Go West young man!

Greetings from Santa Fe, New Mexico

Nicole and I had a brilliant time in Tennessee last week catching up with many of her old buddies from when she worked at the summer camp program based in Crossville. Nicole always becomes animated and alive when she talks of those days...so I was excited and blessed to be able to meet so many of her special friends ...in Crossville, Chatanooga & Nashville. It was great to stay with the Velkers and go caving one afternoon with their seven kids, ages 2-13! We free camped one night at "The Stone Door" one of Nicole's favorite places where she used to take groups climbing. We managed to drive into Alabama for a brief 1/2 hour or so and then dip into Georgia for about 3 mins before hitting Chatanooga where we cauught up with Dan & Carlene and Matt and Julie which was cool.
On Saturday we caught up with Louisa, a funky rock/soul singer based in Nashville & had a great brunch with her at a local cafe. Then headed east to catch up with Ethan and DP & assisted them a couple hours in clearing up Ethan's family cabin (built in the 1700's) to be ready for early Thanksgiving this weekend. We had "hobo packs" for dinner before saying bye & driving west, sleeping in the car at a rest area just west of Jackson. Sunday morning dawned & we drove through Memphis, doing a small detour to see the outside of Graceland, before crossing the Missisippi River and into Arkansas, which we drove right across & into a rainy Oklahoma by early evening.

As we approached Oklahoma City I got a call from a friend Holly who I had studied Dari with in Kabul in 2003. She lives in Oklahoma City now so we detoured for a few hours and caught up with her & another mutual friend Heidi (who had lived in NZ). Was a really nice unexpected meeting that day. We drove another couple hours and slept again that night in the car just before the Texas border. That night was cold and their was a frost on the car roof in the a.m!

Texas was...well ..BIG...and starting to feel like we were heading into the desert again..which we were! We just crossed the top bit - called the Panhandle - and some of the towns were tiny but had HUGE billboards for miles before you got there with advertising for whatever the town had to offer...like the many terribly overpriced tacky touristy junk stores & even a "Jesus is Lord Travel Centre"!!!! Gotta love it!!

We arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Monday afternoon and were excited to see evidence of recent snow from the night before dusting the shady sides of the hilly city! Big blue skies and cool nights were in order. Nicole has had the flu since Thursday..and it hit her low here so she stayed in bed on Tuesday most of the day but got up to come out to the airport with me to pick up our good friend Justine. We have worked with her in Sudan and Kabul (where she still works) & joins us now for the rest of our time here - so is great to be able to enjoy this last part of our journey with her.

Today we drove the hour or so north to Santa Fe...a much smaller town..where all the buildings and homes are brown adobe/pueblo style & bathed in golden sunlight...making it a very pleasant town to explore - which is what we have been doing all this afternoon.

Tomorrow we head north again to Taos - apparently an ex-hippy hangout and also an area full of Pueblo/Adobe housing. We are really interested to see the "Earthship" housing here (go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship)...something I had seen in books years ago and last year the interest rekindled again after seeing the film Grabage Warrior at the Auckland Inetrnational Film Festival - a great film to inspire creativity and persistence for whatever your cause may be(go to: www.garbagewarrior.com/. Really looking forward to that!

Has been great heading west again ...and our trusty $650 car, Ziggy (christened due to it's licence plate no. ZGE 45M)has been great so far - with only 2 quarts of oil needed to quench his thirst to date!! Go Ziggy!

It is quite different travelling by car compared to bicycle of course. Being bicycle tourers seemed to break barriers immediately and automatically opened all kinds of conversations and invitations...as it was obvious that we were on a long journey and going slowly!(and I don't think many of the towns we cycled through had ever seen lycra before!!) Travelling by car ...we could be any of the many thousands of others travelling that day on the same road by car. That being said we still continue to be impressed by the great service & attitude we experience along our way and the friendly people who always wish you the best.

In fact...the most common thing that has been repeated to us over and over as we say what we are doing is..."Have a SAFE journey". In New Zealand I think we would more likely say..."Have fun!". I don't know where the difference lies and what we are supposed to be kept safe from...bad drivers (we actually think Americans are in general VERY good drivers)? accidents?bad people?

One interesting recent comment from an American friend to ponder is this..."take fear out of the hearts of Americans and they are some of the biggest hearts anywhere!" Interesting huh? Not sure what the fear is about...but gotta agree that there are some pretty big hearts everywhere we go.

So...2 1/2 weeks left in the US and then back to "normality" whatever that may entail!! In the meantime we continue to enjoy the ride and are grateful for you "riding" with us too! I hope to put some more pics up soon from our time in New York City...but haven't had a computer capable of doing this for a while...but promise to try again soon!

Stay cool!

Marty