Santa Fe

The Wizard of the Sphere

In November I’m going down for another visit with Santa Fe Sally. The impetus for the trip is a good old Thanksgiving dinner with her family. This means another drive to Hammond, Louisiana, but first is a trip to Monument Valley. She has always wanted to go, and she has a State Department friend that lives in northern New Mexico that has the same desire, but neither wanted to go alone; enter Brian. Sally and I will be in Tucson, and her friend will be in her own car (she is having it serviced in Arizona before meeting us there.)

Sally and I had planned on looping by the Grand Canyon and other places after the Monument Valley visit, but things took a turn over the weekend when Sally saw the video below. She is a big fan of the Wizard of Oz and wondered if we could maybe add a stop in Vegas. So guess who just spent over $200 to see a movie that could be watched for free on numerous streaming services and has his own copy of it?

Monumental

So, for episode 2 of “Driving Ms. Sally” in late April I’ll be driving down to Santa Fe instead of flying. Because after we get back to Santa Fe from the Hammond visit, I’m leaving Sally there and I’m going to continue driving around the country visiting folks. On the trip down I want to visit Monument Valley. Sally mentioned that she wanted to go there and see it someday, so I’m going to reconnoiter the place.

I have driven through the area twice recently and I actually visited it a long time ago. Back in 1989 Donna & me were deciding whether to quit our jobs in Florham Park and move to a sister plant in South Carolina or just stay in NJ and think about buying a house there. To help clear our heads and think on it we took a couple weeks of vacation and flew into Phoenix, AZ, rented a car and circumnavigated the state. One of the stops was Monument Valley. We arrived late afternoon and they were no longer running the Jeep tours, so we thought we were out of luck, but things were a bit more laid back then. The guy behind the counter handed us a map and said, “Just stay on the roads and be back here before 6 to leave, because they lock the gate.” We got back in our little red 1989 Ford Escort and bounced along on several miles of dirt road. That would never happen now.

Deja Vu All Over Again Again

Didn’t we just go through this? I thought we left snow behind in Louisiana, today while at the gym it started snowing, by the time we got back to Casa de Sally it had started to stick. Snow here in Santa Fe is more of a regular event than in Louisiana and the 1″ or so that fell here is a no big thing.

Later on in the afternoon I said, “I’m going to get an aspirin, my back feels a little tight. Probably from using the rowing machine.” Her response was, “Why don’t you try and stretch it out?” And probably for the second or third time I’ve said to her in the last three and a half weeks, “I don’t believe in it, Have you ever seen a lion stretch before taking down a gazelle?” I figure it was probably time to let her knew what I was referencing:

This led me down the Zombieland memory lane, as I remember being pretty fixated on the movie back when it first came on DVD. One post that was unearthed references the movie this way; “All and all, it would have been preferable to have watched Zombieland than Easy A, but Donna couldn’t sit through the gory parts of MNFMTMWHS.”

What that acronym means is lost to history, because I used to have a plugin for this blog that would show you the meaning of what those letters were, but it was never updated to work on newer versions WordPress. My best guess as to what the first 5 letters are is My New Favorite Movie That. What the MWHS part is, no clue.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Yesterday afternoon when we arrived back at Case de Sally the house was usually cold. Didn’t we just go through this?

Turns out the radiant floor heating was not working. At least Sally has several mini-splits and some small portable heaters to keep us only slightly chillier than normal. What is weird is that there is one boiler for both the floor heat and the on demand hot water, that hot water is plentiful and quick to the faucets. There is a call into a plumber to see what the issues is but, this isn’t an emergency, so it might be a while before the floor radiant heating gets back on line.

While it is chilly inside, outside it made it into the 40’s, but the plentiful sun made it feel warmer. I spent some quality time outside replacing her ugly typical dog house door shaped mailbox with a large square lockable one that will swallow several days’ worth of mail and keep her Smith’s coupons from disappearing.

In the afternoon we headed to the gym to try and work off the excess calories consumed on King Cakes while in Louisiana. We probably didn’t make a dent on the calorie front, but it sure felt good after three weeks of sitting on couches or car seats.

Road Trip Eve

Sally and my bags are mostly packed and we are raring to get going on the road trip to Hammond, Louisiana. We are planning to get an early start as this is the longest segment of the whole of the whole trip. Plus south eastern New Mexico got a little bit more snow than was originally forecast. Roswell got 4″ instead of the predicted .4″, but at least the snow was just today and there is no more predicted.

I’ll be stopping for on last cup of Dunkin’ coffee on the way out of town tomorrow morning and it’ll be the last for awhile because even though there are some Dunkin’s along the routed, I’ve been in them, they are all in Flying J or Loves truck stops and are just self serve kiosks with Dunkin’ branded stuff. I might get to a Dunkin’ once while visiting in Hammond because there is a store in Covington, but it is a 45 mile round trip…

Oh My, Blue Sky

Today myself, Sally and a friend of hers walked over to Tune Up Cafe for lunch. The place is a mere 1/2 mile from Casa de Sally. Sally was the only one who ordered lunch, Darcy and I ordered off their extensive breakfast menu which is served all day. When Donna and I visited Sally in 2022 we ate there just based on its appearance on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and I have two of their coffee mugs back in Fairview. This time, as with the last visit, the food was tasty, plentiful and relatively inexpensive.

Late in the afternoon Sally and I headed into old town to wander around and get in a couples of walking and shopping. In today’s two walks and saw more blue sky than I’ve seen back home since probably Christmas.

Adios Casa de Sally

Having guided our host through the gates of car buying hell, we packed the Mini and headed north on the long awaited return to home.

Monday we test drove the front runner, the 2023 Subaru Forester, followed by a 2023 Honda CRV (Honda shared the lot with Subaru) and although Sally swore she wanted new, a 2020 Honda Passport was taken for a short drive. She liked the heft and acceleration of the Pathfinder, but she didn’t like the low gas mileage. The CRV was an underwhelming drive and to get the stuff she wanted it was going to be over her spending cap. The Forester remained the favorite. Tuesday we started at the Hyundai dealer to try out the 2023 Tucson. After a 10 mile test drive, this vehicle jumped to the head of the class, so much so the Nissan Rogue that was possibly next, was skipped.

She really wanted a black car, her current car a 2002 Toyota RAV4 is that color and she likes it. Also a black car diminishes the prominence of the ugly black plastic cladding that is ubiquitous these days. None of the new cars tested were black and there were no black cars on the lot. The Subaru salesman on Monday said he would email her if any might be in their pipeline, but he never did. That and his ineptness in name remembrance and constant sniffing while along for the test drive killed the Subaru sale. Sally even said if the more personable and professionalism Honda salesman could sell her a Subaru, the Forester would have been her choice.

The Hyundai dealer had a still unprepped brand new Tucson in Portifino Gray (see yesterday’s post) on the lot and she though maybe if she could get it ready later in the afternoon and she could test drive it, that might make the sale. They called at 4:30 and we went back to take that test drive that included a trip right back to Casa de Sally for a test fitting in her garage. Ding, Ding, ding we have a winner. They worked up an offer sheet and she said all she needed to do was contact her insurance to see what the coverage would be like. That happened this morning and when we left she was text bargaining with the salesman over the usual dealer added options and their extra markup crap. If all goes well Sally will be driving a new Hyundai Tucson before we get back home on Sunday.