ABQ Bound

I'm making a short trip to Albuquerque this weekend. My parents found me a great deal on a car that some friends of theirs were selling. Since they live about 1100 miles away, we decided to meet somewhere halfway-ish so I could pick it up. I'm flying there tomorrow evening, and then driving back on Saturday.

It's supposed to be about a 9 hour drive, which I'm not all that thrilled about, although a change of scenery (at least for the first half of the drive) will be nice. I'm hoping to make a quick stop at the "second largest canyon in the United States". Trust me, though, there's a BIG difference between number 1 and number 2.

I'm looking forward to eating as much green chile as possible while in New Mexico, which hopefully will include some green chile bread from this place. I'm also excited about making a Trader Joe's run in Albuquerque. Hopefully I'll get at least a couple of interesting photos out of the deal too.

This is a view of downtown Albuquerque from the observation area at the airport. I took this shot a couple of years ago when I was out there for a friend's wedding in Santa Fe.

Dirt Mall

These photos are from a mall that I pass every day on my way to and from work. I always thought that the tile design looked interesting. The store with the tile started out as a Sanger Harris, then it was a Foley's, then it was Macy's, now it's closed. I know it's not the Taj Mahal or anything, but it's a lot more interesting than the cookie cutter stuff you see built nowadays. It kind of has that tacky/cool early '70s thing going on.

I also really like the textured look of this Sears store. It just doesn't look like anything you see built these days.

A bit of trivia: For my 10th birthday one of my friends parents planned to take us to Six Flags as my birthday gift. As we were driving there a nasty thunderstorm came along, and it started hailing (I think they were about golfball-sized). We pulled off the freeway, got out of the car, and took refuge under this Sears overhang. I was scared shitless. And we never did make it to Six Flags.

Downtown

I went for a stroll downtown with my new lens this evening. I'm really loving it. It's so much sharper than my old lens.

International Tweet Tweet

On the Sunday following the Fourth of July I awoke to a surprise rainy day. It was a nice break from all of the hot weather here lately. Looking out my back window I noticed that I had a visitor perched on top of my tomato cage. He spent a good portion of the day there, so I thought I would practice my manual focusing. Some of these poses are really crazy!

Kaboom!

It had been a really long time since I had seen fireworks in person, so I decided to motivate myself to go see the local fireworks show in honor of the Fourth of July last night. I thought it would be a good chance to try out my new lens too. It was fun watching and shooting, but unfortunately today I have really been feeling the effects of spending an hour or so in the middle of a grassy field. My allergies have been going crazy, and I'm still sniffling. No pain no gain, I guess.

I know there are too many photos here, but I had a hard time editing them down. Feel free to skim through them quickly. If you want to view any of them larger click on the image.

Here's the requisite after-show traffic. I like that you can see the fireworks from the town to the south in the distance.