![[Photo: Yup, that's the desert all right]](SFeDesert.jpg)
Sugar-coded steganography... Risking life and limb for student housing... The Torpor out of Space...
Too soon, we were back in the car, back on the road, with
no time to stop at our room before dinner. We did have time
to stop at a gas station to pick up beverages for those who'd
become thirsty on the hike. I picked up some orange juice
and a roll of Shock Tarts.
Back in the car, I offered around the Shock Tarts. I offered them to Dave first, driver's privelege. He looked at the roll. In classic roll candy style, I'd unwrapped enough to expose the top-most candy. "Not that one," Dave said. He wanted a blue one. Bryan said he didn't want any Shock Tarts. I figured that giving away some Tarts was going to be more complicated than I expected, but I didn't know the half of it. I gave Brendan the exposed Shock Tart and took one for myself. We polished off a few more in this manner before a blue one came along. I gave it to Dave. We ate more Tarts, with the blue ones going to Dave. At some point, Dave decided to start eating the pink ones instead. Whatever. That was easy. Then Dave announced that he'd had enough Tarts, and that I shouldn't give him any more--not even if he specifically asked for them. Okay, whatever. A few tarts later, I was handing Brendan another. "What color was that?" Dave asked. "I don't think I should say," I said. Dave shot me a look. "I think you're getting just a little bit excited about all this," I explained. A while later, I gave Brendan another Tart. "What color was it?" Dave wanted to know. I said I wasn't going to tell him. Bryan let him know: it was orange. It wasn't pink. Dave should feel no need to get excited about that Tart. I shot Bryan a look. When you're trying to transmit concealed information when under hostile observation, you don't reveal any of your information, no matter how innocent. What if Bryan kept telling Dave the colors of the non-pink Tarts? What was Dave going to think when I handed Brendan a pink Tart and Bryan all of the sudden didn't want to talk about what color it was? Dave was no dummy. He'd know there was a pink Tart in transit. And then who knew what would happen? He would pounce, he would grab the tart, the car would spin off the road, we'd be found drowned in the Rio Grande, we'd die of embarassment to have drowned in a river that looked to only be a couple of feet deep. Uh-oh--unwrapping a bit, I saw that the next-next tart was a pink one. When I handed Brendan his next tart, a pink one was going to be revealed. I casually adjusted my grip on the roll, trying to use my fat fingers to conceal the candies from the view of Dave and the insecure Bryan. I offered Brendan a Tart, which he took. Dave asked what color it was. "I don't know," Bryan said. I relaxed, and grabbed the pink Tart for myself. "...but Larry's got a pink one," Bryan continued. I popped it in my mouth hurriedly. Dave huffed indignantly. Fortunately, there weren't many Tarts left, and as I finished masticating the last of the delightfully chewy centers, the mood of uneasy detente faded.
Dinner was at Gabriel's, a restaurant on the road between Pojoaque and Tesuque, and we got there right on time. We wandered inside, and Dave, now universally recognized as our party's representative to the outside world, explained to the maitre d' that we were not a party of four, but about 10% of a party of 36. We wandered into the area that had been set aside for the dinner to find that we were the first ones there. We were ravenous. We'd been up for a long time, we'd done some hiking, you bet we were hungry. One by one, the tortilla chips in the bowl before us were snatched away to cruel, crunchy fates.
Other people started to show up. Soon there was a conversation in progress, and soon after that a dinner. I'll start by talking about the dinner. I had some nicely filling tamales, which I ate much too quickly to savor. One of the waiters made guacamole for us at the table, and it was mighty tasty. The conversation was more interesting.
John, Rob's roommate from Madison who I dimly remembered, was there, along with someone else from Madison. They talked about how they'd missed their connecting flight in Denver, how they'd had to scramble to get here, of their two companions who might still be stranded in Denver. Yipe.
Alex (Alex Ho, known to my generation as aho@cory) said that he'd changed the nature of his work at Oracle, and was now doing a lot of travelling, both for work and for tourism. He had filled up his passport. Alex was never one for half-measures. I wondered if he'd decided to find some new goal once his passport had filled up, but he was still travelling. Now he visits companies all over the world, talking with them about database benchmark test standards. At least he's travelling.
Karen, a friend of Suruchi's, was living in Ithaca, NY. That probably would have told me which school she was gradding at, if I were up on that geography thing. She didn't talk much about school, though. She was living in a firehouse, and got free living space in exchange for being a volunteer fire-fighter. Whoa. She talked about the time when the campus linear accelerator was in a state of enforced idleness, perhaps for repairs, and she and some other fire fighters went to check the place out, get an idea of the layout in case they ever had to do anything there. She described it as a long corridor, occasionally interrupted by construction-type equipment. She talked about the nervousness of the full-time firefighters at the thought of all this "nuclear" stuff around them. She mused that the particle physicists and the full-time firefighters each thought that the other group was in an extremely dangerous profession. She talked about a "HazMat" situation at the Agriculture Building. I startled. This was the first time I'd heard anyone use the abbreviation "HazMat" in a non-self-concious manner. A researcher had spent some time in one of the rooms full of plants, only to notice a sign on her way out, the sign saying that the room had recently been sprayed with some hazardous chemical. The researcher had panicked and walked to her office--thereby spreading the chemical around. The firefighters, who I guess also serve as a hazmat team, had to retrace her steps, taking steps to neutralize the chemicals.
We heard how things had gone last night--tonight's dinner was for out-of-town guests, but the night before, all the locals had gone out. A bunch of guys had brought Rob--I'm not sure if Suruchi was along--to some club called the something Cowgirl something, with some sort of bachelor-party debauch in mind. They were somewhat non-plussed to discover that this was some kind of dyke dance club, but they stuck around, and even got Rob to dance.
Dinner was done, people milled, some people left. I waved hi to one of Suruchi's cousins I'd met a few months before. We all commented on how grown-up Suruchi's little brother, Toby, was looking. There was some, "Do you realize how much time has passed since college?" conversation. Brendan made arrangements to borrow a pair of Rob's long pants for the ceremony.
Dave gave Rob the new album from the Verve. "Hey, cool! How is it?" Rob asked. "It sucks," Dave said. John from Wisconsin sadly concurred. They commisserated with one another. John said that at least Spiritualized was still holding up--they were now his favorite band. I wondered what sort of person could have Spiritualized as a fave band. Probably a calm person. John must be wiser than I.
After dinner, people got up and milled around for a while. No longer separated by a long table, I got a short chance to talk with Mason, who I'd once shared a house with. He was almost done with gradding, still working at materials science stuff that I couldn't really follow.
It was time to go; we went. Our little foursome headed back to the Rancho Incontinento. It was very dark; there was very much darkness to see, and precious little else. Brendan noted that it was no wonder that people around here kept seeing flying saucers and going nuts in general. There just didn't seem to be that much else to do around here beyond looking at the sky and going slowly insane.
We stopped off at a little grocery store on the way back to pick up a 40-ouncer of Miller and some Mega "Warhead" sour candies. The Rancho had a hot tub, and upon our return, we headed over for a bit of relaxation. The hot tub turned out to be outdoors. I dangled my feet in the water, sat back in a chair, and started working on some Jolly Ranchers. Brendan and Dave opened up the 40 and started sharing it out, using a couple of glasses they'd brought along for the purpose. Yeah, glass around the hot tub, shut up. They were careful. We looked up at the night sky. There's not a whole lot to Santa Fe, and it doesn't glow much. There are a lot of stars one can see from there. I couldn't spot Orion's Belt, and I wasn't sure whether that was because it wasn't showing, or if there might just be too many other stars getting in the way. I spotted dippers, I saw the milky way, I sat back and just looked at stars.
Dave, Brendan, and Bryan divided their time between the hot tub and the swimming pool. Their bodies were trying to tell them that the heat of the hot tub was not good for them, but they wouldn't listen; after each refreshing dip in the pool, they kept coming back to the hot tub. I'll never understand these heat fetishists.
The hot tub was fed from a constantly-running faucet, and it provided a constant sound of trickling. At one point, I mused aloud, "This night is providing me a stimulus for every sense. There are stars for my eyes, that trickling for my ears, this hot water for touch, these Jolly Ranchers for taste, and the smell of horseshit for my nose." There was a horse corral nearby. Bryan allowed as how he wasn't so sure that horseshit's was a nice smell. I told him that my pappy had grown up in farm country, and that the smell of manure gave him pleasant memories of home each time he encountered it. I myself had pleasant memories wrapped up in the smell of day-old fish; whenever I smell it, I'm a young tad walking along Clement street.
I spotted a shooting star or two, and couldn't figure out whether to wish for peace or justice.
After a while we headed back to our rooms. Dave watched Saturday Night Live for a while while I took notes on the day's events. I took a shower; when I emerged, the lights were out. Dave was in bed. I climbed in next to him, wished him good night. Goddamn it; he'd chosen my side of the bed. How was I going to get to sleep now? I shut my eyes. My ears were ringing, perhaps an after-effect of the loud airplane rides I'd taken. It was so quiet here. The rumble of traffic which usually lulls me to sleep was absent. How was I going to get to sleep?
I fell asleep in moments.
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