Day 5 & 6: Santa Fe and On the Way to Grand Canyon

Day 5: 30 March 2007

I swear I'm gonna live forever
Tell my maker he can wait
I'm riding somewhere south of heaven
Heading back to Santa Fe
It's judgment day in Santa Fe

Bon Jovi "Santa Fe", 1990

Santa Fe is definitely not close to heaven, but it is quite mystical and beautiful at the same time. We spent the whole day Friday exploring the city, drove around and walked all along its marvelous downtown.

All buildings in downtown have distinctive Southwest architecture. Not a single high rise building exists. The landscape is not typical American downtown. The streets are all narrow, mostly only enough for one car each way. The shops and galleries are neatly designed and even the sign boards seems like regulated, all match perfectly with the surrounding environment. The small plaza in the mid of downtown reminded us of the plaza in old western movies with Mexican background. Besides the art shops, we found a lot of locals selling Indian crafts and arts in a dedicated place close to the plaza.

The snow rain which was still falling when we were there made Santa Fe much more 'post-card' beautiful.

Santa Fe is a city of art. There are so many art galleries around the city. The artworks are widely range, from traditional Indian, Mexican and Southwest arts to the modernism. This is almost close to heaven for art enthusiasts and collectors.

Speaking of art, we can't discuss about Santa Fe and New Mexico without talking about the prominent late artist Georgia O'Keefe. She's been like a great art ambassador of New Mexico to the world of modern art since her move to New Mexico from New York in the 40s. We visited the museum dedicated for her, the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, right in the downtown.

I am not an expert in art nor its interpretation, but having visited the museum, seen her works myself (before this I only knew her from books, publications and documentaries), I found this artist quite inspirational. Her life story was about a tireless search for the meaning of life, until her death at the age of 99 in 1986. I can't imagine how New Mexico looked like in the 40s when she moved there permanently as she found a lot of inspirations there during her previous visits, leaving her estate in much more glamorous New York City, after the death of her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

Her words described the philosophy behind her paintings:

Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of this life.

That's after she found her abstracts had been misinterpreted by critics as about sensuality and sexuality. She then moved to realism, so now an apple was an apple, a pear was a pear, a skull was a skull, in her artworks. And she didn't want people to read them:

One paint what is around. It is easier for me to paint it than to write about it and I would so much rather people look at it than read about it.

To sum it up:

From experiences of one kind or another shapes and colors come to me very closely.

So not to change this blog to become art review...:-), we finally concluded our day in Santa Fe a couple of hours before sunset and we continued our trip 180 more miles to the west. We stayed overnight in Route 66 town of Gallup, still in New Mexico.

Total drive of the day: 220 miles


Day 6: 31 March 2007

We started the day by driving around Gallup. The town is small so it was fast to complete the round.

An hour driving to the west we already crossed the border of Arizona, the Grand Canyon State. We didn't do a lot of stops. We continued all the way to Flagstaff (another Route 66 town mentioned in the famous 'Route 66' song, made popular by the Manhattan Transfer and many other singers).

This town is about 80 miles south of Grand Canyon. We initially planned to stay in the lodge inside the Grand Canyon Park, but they were all booked up when we called them. Based on our experience, practically there was not a nice place to stay between Flagstaff and GC, so we decided to call off the day and take a rest in Flagstaff. We explored Flagstaff before we rested. This is a nice town surrounded by ponderosa pine forests. At the background is the San Fransisco Peaks, the highest elevation peaks in Arizona, with snow still decorated its beauty from a far. No wonder that this town is chosen among the top places to live in the US.

Total drive of the day: 200 miles, and we already passed 1,500 miles, half of our total plan trip.

Day 4: Albuquerque & Sandia Peak

Today was the day for my kids. They'd been wanting to see, feel, and play with snow... and too bad Houston never had snow... the most it had was ice at the peak of the winter on December last year and they were already happy with it... We already planned to go to Big Bear in California early this year, but then my stay was extended in Houston so our hope of finding snow was kind of vanishing...

Imagine how delighted we were when we could still find snow in spring here in Sandia Peak, about 10 miles from Albuquerque...

At the elevation of more than 10,000 feet, it was cold up there in Sandia. The main attraction is actually the Tramway... it is said as the world's longest aerial tramway. The ride was smooth and the view from the tram and from the top was breathtaking... But for the kids, it was snow which drew their full attention and energy...

The ski area itselft was already closed for the season, although snow was still abundant. That was enough for my kids... We spent few hours playing with snow... with the only break was lunch at the resto at the peak... it was called High Finance... don't know how it got the strange name, but good thing is that 'high' here only related to the elevation and didn't refer to the meal prices... they were priced just like any other restaurants...

Few hours later we took the tram down to the base and we drove back to Albuquerque... We spent several hours driving around the city... We stopped by at several places like the Central Avenue where the historic Route 66 was located... several buildings still maintained their old sign boards to make the street looked 'vintage'. We also enjoyed the unique Southwest architecture of a lot of houses and buildings we found in all parts of the city.

To complement for the day for the kids, we visited the Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, which was just opened 1.5 years ago. The museum displayed the history of balloon, the balloon school (how to make a balloon, etc.), the science behind the balloon, and several real big balloons, including one which travelled across Atlantic. Albuquerque is the place for annual International Balloon Fiesta, which takes place on October.

An hour before sunset we decided we had enough with Albuquerque and we headed 60 miles north to Santa Fe. We stayed overnight here.

Total drive of the day: 100 miles only

Day 2 & 3: Leaving Texas, Entering New Mexico

Day 2: 27 March 2007

Walked around Fredericksburg, enjoying its German influence... Visited the Enchanted Rock, the huge granite dome (it's not pink as said in its publication, at least at the time we were there)... so huge it's visible from so far... wished we could climb it as many people did that day... maybe next time when the kids grow bigger....

Continued drive to Amarillo... passed small town Brady... so many bluebonnets found along the road... and strangely also some vultures... this is not a desert, wondering what these birds of death were doing there....

Passed Abilene and stayed overnight in Lubbock, home of Texas Tech Univ... Between Abilene and Lubbock we found countless sucker rods (for pumping oil from the ground) and windmills (for generating energy/electricity)... the wind was indeed so strong there...

Total drive of the day: 380 miles

Day 3: 28 March 2007

Continued to Amarillo... passed small town Tulia (with its slogan: home of richest land, finest people... wow...), took some snapshots of the Cadillac Ranch, a roadside artwork, a modern light version of the prehistoric Stonehenge in England... that's probably too much of an exaggeration....

Finally after driving 861 miles for the past 3 days, we entered New Mexico in the afternoon. Again, we found many windmills along the road. Stopped by the Route 66 monument.

Getting close to Albuquerque, we were greeted and surprised by cold wind... maybe too cold for spring... At the sundawn we reached Albuquerque and stayed overnight here...

Total drive of the day: 420 miles.... so now we are already past 1,000 miles... 1/3 of the plan trip...

Note: As a pic speaks louder than words, I will add some later to my posts when I have more time to select from hundreds I have taken so far...

Day One: Leaving Houston...

Left Houston @3pm.... blame it on the kids....:-)

Destination: the Enchanted Rock

Route: I-10 to Luling, TX 80 to San Marcos (bought something quickly in the Outlet...), enjoyed the ride to Fredericksburg through scenic byway Texas Hill Country Trail... rain most of the time... reached Fredericksburg slightly after sunset.... stayed overnight here....

Total drive today: 250 miles

Beautiful bluebonnets and other spring wildflowers were found along I-10 and some parts of TX 80 and the Trail...

WOW...

Many thumbs up for Java Jazz organizer!!! The plan showcase for Java Jazz 2008 is nothing short of a WOW (with huge capital letters...). See poster taken from their website on the left (with my own highlights...).

For me personally, where else can I have a chance to see my favorite jazz heavy weights like guitar virtuoso Al Di Meola (last seen him perform in Austin 14 years ago!), The Manhattan Transfer (seen them in LA 1991, Jakarta (1999?)), and ones I've never had a chance to see: Pat Metheny, Diana Krall, Eliane Elias, Larry Carlton and Basia.... all of them in a single big event? And what could be more irresistable than seeing them all in my own country...?

Hope that I won't be on trip on March 7 - 9 next year... or I may have to decline for the favor of this once-in-a-blue-moon gathering.

PS. Note for the organizer: some of these giants' names are misspelled. They should be Abraham Laboriel, Stanley Clarke, Erykah Badu, Kazumi Watanabe, Rene Olstead, Pat Metheny.

Hanzo:web, An Alternative to Furl

I wrote about my favorite social bookmarking tool, Furl, almost a year ago. It is still my favorite tool, but since last week it is not the only one that I use for bookmarking and archiving at the same time. That was when I found out about Hanzo:web.

Hanzo:web does what Furl has done and more. It saves not only certain web page like Furl, but can save the link only (bookmarking), the context (page with its direct links), and even archive the whole site including its links (though it is limited to paid members).

Hanzo:web is generous enough to give its free members with 100 Mb/month of websites archiving (Furl is currently giving its free members a total quota of 5 Gigabytes). That is more than I ask for as I normally only save articles and news, and never have a need to archive context or even a whole site. For the latter I rely on the Internet Archive with its wonderful Wayback Machine, which as of now it says it has saved 85 billion pages from extinction!

The way Hanzo:web works is the same with Furl. We use their button or bookmarklet to save a link, web page, context or site, tag it and put some comments (Furl has another feature for rating a web page, which Hanzo doesn't have yet in the moment...). One cool thing in Hanzo:web is its collect form, which albeit so manual that we have to paste the site and the title, it saves us from dependence on the bookmarklet or toolbar button. This way we can save to Hanzo:web from any computer without having to install the tools (for example when we are in an internet cafe, airport lounge, etc.). It is ashamed that Furl never thought about it. It should be an easy thing for them to add.

However, as Hanzo:web is still in beta, there are many things that they need to improve to make it a better social bookmarking site. First of all, the saving speed is not stable yet. Most of the time it is slow. I just tried to save an article and it has taken me more than 2 hours to get it archived. It is already on the list of my archives but I can't still open it. Two hours is probably very rare as I was able to have my articles saved properly within 5 minutes last week. Still very contrast in comparison to Furl, which saves web page within a snap.

The archive list in Hanzo:web also has a lot of rooms for improvement. The only filter there is by tags. No filter by date. No multiple selection tool to move the tag, make it private/public, send email or delete the saved pages like in Furl. No saving to zip file as well for all archives. No recommendations or 'hanzomates' (people with similar tastes). Definitely there are many homeworks for Hanzo:web to prove their value.

Hanzo:web does give us a promising future and rare alternative on free archiving of web pages, which as far as I know, has been dominated by Furl.

For me personally, I still cling to Furl as my favorite archiving tool, but once a while I keep an eye on Hanzo:web for their development.

Roadtrip Plan with the Kids

Sepuluh hari lagi berakhir sudah tugas di Houston yang dimulai 4 bulan yg lalu (yang cukup sibuk sampai blog ini terbengkalai nggak pernah diupdate). Now it's time for break and for fun.

Berhubung kali ini keluarga ikut di sini sejak 3 bulan lalu dan terutama buat nambah pengalaman anakku Adit dan Afif yang belum pernah roadtrip jauh kecuali sejauh Yogya - Jakarta, KL - Singapore atau KL - Penang, kali ini aku dan istriku Fitri rencanain untuk waive aja flight dari Houston ke LA dan diganti driving.... Di bawah ini route maps rencana kami. Permanent linknya ada di sini.

Jalan-jalan kali ini cukup ambisius idenya mengingat 2 pesertanya masih kecil-kecil, Adit 3.5 tahun dan Afif 19 bulan.... Tapi karena kami alokasikan 14-15 hari penuh untuk jarak sejauh lebih dari 3000 miles (= 4.828 km) dengan 12 tujuan utama sepanjang jalan (termasuk Santa Fe, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Yosemite, SF, Santa Barbara), lewat 5 states besar, kami hitung-hitung cukup reasonable. Dulu semasa belum ada anak-anak route yang kurang lebih sama pernah kami kunjungi dalam 7 hari saja.

Rencana kami berangkat dari Houston tgl 25 Maret dan sampai di LA kami targetkan tgl 7 April. Tgl 9 April kami akan terbang malamnya ke KL.