I have a close pal who used to live in New Mexico. He and Better Half don’t get along so I went solo. Here’s what happened the first time I visited. For the purpose of this narrative, let’s call him Thelma and I’ll be Louise.

I flew in, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. Direct flights to Albuquerque are few, and he lived up in Santa Fe, which is about an hour away. What little was left of the day was spent at the Plaza, we had dinner at some place he knew of, a quick drink at a bar, and back to his rented casita, which came complete with a kiva fireplace, which sparked joy in me. The next day more wandering Santa Fe, chatting up a storm, he is as chatty as I am, late night drinks in his backyard, which was more like an enclosure with native sand and shrubs and a couple of cacti, and then off to bed because we were to set off on a Road Trip.

The two of us have taken many an Epic Road Trip. This one was to be kind of pointless, because I had never been anywhere near this part of the country so we figured we’d just go where the road took us. We went to a reservation which had a mesa where the original inhabitants once lived. It was an archaeological site. “Imagine, Thelma, people were living here 2,000 years ago. Have you ever wondered what life will look like 2,000 years from now?”

“Well, according to ‘Star Trek’ in a mere few hundreds of years from now we’ll be roaming deep space, meeting all sorts of extra-planetary beings, and many will be sporting beehive hair-do’s, as if the universe is one infinite AquaNet commercial.”

“We should learn Klingon. You can, you know. There are online classes, and dictionaries. Apparently it’s so developed in the franchise that the writers aren’t just making up gibberish, they’re sticking to linguistic conventions.”

“I never knew you were a Trekkie. Let’s get lunch.” We stopped at a nearby fast food/diner/bus stop-looking hybrid restaurant. We sat at a booth and I asked, “Thelma, what’s that? A jukebox? That’s fun. I haven’t seen one of those in years.” “No, it’s a tabletop slot machine. We’re still on the grounds of the reservation. And don’t bother putting in a drink order; alcohol is forbidden.” “What a strange way to live, soberly pumping quarters into tabletop slot machines.” “The slot machines are more for us than them.” I’m still sore about this, because I lost $1.75 and I thought I would be financing my part of the trip through the winnings.

Then off we set. Our only vague goal was to go into Colorado and take a look around. “Colorado? How long is that going to take?” “From here about half an hour. Colorado borders New Mexico on the north.” “How can it do that?”

At the border we stopped for gas but I can’t remember which side we were on. As we exited the car I said to Thelma, “I can almost hear the dueling banjos…” The place was hopping, so I assume gas is cheaper on one side than the other. We also took a (very flattering) photo of me standing next to a “Welcome to Colorado” sign. Thanks to Thelma’s stage directions to get the perfect shot I almost stepped into highway traffic. When we got back into the car Thelma said, “It would be kind of funny if I had to contact Better Half. ‘Hi! It’s Thelma. Listen, I’m here with Louise but he’s not really here with me. There’s been an accident…” “And tell him not to try to retrieve my remains, that’s just a waste of time and money. Just pull me over to the side of the road and let the vultures have at me.” “Very ecologically sound.”

“So let’s go up into the Rockies.”

“Aren’t we in the Rockies?”

“Oh no. No we are not.”

I cannot describe how awesome, in the traditional sense of the word, the Rockies are. To be driving on these little roads with no shoulders and few guardrails and drops of hundreds if not thousands of feet inches from your car’s wheels is unforgettable. 

“Jesus. I wonder how many people have died on this road?”

“Well, they close it when it snows so that must help. But imagine doing this in darkness.”

“Wasn’t there a movie where—no, I’m thinking of a James Bond film and I think they were on a corniche in the French Riviera.”

“Poor Princess Grace.”

“I know. Imagine being driven off a cliff by your own daughter. They might have had a frosty relationship but that seems excessive.”

“The Monegasques are a Mediterranean people so no doubt they have fiery tempers. She must have gotten it from her father.”

“Or her mother. I think Grace Kelly’s father was a successful Irish-American brickmaker from Philadelphia. Have you ever been to Philadelphia?”

“We went together, Louise, back when I lived in New York.”

“Oh that’s right. God that was a long time ago. Had the Declaration of Independence been signed yet? I can’t remember.”

That’s pretty much how the entire week went. At one point we were driving along and I cried out, “Thelma, stop the car!”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a WalMart. I’ve never been to one.” [This is true. They aren’t allowed in New York City.]

We got out to stretch our legs and it, too, was awesome in the traditional sense of the word. “Thelma, look at this aisle. They must have 1,000 versions of potato chips.”

“You’re acting like you just fled the Soviet Union in the 1960s.”

“This store is the size of Manhattan. Surely not that many people live around here.”

“The land probably cost $1 an acre and the town and the state probably threw some money their way.”

“I didn’t bring you a hostess gift. Here. Do you like ‘Nilla Wafers? Please accept this 48-oz box from me, with my gratitude.”

At some point we found ourselves in Denver, which I really liked. In the beginning. They have a tiny history museum which can be thoroughly toured in about 1/2 hour, so you don’t waste a lot of time on cultural pursuits. We had lunch in LoDo, Lower Downtown, and that brought a strange sort of sadness to me when I heard this neighborhood’s unfortunate name. Later we had an excellent dinner in a neighborhood thickly carpeted as far as the eye could see with delightful Craftsman houses.

“This is lovely. Thelma, I think I could live in Denver.”

“You’d have to learn how to drive.”

“I can drive. I have a license.”

“I was in a car with you once when you were driving. Never again. Plus it’s kind of outdoorsy and snowy, what with the Rockies and all. Do you like to ski? Snowboard? Snowshoe?”

“None of the above but I love dogs, so what I would do is get enough huskies to form a pack and mush them. I could enter the competitive world of sled dog racing. And we would all live happily in our Craftsman house on Rocky Mountain Rd. here in Denver.”

“You all would. What would Better Half do?”

“Oh, he’d make money, he’s good at that. How many huskies in a sled dog pack? Six? So that would be eight mouths to feed. I wonder how expensive liquor is here. Because a fully stocked bar is essential to civilized life.”

“Speaking of, when I went to the men’s room I chatted up our waiter, and he told me the only gay bar close by is a video bar. Do you want to try that?”

“I am always in the mood to revisit the 80s and I would like to meet some of my new neighbors.”

This is where the bloom went off the rose. The place itself was fine and kind of jolly, and we did indeed revisit the 80s through the videos shown, but they were the worst the decade produced. And this wasn’t an 80s bar, they just happened to have a lot of bad music videos that happened to be from the 80s. 

“You know, Thelma, I once read an interesting—not history, exactly, more like an overview—of cowboys in the American West. Did you know a lot of them were southern Civil War former soldiers or deserters? Yes, that’s why everyone was armed to the teeth. And many of them came from very poor backgrounds, malnourished since birth, and that leads to mental problems.”

“That’s interesting.”

“The poverty, the desperation, the social dislocation, the mental illness, the barbarism practiced against the natives and what they practiced toward the cowboys. It explains so much. And right now it explains what we’re seeing right here, in this very bar.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right Louise. Let’s go and get an early start tomorrow and see how close we can get to New Mexico by sunset.”