ROAD TRIP

For a couple of years now I have heard about the Great Southwest Track Meet. It is a huge track meet that includes Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. The kids that are invited go and run as part of a state team. This year I had the opportunity to go. It was cool to see all the different teams represented. My pole vaulter was going and in theory couldn't bring our schools' poles unless a coach traveled with. We don't have enough money in the track club to cover the cost to go so I asked Jeff it he would want to go. We could split the gas and have a fun time before he goes off to BYU. He said yes so I now had a travel buddy and the mother of the pole vaulter was helping with the room. I did get permision from my lovely wife to go also.

Friday

So we were off. I got up early and wrote a paper for one of my classes that I was taking. It didn't get done the night before as I was dealing with TV issues. I met the mom at Higley to give her the poles so the vaulter could bring them with him on the plane. Then I headed over to my parents house and Jeff and I were off. We both couldn't believe that we were on a trip. For the first two days we would just stop and laugh because we would look around and say what are we doing here. We grew up in a house hold where any vacation had every second planned. Even time to hang out and do nothing was scheduled in. It was nice to be a little sporadic and not plan to much. The only plan I had was to drive up Friday, go to the meet Saturday, and go to church then come home on Sunday. Jeff and I have been all around Payson and the rim area but neither of us had driven to Holbrook before or anywhere in the northeastern part of Arizona. We weren't missing much. We drove into Holbrook and saw what looked like a whole bunch of paper mache dinosaurs and about 2,000 references to route 66. We didn't know what to think. Holbrook looked hot and an ice cream cone at the DQ cost$1.99. Needless to say we did not spend too much time there. So we jumped on the 40 and started our trek eastward. We saw some signs that showed the Petrified Forest National Park coming up. We had nothing better to do so we decided to stop. We almost decided to stop at Knife City but we decided because of bad experiences with knives in our past we would pass. We also saw a chainsaw city in Gallop but we kept moving on. If we saw a spatula city however we would have stopped. The Petrified Forest was one of the highlight of the trip. We saw more petrified wood on the side of the road driving to the national park then we actually saw at the national park. Since we had some time we decided to watch the 22 minute video explaining how the wood becomes petrified. The movie explained about the dinosaurs in the area and the crazy things we saw in Holbrook and on the side of the freeway began to make more sense. The best part about the movie was that at the end it had the Park police putting a tourist in handcuff and removing a piece of petrified wood from his pocket. It also showed a moving letter from MeMe appologizing for stealing petrified wood. It was awesome.

We thought about just coming home, I mean how can you top the petrified forest, but we pushed on. We were having so much fun looking at the trains, old cars on the side of the road, and signs the people had to try to get us to stop that we almost missed this sign.

The biggest difference we noticed was that gas was about 15-20 cents cheaper. We stopped to eat at Taco Bell in Gallop, NM and happened to drive through almost the entire town as we missed the detour and decided to find our own way back to the freeway. This is how we found chainsaw city. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. There really isn't too much to see. You come over one little hill and out of nowhere here is Albuquerque. According to Wikipedia Albuquerque is ranked as the 32nd-largest city as well as the 2nd fastest growing city in the country. I don't know what part Jeff and I went to but we didn't see too much of the new part. Jeff and I decided we really don't like the Sante Fe style houses. The entire University of New Mexico was built in this style. We found the hotel then decided to cruise around. No one was very helpful on telling us were we should go, so we decided to cruise down by the campus. You would think some type of store or fun place would be down there. We couldn't find anything. Not even any fast food so we went to plan B. We looked for the biggest building we could see and headed for them. Once we reached downtown it was a little bit of an adventure finding a parking space. It was $10.00 almost everywhere we went. We asked one of the parking attendents where we should go and he said center street (which eventually turns into the historic route 66) We went a little further and found a plaza were we parked for free. We found some old houses for my mom and took a picture because we thought she would appreciate it.

The downtown area wasn't really big but it was nice. We spent most of the time taking pictures of the statues and listening to live music in an area surrounded by three bars. I missed the AZ no smoking rules but what can you do. The music was nice. At first we thought it was a guy and a girl but it turned out to be two guys. I was not so sure they weren't a couple. We also looked at the bouncer and Jeff said that I looked more intimidating then he did. He didn't look that tough. When we had had enough we jumped back in the car for some more exploring. We found the aquarium but didn't want to pay money to get in. We didn't realize that there are only 3 bridges that cross the Rio Grande in the city so we wondered around lost for quite a while. We did find the church that we ended up attending on Sunday so it was worth the drive. We finished off the evening eating a large Pizza Hut stuffed crust meat lovers pizza with two pitchers of water. We were still hungry when we finished it but when we stood up and began walking around we both felt like we were going to burst. We both had to share a full sized bed. Jeff accused me of pushing him off but he did back my claim to Jami that I don't snore when I sleep. See Jami I told you I didn't snore.

Saturday

Saturday was all about the track meet. We got up had some breakfast, went to Walmart for supplies, and then off to the track meet. It wasn't hot but it was sunny. Jeff got a sun burn on just his knees?!? The track is in a cool spot. Its bleachers are on the backside of the football visitors bleachers. It was a cool use of the space. We took a few picture of the field and practice fields as my dad likes to look at football stadiums like my mom likes to look at old buildings.

If you look to the right on this picture you would see the track.

It was pretty incredible to watch these athletes run. I believe that there was 7 or 8 athletes who were the number one ranked athlete in their event in the entire nation. Two 10.3 100 M dash times, 204' discus throw, 4 sub 14 110M Hurdles it was awesome. Of the best 6 pole vaulters from Arizona 4 didn't clear a height. While it was a great place for a meet it was not a great day. The wind would change directions 3 times while the vaulters ran down the runway. My vaulter didn't clear a height. Good thing Jeff had come and we were having a blast or I might have been a little perturbed. So when the meet was over we were starving and went looking for food. We finally found the main drag, Center street just like the parking attendant said. In three miles we saw 4 different tattoo shops and a wide variety of bars. We settled on Arby's. We had to go through the drive through. The lady helping us was probably in her early 40's and was very nice to us. While she was getting our food she started to complain as the car behind us was repeatedly back over the sensor that caused her headset to ring. Jeff asked for some more Arby's sauce she said sure really nice and as she was handing us our food out of nowhere yelled M. F., she had enough of the people backing over her sensor. You can imagine that Jeff and I were a little surprised and we couldn't stop laughing at how weird our experience in Albuquerque was. We found a little park and ate our food.

Sunday

The next morning we got up showered and went to the Academy Heights ward. It is always fun to attend church in different places. I know how to fold an X-wing plane and I usually do this with the church program. It occupies the kids. When the 3 year old next to us got a little restless Jeff gave her the X-wing. The mom then proceeded to pull out of her bag almost every single starwars action figure ever created. She really did take out about 20+ little figures. The boy probably about 4 wanted the X-wing and needless to say I created nice little situation for the parents. After church Jeff and I couldn't leave with out looking at the River. It had quite a large flood plane which took us about 5 minute to walk across. This does help us to understand why their are only 3 bridges. The river was pretty big and moving quickly.

We were now ready to go home. Before we left we did change clothes in public but no one saw us. It was a very fun trip. I missed my wife and my kids but it was great to spend a little time with Jeff in the great city of Albuquerque. By the way if you know of fun things to do in Albuquerque let me know. I would be interested to find out what I missed out on.