Pilgrimage

Thanks to the handy-dandy recession and the generally shitty state of journalism, I've been using up a lot of furlough days this year and still have nine vacation days to figure out what to do with before the end of the year.

Until now, my vacation days have been saved up for taking off luxurious amounts of time for the holidays, since my parents were in Virginia. Now that they're an hour and a half away, I should use the days for something else. I mean, I still want some days off to see how many pounds I can pack on during Christmas by eating cake for breakfast and the like, but I need something different.

Last year, Dan and I took a four-day vacation to San Francisco, where some friends of mine from grad school got hitched. We celebrated Halloween, we drank beer, we gawked at the tourists, we saw the modern art museum and new science academy and one of us cycled up Mt. Tam. (I know it's a difficult thing to do, but I'll let you guess which of us what was.)

This year, Dan's halfway into a new job and only has a few vacation days, which he's using to help his sister move to California, where she'll be entering Stanford's business school for an MBA. I rather like the idea of taking a vacation on my own, and I think tonight I've decided to knock off a few days to drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Albuquerque and the surrounding areas are a key part of my years growing up. We lived there briefly before going to England, and then moved back from England to the city, where I attended second through fourth grade. We moved back again for one year when I was in high school, and that year we lived on the east side of the Sandia Mountains and I went to my junior year at a high school that was crappy.

Of all the places I lived growing up, New Mexico is where I spent the most time. I took lessons there, I went to night classes about various animals at the nature reserve, I learned how to ski on the Sandias. I ate fry bread at the pueblos, I went to the movies with my friends, I got my driver's license there. (It was a rocking photo, something I've tried hard to replicate but never had much success with. Maybe it's because I was 17.)

I haven't been back to New Mexico since we moved away Alabama. Going back to a place where I lived as a kid is always a very personal thing. When I went back to Orford, the place we lived in England, I did it on my own, and it was deeply cathartic. I think going back to Albuquerque would be the same way, plus October is the Balloon Fiesta, which is awesomeness. I can go to that, I can potentially take my bike, I can go hiking, I can go to the nature reserve and to the museums and the restaurants. (The thought of real sopapillas is enough to make me hungry right now.)

Plus, it's Albuquerque. Compared to other parts of the country, it's practically free. I can drive there in nine hours, I can stay in a hostel for $25 a night, and I can probably afford that if I save between now and then.

Here's hoping. I'm calling the hostel tomorrow to check on availability.