Whatever I Feel Like

Since I was still on east coast time, I woke up pretty early for a Saturday – around 6 AM. Thankfully, my uncle was also still on east coast time, and he was up as well. We had coffee and breakfast and chilled out for a little while before heading off on our first big New Mexico adventure together – driving along the Turquoise Trail to Madrid and Santa Fe!

The drive up the Sandia Mountains was incredible, although I expected it to be a bit more grand. Because it’s early spring, the landscape wasn’t as gorgeous as I’ve seen it on TV and in movies. Don’t get me wrong, parts of it were still breathtaking, I just thought the whole thing would be. I was also unprepared for how small the town of Madrid is. I don’t think the main road that goes the length of the town is more than half a mile long. There’s a lot packed into that half mile, though.

We parked towards the end of town (headed north) near a guy with an old-fashioned smoke pit going full force. The chill of the morning air combined with the smell of the smoke pit and look of the small town nestled in the mountains really made me feel like we’d stepped back in time. It reminded me somewhat of visiting my elderly great-grandmother in the mountains of southwest Virginia when I was a young girl. There’s something about a sleepy mountain town that remains universal no matter where you are I think.

Our trip through Madrid lasted a few hours. There are a lot of small art galleries here, as the town is now a sleepy community of artists who revived the place in the 70s and never left. I was just beginning to get a taste of how prevalent art is in New Mexico. I’m not in the art circle at all, so it took me some time to get acclimated. I do believe I have an eye for good art, though, and it was interesting to see so many eclectic styles as we passed through each store.

Towards lunch time, the bikers came roaring through town. They were loud, plentiful, and black. My uncle said they reminded him of a colony of ants swarming – I thought that was a perfect optical analogy. I stood in awe with a huge smile on my face as they noisily made their way into the parking lots of the Mineshaft Tavern and Engine House Theater. My uncle wasn’t nearly as enchanted as I – when I turned around after a few moments, he was gone. It didn’t take me long to find him inside one of the small shops nearby, though.

I loved being able to see all of the stuff from the movie Wild Hogs through out the town. I didn’t realize the diner Marisa Tomei worked in was made for the movie. It’s still standing, but it’s a prop and wasn’t open for us to go inside. I thought that was pretty wild. I also got a good picture of one of the shops that was featured as a house in the movie. The big fight scene was shot outside this store and the diner next door to it. I don’t think all of those mailboxes were in the movie – I’ll have to look again. In this picture, the diner is to the left and the fight scene was filmed in between that building and the yellow & blue one that is in the forefront.

We encountered a Native American medicine woman in one shop. The funny thing was, when we first walked into the place, we both smelled pot. I was like, “Wow, the hippies sure are blatant here. Guess it’s cool to just smoke one out in the open here in Madrid.” We noticed the shopkeeper in the back of the store talking to some customers. I glanced at him and thought – more power to you, dude. After the customers left, he approached us to let us know the smell we were smelling was a mixture of sage and some other herbs. And it was then that we both realized he was a she. Ha! After going farther into the store and talking to her, we also noticed she was a medicine woman. How funny that this lady who looked like a dude dressed in faded denim biker’s garb turned out to be a holy woman of sorts. She told us how the herbs she was burning warded off negativity and a bunch of other stuff. My uncle bought a baggie of it – it truly looked like he had copped about a quarter ounce of weed. We got a big kick out of that.

Shortly after we got our faux contact high, we decided to head up the road to Santa Fe. I was getting hungry for lunch and my uncle didn’t want to eat in Madrid, so off we went.

Here’s a link to all of my Madrid pictures.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Mundane, The Fam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.