June 18, Santa Fe to Albuquerque.

June 18, Santa Fe to Albuquerque.

In the morning we verified there was not much to do in the pretty Santa Fe and after cake-pie, WiFi and coffee decided to opt for the Albuquerque night out rather than the Santa Fe night out. Molly was on a date that night but none the less had asked us if we wanted to join her later, I guess dating really is different in the states.

In Albuquerque we once again attempted to explore on foot only to be defeated by a large yellow lazer in the sky that was attempting to incinerate our flesh. Thank god for factor 35 suncream, even if it is leaving my skin a pasty white.

On the way back we happened across a nice little diner in classic American style. It had a bar-like structure surrounding the open kitchen which itself came with wisend bitter looking chef. We got chatting to the mostachioed dude who appeared to be running the place, i.e. he wasn't doing anything, and the waitress who was doing all the work. He turned out to be a huge soccer fan and over the next hour and a half we proceeeded to cause chaos as service ground to a halt due to various discussions with them. The dude was a huge soccer fan and extracted all the meager knowledge of football that Josh, Keith and I have. This lasted sometime before he adopted listing all places in L.A that we should visit. Subsequent grumpy customers and mis-changings occured left right and centre.

Chatting to the waitress also got us an invite to a "12 keg-er with Jungle Juice" featuring four goth/industrial/metal bands. She reckoned that everyone would be heading to this (a 4 keg-er gets 100 people apparantly) and that we should come along. Basically a big illegal piss-up in the desert with free booze, bonfire, bands and allegedly, babes. It sounded loads of fun but we said maybe, it was in the desert well outside of town and neither Keith or I fancied driving there and back or giving up booze for the evening. She then, somewhat sportingly and without us knowing, phoned a bunch of her friends to see if any of them weren't going and could take us out downtown. It turned out they were all going to the 12 keg-er, maybe a bit of a shame as she said "...don't worry they're all cute too".

Having decided to stay in town we had our dinner, a quick beer and phoned Molly. She was still on her date but said to come on down to the 'Perl diver' and join them. Wondering a bit about American dating we headed off to meet up with Molly, her date Aaron and her friend Heather. As an aside as we walked into town passed the diner the 12 keg-er lassie chased after us down the street and took our cell numbers. This is unprecedented and would have been much cooler if she wasn't only seventeen.

We arrived at the 'Perl Diver' and met up with Molly and Co. It was a really good night, excellent and witty chat ensued and there was much hilarity all round. They were sharp and interesting, and were social libertarians to boot, hooray. After a couple of beers on our part, and a couple of waters on the part of our hosts we all had some smooth, smooth tequila. Closing time then promptly arrived and the bar disgorged us onto the busy street. There was a brief discussion about continuation of drinking before the impossibility of finding somewhere open or serving alcohol became apparent and we parted with happy waves.

Tomorrow we head for Flagstaff as our base for day-tripping to the Grand Canyon. Cya,