Albuquerque

We have a new camera! Very excited! After a false start on Sunday when we bought the camera orginally, we took it home, played around, and discovered the colour was off - like REALLY off - Chris's new bike was bright pink! After a call to Canon they agreed it was defective. Somewhat frustrating as we were in wilderness 200 miles from the nearest store to get it exchanged. So now...it's sorted. We have our brand new fully functional Canon Digital EOS Rebel XSi!! and very nice it is too. Currently wading our way through the instruction manual. It's a late birthday present from each other and from Pat who gave us birthday money this year towards it - so thank you all!

Have just spent a few days in a town called Truth or Consequences. Yes a strange name for a town, but in 1950 they changed their name (previously called Hot Springs) as part of a publicity and fund-raising effort and it's stuck ever since! It was named after a popular game show at the time.

From here we took a fantastic ride out on the bike up into the hills and Gila National Forest. The roads were fabulous biking roads through very picturesque scenery. Past the HUGE open mine pit of Santa Rita (the oldest active mine in the SW - it's 1.5 miles wide and 1800ft deep and is producing 300 million lbs of copper a year!), over the 8228ft high Emory Pass and through a few small (nearly) ghost towns . Stopped for lunch in Silver City - it was a silver mining town, then got lucky and found copper once the silver ran out so now it's still going strong as a funky bonhemian town with every other store an art gallery, a few good cafes, wineries and at least one brewpub that we noticed! The old downtown is full of Victorian brick buildings and a real wild west town feel to the place! A great stop and a chance to stretch our legs for a couple of hours. We then took an incredibly twisty road north to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument - the road was actually TOO twisty to be really good fun on the bike - but at least we weren't in a car - the recommended drive time was 2 hours to do 58 miles!! (we did it all in about an hour! - the advantages of a bike on narrow roads - at least we could overtake the slow stuff!) Gila Cliff Dwellings were inhabited about 700 years ago by the Mogollon people - there were a series of 7 caves set up in the cliffs with dwellings built in stone inside them making up some 40 or so individual rooms. Quite fascinating stuff - quite reminiscent of the Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, CO we visited a couple of years back but these were very quiet because of their remote location - we only saw 2 other people in the area!

And so now we're in Albuquerque. Getting a new fridge fitted! After 2 years of intermittent problems with the thing - going from +15 and everything warm to -5 and frozen food I've got fed up and booked us in Friday, whilst Chris was still mincing about it all (it doesn't help that for the last week everything seems to be fine). I figure it's a kitchen applicance and therefore my domain and whilst Chris sits gazing adoringly at his mistress (aka the new bike) I'll get on and admire a new shiny, clean fridge - a fair deal - nah!!! - get me my leather jacket and helmet and take me for a ride baby!! (but I WILL get a cold drink when I get back!)