BTV to ABQ

Coming off the hill toward ABQ from Mountainair.

Early flight from Burlington, went in to work and tidied up a few things, then the taxi was there 20 minutes early so what the heck. The early am drivers are chatty and this guy grew up logging in the kingdom (sorry, Kingdom). He had no change so I over tipped. (BTW, he taxi in Albuquerque is half as much to go twice as far..).
Two flights, BTV to Atlanta and ATL to ABQ. Tiny gate change (plane was broken) but other than that, no problem. The guy I sat with on the first flight retired from Vermont Yankee and told some great stories. The best was the A10 Warthog story (military planes). Two A10s were for some reason flying up the Conn river and one decided to buzz the plant, doing a loop around the big stack down there. I guess he got his butt chewed on that.
He seemed bitter it closed, but was retiring anyway. Nice guy.
I met a fire jumper that worked for BLM (Bureau of Land Management) that hit a dog on his motorcyel, and then sat next to another BLM woman on the last flight. Must be a convention?
Jake is real close to the airport so cheap taxi to his place. I rolled the BMW out of the garage and started it up. Everything looks perfect (gotta do a mouse check, they like to build nests in the airbox, cuts down on mileage, make a bad smell..) Jake came back for lunch so we caught up for a bit and he headed back to work (he bikes it). So what the heck, I better take the beemer out and see if it still runs.

I was going to head north, but the traffic was backed up so got on 25, headed south and opened her up. Clear sky with just a few tiny clouds and 70 degrees. Jake was not back until about 6 so I had 3-4 hours. Rode to Socorro and stopped for coffee. The bike runs smoother than I remember. There is no other way to get back so I thought I would go east on 60 and sneak up the back side of the mountains behind ABQ (sorry for the "ABQ" but I get tired of spelling it). I took Rt60 and about half way to Mountainair realized the sun was dropping fast behind me. So much for long days I guess. I stopped in Mountainair and checked the map. Nothing but a gas station and a bar by the looks. It was 50 50 on whether to continue on, but I thought riding in the dark on the unknown back side would not be the smart thing to do. And I would get a better sunset heading west. And I did.
Back to Jakes and we rode out of town to a Mexican place that was great. Back to his place buzzing the ABQ street on the beemer with Jake at night. Met the new roommates who are great, and seem like a group that have fun together, all thanks to Craigslist. Good first day. I may head south to Las Cruces tomorrow as there is some weather due west of here today. Then west to Tucson. Good night!