Superfast breakfast, same procedure as everyday: You enter the breakfast lobby, get yourself a BIG mug of this bitches’ brew menat to be coffee, which has to be boiling-hot, otherwise the northpole- cold milk would cool the whole thing down to some minus degrees … Same scenario as every morning: TV-set yells, everybody is chewing and staring wordlessly on the screen … EGAL : kap throws himself into our ritualized super-fast packing-routine, czz finishes the blog-notes, we get in the car and back ON THE ROAD AGAIN, straight into an unearthly glowing NEW MEXICAN morning. Today theres gonna be a long way to go, knappe 400 Kilometer - - -
Out of Tucumcari (A sign indicates: 28 hotels, 30 modern petrol stations) we are blessed by a series of archetypically abandoned motels, gas- stations, etc: foto- motives galore.
Letztes Tanken vor der desert-zone: Wie sonst nur in gefaehrlichen Areas oder nachts ist der Preis im Vorhinein zu entrichten …. und - this makes a huge difference to all weve seen before: They sell hard drinks in bottles and heavy liquors, which are openly ON DISPLAY at the cashier. Until now, they wold deny every question for even a can of BUD …. (”You want … beer ?? - I don’t really know what you’re talkin’ about …”)
Up in the hills, heading on the interstate up to Santa Rosa, get a huge huge mug of another coffee @ Dennys, the nationwide chain of family restaurants, designed after the shape of the prototypical American Diner. They serve monstruos dishes of breakfast, all U can eat of toasts, eggs, ham, peanut butter-and-jelly-sandwiches.
At the parking lot: Grey-haired female truck driver descends out of one of those chrome-polished Kings of The Roads. - - Vanity license-plate @ the front of a NM-SUV: VIETNAM VETERAN (> schon oefters gesehen: discounts fuer VFW = Veterans of Foreign Wars).
Later in the day we will discover that in New Mexico, the manadotory license- plate is mounted at the rear of the car ONLY. At the front, most of the NM- cars don`t have anything if not fancy or vanity- plates.
Driving up the hills, a gigantic landscape enrolls itself ci- ne- ma- scope right infront us: a Surround- experience of emptiness, sharp rox & blood-red cliffs reaching up high in this vast vast vast sky: THE BIG SKY embraces the desert land streching to all the horizons … WOW. This is IT. Supposed to represent the metaphysical meaning of this landscape owned by pagan and ancient gods.
As always, there are some mundane & trivial aspects to all of it: Gradually we discover many hints to the fact that New Mexico is one of the most regulated and most controlled regions in the US.
NO NO NO- signs galore, speed limits, DO NOT PASS, DO NOT ENTER, NO TRESPASSING. For the first time during the trip, private cars outnumber the trucks @ the interstate, passing trough native-American-reservations: CASINOs, LIQUOR, ARTS & CRAFTS …
At Romeroville we join the Old 66 again, streches of total mud follow recently rebuilt parts, finally the 66 leaves the vicinity of the interstate and turns right up into the hills, only accompanied by the ubiquitary rail tracks. Still not electrified, still towed by DIESEL -Loks, impressive freight trains rush into and out of view.
This will not change up to the area behind terribly crappy Santa Fé: In this region communities impose strict rules to every building, design and behaviour. In exchange, people enyoy public benefits such as schools, wards, hospitals and …. public transport. We see buses, bus stops and , @ Bernalillo, even the New Mexico Rail Runner Express (NMRX) , a Diesel- powered commuters train. An absolute rare and remarkable community- effort to reduce car- traffic. Nice (and the first and only which will come into our view ) passenger- station, nice Diesel- train-set design … but the vehicules proove to be completely empty …
Meantime, noon has been comin’ up. The scenic, but harsh landscape offers not a single bush or tree to find shadow or shelter for a short pique-nique. So we get off the road and hide under a train-bridge, visited by swarms of flies & bugs, enjoying human company probably for the first time of their entire insect-life. A mexican worker watches us from beyond, acting busy, trying to make sense of the unusual visit of people ….
Entering Santa Fé County we get acquainted to numerous signs, bans (DOUBLE FINE ZONE), no mile without fences left & right of THE ROUTE, tiny shacks, abandoned shops (LIQUORS) in the rocky hills with sparse bushes and macchie ( > mediterranean karst ), small churches, missions and cementaries.
Hemmingway is supposed to have written his OLD MAN AND THE SEA somewhere in this desert zone inhabited for thousands of years by the pueblo indians, until the white man’s RECONQUISTA, the Santa Fé-boom 1840 ff and and TOURISM 1870 ff until today.
Somehow we did preconceive it, somehow we DID read the signs in an appropiate way: Getting into the vicinity of Santa Fé every single structure, every single building, even the gas-stations are shaped uniformly in the ADOBE-style: cubicle houses, cubicle-shapes, uniform colours of earth-mud-brown.
REAL ESTATE, LIONS & KIWANI´s CLUB, not a sole building, street, fence etc other than in the CORPORATE DESIGN: THIS is an All American Nightmare of a tourist trap fortissimo, hordes of American tourists crowding the pubelo-Geisterbahn-town, this Disney World of the domesticated would-be INDIAN style . - This town is an all- over Gift Shop Alert, ein durchgestylter Alptraum: So etwas bisher nur an der Cannery Row (west coast, route # 1) gesehen.
RAUS HIER !!! Even the gigantic shopping malls in the vicinity are shaped adobe- style. GPS supplies us with the locations of all six SBUX - cafés around. We DO need some REALLY STRONG espresso to rebuild our nerves and minds after this explosion of cliché-shaped reality. The enourmous wealth - manifesting itself thru European car outlets (Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes), huge hospitals, banks and real estate-dealers, five-dollar-tips @ Starbucks … Smoking strictly prohibited, not only in the shop but also on the patios and up to 25 feet around, a telephone number TO REPORT VIOLATION ist indicated, too.
Getting out of here as quickly as possible, lautet das dringende Gebot der Stunde, ruhiger und friedlicher werden wir erst, als wir die gute alte 66 rechts neben der Interstate Richtung Albuquerque wiederfinden. Auch hier bleibt die Adobe-Uniform erhalten, but still there seems to be some spots of genuine life, vegetable growers & vendors, small shops and car-related enterprises tyical for the 66 all the way from Chicago up to here.
Enter Albuquerque: Traffic Hell, mall hell …. not even downtown Chicago the traffic has been so packed, aggressive, the cars never have been that expensive so far …. it seems, that we have left charming small-town America ?? - - We still pamper some hopes that in Arizona the other - the small-town America - might be found again, in contrast to this showy, aggressive, super-regulated and crappy pseudo- Miami.
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