Back from Albuquerque

I just got back at 5am Monday from my road trip with a friend to Albuquerque. We left around 10:00 Friday night and drove all night, with stops for gas and a stop for a nap sometime in the wee hours. We got to her daughter’s house sometime around 2 in the afternoon.

After a little rest, we wandered around Old Town Albuquerque, looking in the shops and at the statues outside the Albuquerque Museum of Art. The wind picked up, threatening one of the “scattered thunderstorms” promised by the weather service, so we went early into Casa de Armijo, the Mexican restaurant where we had our reservations. Wonderful meal. Good company. We worked off some of our dinner by walking back through Old Town to my friend’s daughter’s place.

Sleep couldn’t come soon enough, after our long drive, and I was so tired that I slept fairly well on the hard futon with not quite enough padding between me and the wood. After breakfast, my friend and her daughter had a quiet argument that ended in our leaving early. We packed up the furniture my friend had come there to get, tied it down in the bed of the rented pickup, then drove up the old Route 66 for a while before finally leaving town.

My friend drove through New Mexico to Gallup, and each time I saw the roadsigns indicating the next major town, the song “Route 66” started playing in my mind. Sometimes it was with the sound of Nat King Cole, but usually it was Manhattan Transfer’s version. I drove across Arizona to Kingman (“…Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino…”) and got pulled over by a Highway Patrolman for going 8 miles over the limit.

He was really nice, and he told me he’d only give me a warning. “It won’t cost you anything,” he said, and I told him those were wonderful words to hear. He told us their holiday weekend started on Friday, and that’s when he got called to an accident. A man’s live-in girlfriend’s mother lived in Louisiana, and her home was destroyed. So the man and his driving-age son drove straight through from California to Louisiana, trading off driving now and then. They picked up the girlfriend’s mother and were bringing her back, driving straight through again. They traded off driving and took turns sleeping on the mattress in the bed of the truck. In Arizona, the man fell asleep at the wheel, the truck flipped over, throwing out the mother, who was sleeping in the truck bed, and she was killed. The man had no idea how he was going to face his girlfriend and tell her he killed her mother.

So the Highway Patrolman encouraged us to drive within the speed limit and to be safe. We thanked him and drove on, keeping at or under the limit.

It may not be very obvious by reading my blog, but I’m a very good listener, and that’s what I did during our drive each way. My friend is going through a lot of family upheaval, and she needed to talk. So I listened. She asked me if I thought she was wrong in this or that situation, and it was hard hearing her doubts and second-guessing. But there were times in my life when I had many of the same doubts. What I had to offer her were reassurance and encouragement and honesty.

It was a road trip unlike any other that I’ve had—two-thirds sitting on my butt in a truck, and a little bit of sightseeing. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.