10/5/14 - Albuquerque Car Shows
/Hi again. It's Dianna reporting on the Old Farts comings and goings today. If you checked in on yesterday's blog entry, you know that Saturday was a busy day taking in the Balloon Fiesta from early morning to late night. This morning Jim and Joe got up at a civilized time, dressed in their Bucket List shirts and had a brisk breakfast before setting off in the T-Bird for the Balloon Fiesta car show. The car, apparently rested and relaxed, purred into wakefulness and rolled off to take its place in the staging area to enter the Balloon Fiesta grounds as the balloons were packing up and leaving.
Unfortunately, weather conditions today were not good for ballooning, so they inflated but didn't float away. Ballooning is dependent on the wind speed and currents. If these conditions aren't right it can be dangerous to fly balloons. They sometimes get blown into their own fire jets and burn, or fall on power lines, and sometimes they find themselves pushed down and forced to land on freeways and backyards. All these are not safe for anyone. We were glad we went yesterday when we could see the entire spectacle and no one took too big a risk.
The car show today was fun. The T-Bird was placed in the middle of the field ... a prime spot. The organizer's son has type one diabetes and wanted to showcase the car and the fundraiser. Then about 11:00 AM Joe and Jim and others left the show to enter another show that was in the parking lot in a shopping area on Hwy. 528 sponsored by the Stumbling Steer Brewery and Gastropub. Some of the same cars were registered in both shows and the T-Bird was registered, too. You can see the Albuquerque car show pix here. Joe and Jim talked to lots of people about cars, collected some donations for diabetes research, and got a little sun burned in the bright high altitude. It seems to me that car shows are common ground where people of all kinds can come together around gleaming, tricked-out cars to talk, and learn, and joke, and appreciate these beauties and sometimes each other.
Priscilla work up feeling like she was getting a cold so spent the early part of the day blowing her nose and reading magazines. I intended to meet Joe and Jim at one of the car shows, but they moved around so fast and then they were back at the hotel before I could justify putting my shoes on. So it was a quiet day for Priscilla and me until we all met up for dinner at Pappadeux, a restaurant in Albuquerque specializing in Cajun food. There were oyster shooters for everyone and Joe asked the waiter for special ingredients to mix up his "What-the-heck-is-in-that?" sauce for them. There was gumbo with spicy sausage, shrimp, and other seafood goodies. Jim had mussels and the menu had something for all. Because it was our first visit to Pappadeux, we were offered free dessert! Free! We think we like this place.
After a little timid low stakes gambling at the Sandia Casino where we had fun flushing our cash away, we made an early night of it. Tomorrow I fly back to Oregon and Priscilla goes on with Gayle and Robbie to Prescott, AZ where Jim and Joe will eventually show up in about a week. They will be doing laundry and getting repacked for departure on the next leg of their journey starting Tuesday. All in all, Albuquerque was a blast!
