Departures: East to the West: Part 6

Relations with the fairer sex... Hundreds of hot-air balloons... Bandy cadness...

The Ranch

It was Sunday. It was five o'clock in the morning, and I was awake. The clock-radio was blasting something awful in Spanish. I don't think it would have been any better if it had been in English. It certainly wouldn't have been as effective. We wanted to be awake. We were getting up early to see some "mass acension". No, we hadn't turned Catholic or anything. There was some international balloon festival going on, some Ballon Fiesta or something, and they had this thing they were doing on a few mornings where lots of balloons were all going to take off at the same time. It didn't sound that interesting, but I had no alternatives to present, and nothing better to do. I thought, "The writer rose before dawn/he put his shoes on." I breakfasted on tortillas and OJ picked up at the store the night before, and soon we were on our way to the outskirts of Albuquerque.

During the ride, Brendan mused on the topic of his absent pants. His girlfriend, Sarah (Sally?), had been nagging him about packing for this trip. She wanted to make sure that he had the proper clothes for the wedding. So he figured that his forgetting to pack pants must have been a result of this. Like a semi-conscious cry of protest, I asked. Yeah, like that. Hrm, I hrmmed. Brendan declared that when he got back home, he was going to have it out with S. on this topic. She was going to tease him for forgetting to bring long pants, and he was going to say it was her fault. I hoped he was going to be sure to mention his steps of reasoning; otherwise she might not be quick to take the blame for this one. I didn't share these thoughts with Brendan, though. I was distracted. Dave was asking Brendan if he and S. ever argued. Sure, they did. How about Dave? Had Dave ever had any screaming arguments? Yes, Dave had. I stared at Dave, flabbergasted. Dave seemed to me like one of those guys who got quieter the angrier they got. I couldn't imagine him screaming. I asked him if he considered those times when he started projecting his voice--did he consider those to be "screaming arguments"? No, he didn't. It occurred to me that perhaps I'd never seen this man truly angry.

We headed through Santa Fe, and then headed West. There was a sign; it said speed limit 75mph. 75? Whoa. I was just getting used to the idea of 65mph speed limits. I looked around. Everyone was doing at least 80. A few of them passed us. There was a dull dawn. We found the proper offramp by means of the line of cars waiting for it. We parked in a dusty field, noting out place by means of the shotgun-pocked sign nearby. We walked to another dusty field where there were many hot-air balloons setting up, plus lots of food stands, gift shops, and others of the sorts of booths that tend to follow carnivals and fairs around. We had told Alex that we might meet him "by the stage," but we quickly figured out that there was no way we were going to find him. This place was huge, milling with crowds. Most people in the crowd were looking up, looking for balloons, looking everywhere except where they were going. It wasn't much fun getting around. We picked a spot to stand. I stood there and acted as a tall and visible landmark while others went off in search of bathrooms and breakfast. They got back and we watched balloons set up. "Could you hold this for a second?" Dave asked, and I idly stuck out my hand. He put a cinnamon roll into it. Now I knew whether I was immune to Dave's could-you-hold-this routine. I wasn't. On the other hand, I was now in possession of a cinnamon roll. I managed to gulp down a fair amount of it before Dave got it away from me.

Outside Albuquerque

I don't know what to say about the mass ascension. There were a lot of balloons. There were a lot of people taking pictures of balloons. The balloons inflated, they took off. Not all at once, but at any given time, there were a couple of balloons taking off. I guess there were a few hundred all told. Some were fancy shapes. Some had custom designs. A lot of them were in rainbow colors, yet somehow still appeared drab. In the New Yorker on the plane, I'd skimmed a (fiction) story about some people who failed to stop a runaway hot-air balloon. There were some balloons that nearly got away while we were there. Once a balloon's inflated, the wind really wants to push it around. I guess that's not normally a problem--normally one inflates one's balloon and takes off. But these people had to wait for clearance before taking off, lest they crash into other balloons.

Some balloons had trouble staying in place while waiting for permission to take off. We saw a sort of collision between two balloons, one of which (sponsored by Motorola) was in the shape of a hand holding a cellular phone.

It was a good way to spend a morning. It might have been worth getting up at five o'clock for, especially considering what else there was to do in the area (if Albuquerque counts as "in the area"). There were still some balloons taking off when it was time for us to head back to the room to change. We found the car, piled in, and headed back to scenic Tesuque.

Sometime previously, we'd tried those "Warhead" candies and found out that they were so sour that only Brendan could stand to eat them. I asked Brendan if he wanted one. He said sure, toss the whole bag back. It was then that I discovered that the (individually wrapped) Warheads had all escaped from their bag. I gathered up a few and passed them back to Brendan. I was fading fast. I finished off my bag of tortillas and then started to pick Warheads off the floor, unwrapping them, and eating those. Those were some nasty candies. They kept me awake until we got back to the room. Along the way, we stopped off at a couple of shopping centers so that we could confirm that there was no store in the Santa Fe area that sold long pants before ten o'clock in the morning.

I remember little of our conversation on the way back. I'm not sure if the conversation turned as weird as I think it did, or if my memories were affected by the Warheads. I remember Brendan asking when we defecated. When he realized that we didn't understand his question, he clarified: he enjoyed a bowel movement each morning after he'd had his coffee. He then repeated his question: "When do you take a dump?" It was at this time that Bryan pointed at something on the road and mentioned, in a quiet voice, "roadkill." It was kind of a long ride.

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