NEW MEXICO, 2005
May 29, 2005
My first plane ride was delayed out of BWI due to mechanical problems. Awesome. We had two guys behind us, a father and son team, that just kept cracking jokes the whole time, and they kept things entertaining. We flew into Atlanta, then turned around and headed to Albuquerque. Albuquerque landing was delayed due to a storm which had developed over the city. Once on the ground, Dad and I rented a maroon Chevy Impala and headed south to Socorro. A few miles down the road, we stopped at Carl Jr's, which is like Hardees, and man, that place was awesome. They had some of the best burgers ever.
Once we left there, a squall line with a few imbedded supercells had developed and was passing through the area. Here are some pictures of the back end to that squall line.
After the storms had passed, I got in touch with my advisor and her, her daughter, dad and I had dinner at this New Mexican restaurant. Everything in this state has chilli peppers on it, and I've learned to like it. They ask red or green, to which I normally get green. I had some excellent tacos and a sopapilla, which was excellent. Dad got something that was too hot for him, hehe. Afterwards, Dr. H gave me a tour of the campus, the town and the building that I will spend at least the next two years of my life in.
May 30, 2005
Our mistake... back east, people work Memorial Day all the time. Here, everyone is off celebrating or taking time off in general. This meant all we could do today was drive by potential apartments. I saw several places I liked, so I will set up to talk to some of these places when they return to work. Most of the complexes are small, so they already have limited office hours, and NOBODY was around today.
One thing I noticed: There is so much damage from the October 2004 hailstorm, still around town. Most of the vehicles are dented up badly, many have missing or badly cracked windows, due to the hail. I snapped a few pictures to show to the students I chase with, to show why we don't drive through large hail.
Without too much to do that was indeed productive, we headed out to the Very Large Array (VLA). There is a museum and gift shop, which dad and I toured as well.
This Arby's does not have Reubens.
May 31, 2005
Today was spent finding a place to live. I picked up applications from most of the apartment places, played phone games with mom to get all the info I didn't have with me and filled out all the forms. I also established a new bank account and a post office box.
The real score for today was when we stopped into the Radio Shack and were greeted by several hams, who then informed us that their club meeting was tomorrow night, and it was the Skywarn traning session.
June 1, 2005
I will be moving into Cibola Apartments, but the office is closed today, so we took a tour around the City of Socorro. The architecture here is amazing, everything is Adobes. They can get away with flat roofs, due to the lack of precipitation- 8.6" of rain and 6" of snow average a year.
One of the defining features of Socorro is M Mountain. That batch of pictures includes several area mountains, most of which I don't know the names of. I'd also like to take this time to post some pictures of the NM Plants.
We tried out the Owl Bar and Cafe in San Antonio, NM, and tried their world famous green chilli burgers, which were EXCELLENT.
We attended the Skywarn meeting, and I met lots of hams and weather enthusiasts. Right now, I'm still learning everyone's name and call, but in time, I'll have it all figured out, I'm sure.
June 2, 2005
Dad and I went up northeast of Albuquerque to ride the longest TRAM in the world. It took us up to 10,378ft, where we had a spectacluar view of the city, and surrounding areas. Here are pictures from that excursion.
On the way back to Socorro, we saw several dust devils near some sort of air mass boundary between Socorro and Albuquerque cutting southeast through Route 25. Note how hard the trees are blowing in some of these pictures.
June 3, 2005
I attended a group meeting today with Dr. H and her grad students. Looks like I'm going to have my hands full when I get there!
Early in the morning, Dad and I took some pictures of San Miguel Parish, an old Spanish mission behind our hotel. We took several the evening before, but added the early morning pictures to those. It was originally built in the late 1500's, but was rebuilt in the late 1800's.
After another meal at Carl Jr's, we headed back to the airport to return the car and fly home. Here are some pictures I took onboard the airplane.