my cell phone into the bedroom--a friend was flying in last night and I wanted to make sure she didn't need anything. Well, the friend texted me (and my phone will continue beeping until I look at the message), and for FORTY FIVE MINUTES I incorporated the sound of the beeping into my dream.

I'm rather impressed with my creative dream-state abilities, aren't you?

Me + Bus = Abusive Relationship

For some reason this semester is the first time I've had to wrangle the 9am buses, along with a mazillion other students, to get me to school on time. I've been conning RL into dropping me off more often than not, but when I do end up taking the bus, it's frustrating.

Case in point: I leave the house at 8:45 yesterday morning, get to the bus stop five minutes later. Of course the last "Dash" bus has just passed, so I settle in to wait for another 15 minutes. When the bus comes 20 minutes later (did I mention that this bus is always late?), about 20 other people have joined me at the stop. So late busdriver lets about three people on, says "I'm full!" and drives off.

I stand in disbelief, trying to figure out what I should do. What happens if the next bus comes in 15 minutes and the same thing happens? The other bus that takes me to campus leaves from the other side of this four-lane road, and it's a dicey prospect because I don't know the schedule. Should I run home and drive to school? Finally, a bus comes that can take me as far as Broadway, so I hop on, hoping to get to another bus on Broadway. Of course, that bus passes right before I get to that stop.

At this point I really can't believe my bad luck. Now I'm totally screwed, because there's only the one bus that goes right down Broadway. Except...the Dash! Amazingly, the original bus I should have just sat at the stop and waited for shows up just a few minutes later, not full. I board the bus, passing all the people I had just left at the previous stop, the people who were patient and not freaking out. I felt a little sheepish, but I don't think they noticed.

The moral of the story is: the Dash, 75% of the time, gets me where I need to go without drama. The other 25% it pushes my buttons and makes me nervous, only to show up to save the day just in time. What kind of a weird relationship is this?

our two year anniversary

Yay! It was our two-year anniversary last week, and we celebrated by going back to the camping spot where we first fell in love.



Here are the highlights:
I am really good at setting up the tent, so I do that while RL set up the "kitchen" (which comprises a cooler, a stove, and a Horseshoes set. Don't ask me why.). Then we have a Jack and Coke and a good conversation.

RL bought a bowsaw on the way out of town so we could saw through just about anything. We go out to forage for dead wood, and start a magnificent pile which we later decide is too big to carry back to our campsite. RL goes and gets his car. When he returns, he's chatting on the phone with a friend (in the middle of nowhere, while camping). I assume he's going to get off soon, but doesn't so I am left piling wood in the car and giving him dirty looks. After that he decides to turn his phone off. Thank God.

Once we get our fire going, it starts to drizzle, so RL decides to put up one of the three tarps we brought with us (we even acquired a new one that someone left behind at the campsite, along with a heck of a lot trash and some basketball shorts). It's dark already, and RL is trying to cut the tarp rope with a Swiss Army Knife (well, a cheap SAK knockoff. I think it may be a Swedish army knife), but he gets the blade the wrong side out, and promptly gets a huge, bloody cut in his knuckle. A couple of dunks in the freezing stream (adjacent to our campsite) and a couple Bandaids later, he's ready to get back to it.

Later on we decide to go for a little walk and see if we can find a spot to look at the stars. A thunderstorm is going crazy over on the other side of the mountains, so even though our sky is clear, we can still see flashes of lightning from over the pass. Have I mentioned how amazing the stars are in the Colorado mountains? Milky Way and everything. And tonight, lightning flashes.

The next morning, RL gets it into his head that he needs to build a "toilet" with all of our leftover wood (there was a lot). See below.



In the end it's a masterpiece, except for he's built it basically in the middle of our campsite. I say that I need to pee, but don't really want to pee in the middle of everything, especially when a vanfull of older people (I think they were Polish) shows up and starts wandering around. Well, finally RL decides he's going to just do it, and afterwards begs me to use it too. He says he'll stand watch. Good thing, too, because I finish up about two seconds before the old Polish women come wandering into our campsite (apparently they were mushroom hunting). Yay for peeing in the middle of nowhere which is not actually the middle of nowhere!

All in all, it was a great camping trip. We tried to reenact our two-week-old-roommate conversations that we had the first time we came here, but it didn't work so well. Turns out you have other conversations as two-year-old-partners that are just as good.