Albuquerque, New Mexico — Day 8

Odometer: 1401–1606 (205) miles

Listen to: “Country Mile” — Camera Obscura

A lot could have gone wrong today, but I somehow managed to get by with no issues whatsoever. I could’ve run out of gas, popped a tire, been bitten by a poisonous snake, but I dodged each and every one of those particular bullets, though I’m still not entirely sure how. And now I have stories, plus a not small amount of distrust for Google Maps, which I wholly blame for each and every one of these near-disasters.

The worst part of riding the Vespa is the gas tank. It’s tricky: seeing half the clicks on the indicator doesn’t necessarily translate to a gallon of gas in the two gallon tank. Worse, I’ve started reading the half-full gauge as “eh, you *probably* have enough gas to keep going.” Google Maps told me there were several stations on my route, so I figured it would be fine. This is when I learned that Google Maps is the master of half-truths; you can never quite trust its friendly red markers fully.

As I passed these indicated stops, one had a sign on the front, reading in block letters: “CLOSED SUNDAYS”. Another appeared to be an empty lot, where there might have been a gas station once, but now only provides ample supplies of grass and weeds. My Vespa does not run on grass and weeds. It runs on 91 octane unleaded gasoline. I pushed on.

I was headed to the ice cave, a geological oddity within an extinct volcano’s lava tube where the water at the bottom of a cave stays frozen every day of the year. Looking down at the gas gauge, there was a pretty good chance that with my emergency fuel, I could’ve made it there. I decided to call the folks at the cave and ask if they happened to know if any gas stations nearby. They didn’t, but they told me they had some spare gas, so if I made it there, I could take as much as I needed to get to the nearest town. Reassuring, but I wanted to look for anything closer, something that would be more of a guarantee than “I should be able to make it”.

As it happened, I passed by a place called “The Ancient Way Cafe”. I pulled in and asked the man behind the counter if he had any gas. I didn’t catch his name, but the combination of his looks and his way of speaking reminded me of a mid-career Bill Murray. Think Rushmore, but with more intense sideburns and wearing a button-up t-shirt with flowers on it. Bill Murray-ish told me he thought he had some gas, and asked me to wait while he got it. Sure enough, within a few minutes he came back with a few gallons, I poured about a gallon into the scooter, gave him $5 for the trouble, and loaded it up to leave. But just as I was leaving, I overheard him reading the day’s specials off to a family that was eating lunch at the cafe. Realizing I was starving, I decided to stay and eat.

As I was eating my brisket salad, a group of maybe 15 Harleys pulled up to the cafe. As they pulled in, I saw the German flag on the back of one of the bikes. Sure enough, as they park and walk in, they’re all shouting at each other in German. On the trailer that’s accompanying them, I see the name and address of a motorcycle rental company in Illinois. I ask one of them if they’re all visiting from Germany, and he tells me they have Germans, Swiss, Italians, and Greeks (as he says this last one, he points to a tall, skinny man in designer sunglasses stoically smoking a cigarette next to us). They’re traveling down Route 66, and had just spent the last night at Acoma Pueblo. I had been there a few years before, and tried to ask him what he thought of it, but they were all pretty busy getting espressos and, while their English was great, it wasn’t quite worth the effort for them to carry on a conversation with a stranger at a cafe. I finished my meal, gave my table up to the Germans, and headed out to the ice cave.

First, a bit of a note about New Mexico: the area is home to a lot of fairly recent (geologically speaking) volcanic eruptions. The most recent happening only about 3,000 years ago. The landscape is full of lava fields, these huge stretches of black rock with twisted trees growing out of them. To be in an otherwise idyllic mountain landscape, full of birds chirping and the smell of pine trees, and then to see a huge stretch of desolate volcanic rock is a pretty odd experience.

The trail to the ice cave wove through a lava field, and then descended a steep set of rickety stairs into a deep cave. As I was walking down, a 9 year old girl was sitting near the middle of the stairs. She was scared of going any further, and it was hard to blame her; the stairs were narrow, and looked pretty old. An older woman walked by and asked the girl if she wanted to come with her, since she had hip problems and would be taking it slow, plus she was scared of the old wooden stairs too. The girl reluctantly agreed, and they went down together. Once they got down to the bottom, the older woman turned to the girl and asked her if they could take a photo together. She told the girl: “I’ll look back on this photo and say ‘there’s the girl who helped me be brave’”

The cave itself was incredible. And incredibly cold. I was wearing my riding jacket, riding pants, and a long sleeved shirt underneath, and it was still uncomfortable. Meanwhile, outside it was in the low-90s. This place seemed cordoned off from the world around it, existing completely independent of its environment, never allowing summer to creep in.

I then hiked up to the cone of the dormant volcano that created the lava tube where the ice cave formed. This was the top of the Continental Divide, standing at roughly 8,000ft. The path seemed like a standard mountain hike, except I’d look to my left and see a huge field of black lava rock. At the top was a massive crater. Later, talking to the woman who was running the gift shop, I mentioned that it reminded me of Haleakala, a dormant volcano that formed half the island of Maui, in Hawaii. She agreed, and told me when she visited that crater, she kept thinking it reminded her of home, but without the smell of pines.

From there, I followed Route 66 down to Albuquerque. This was a fairly old segment of the highway, and it was dotted with old signs, broken down buildings, the typical hallmarks of the sections of 66 that were completely bypassed by the interstates.

Here, we get to the next two near-disasters. Because driving a Vespa on the interstate is both dangerous and incredibly boring, I had Google Maps set to “Avoid Highways”. Normally, this led me down access roads and small state routes. In this case, the old alignment of 66 I was following rapidly turned into a rutted out, but mostly paved, country road. I had to slow down to avoid potholes, but otherwise, it didn’t seem too bad. Taking the occasional worn down old road seemed the price to pay for avoiding the shiny new interstates. But then, the road dropped any pretense of paving. It may have been paved the entire way through at one point, but in the decades since its construction, it had become nothing but gravel and sand.

One thing about Vespas: they are not meant for off-roading. In fact, it’s hard for me to think of a single vehicle that is less suited to this particular type of driving. Last time I took my Vespa down a gravel road, a rock broke a bit of my muffler off, and I spent the rest of the trip driving a scooter that sounded like a Harley-Davidson. Terrified of a tire puncture, I was taking it slow down this godawful road. But even going slow, I could scan the road a few feet ahead of me, at most. It was a few feet ahead of me, then, where I saw a rattlesnake basking in the sun. I was headed right for it.

Shit.

I tried to steer out of the way as I passed, but I still have no idea if I hit it. Hopefully I didn’t. I certainly wasn’t turning back to check. Thankfully, I was moving fast enough that the snake didn’t have time to react either. A few hundred yards down the road, I stopped to take a photo of what I had just driven through. And a few hundred yards after that, I was back on paved roads.

Albuquerque was wonderful. I spent the night hanging out with a friend’s brother, who showed me around the city a little bit. He was in school here, taking CS classes at the college to eventually try and get a job as a programmer; I tried to give some tips as far as that goes, but given the last time I interviewed was over four years ago, I have no idea how helpful they were. He grew up in Albuquerque and was thinking about taking a job in New York, so we talked about leaving hometowns, and about friends who never did. We stopped by the local late night diner and ate the most incredible cinnamon rolls I’ve ever had, plus I got some chamomile tea with honey, which calmed my cough almost instantly. If you’re reading this, huge thanks to Julian for showing me around!

Today, I leave for Clovis, in eastern New Mexico. I’m so close to getting back to Oklahoma, and I can’t wait. The road’s about to get a lot more familiar as I get closer to home, family, and friends.

Till tomorrow,

-Esten