Another cool morning. Scrambled eggs and sausages for breakfast. Fill up the van. Hit the road, heading straight west to Albuquerque. Most of the way the road was 3 lanes in each direction, with the trucks limited to using the right two lanes. There are so many semis on the road now that it makes sense to have dedicated trucking lanes. Nothing is more frustrating than getting slowed down by a semi SLOWLY trying to pass another semi.

I got into Albuquerque early. Because I’d booked a hotel on the west side of the city I got stuck in rush hour traffic for the last hour of my drive. Still, I checked into my hotel at around 4pm. Plenty early. Last night when I made my hotel booking for today I had purposely selected a hotel that was near shopping centres and restaurants and theatres — thinking that would be more convenient than repeating the long late night ‘stroll’ I’d had through ‘no-mans-land’ last night. Well, I guess there’s always a trade-off: sure, the Microtel Inn and Suites was surrounded by strip malls and gas stations, but clearly THIS side of Albuquerque wasn’t the ritzy part of town. Pimps and beggars and a busy highway did not make a walk tonight all that appealing. And the note at the hotel front desk, suggesting that vans and trailers would be safer if parked in the well-lit back lot where there were security cameras, didn’t instil a whole lot of confidence in me either. Instead of walking, I ended up taking the van to the strip mall just down the street. And whatever ‘fitness kick’ I thought I was on was quickly undermined when I ordered a big greasy shrimp and fries meal at a ‘chester-fried’ chicken joint where I could sit by the window and keep an eye on my van! No movie tonight. I was back in my room by 8:30. Since the last leg of my trip was a 6-hour drive into Gold Canyon, and ‘possession’ of my house was supposed to be at 3pm, I decided I might as well stay up ‘late’ and watch a couple of the late night comedy shows. Unfortunately the next time I looked at the clock it was one o’clock in the morning — I had slept through my shows and the only thing on TV now was infomercials and late-night TV preacher shows. Man, I’m such a loser!