A Short Visit to Santa Fe

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In April 2002, I returned to Santa Fe as a co-organizer of the Biological Framings of Problems in Computing Workshop, which we held at the Santa Fe Institute. (See previous visit.) This time, I stayed only for 4 1/2 days, most of which was occupied by the workshop. Fortunately, I found some time to party on the side.

When I left for the workshop, I had just finished three exhausting weeks of packing up my stuff in Boston and saying goodbye to my friends. When I arrived in Santa Fe, I had been traveling all day long, including a transfer in Dallas/Ft. Worth and driving up from Albuquerque in a rental car. After some searching around, I found the guest house that I had rented through my local friend Angela. It was very nice and a good deal too, compared with the local hotel prices. (Ask me, if you are in that area.)

I called up Angela and we went for dinner at Maria's, a local Mexican food hangout. Ignoring my exhaustion, or maybe because of it, I made friends with two margaritas, Don Esteban and Moonglow, respectively. Both were very enjoyable, probably the best in town. However, add to my exhaustion a feeling of dizziness, perhaps caused by altitude sickness, throw in the margaritas, and you might get an impression of how I felt when I brought Angela home that evening: I was wasted. Fortunately, I could sleep long the next day.

I'll skip the actual workshop since this is a travel story. Suffice it to say that the margaritas were still going strong.

On the final evening, Dick, Ron, Ward, Cathy, Angela and me had dinner at Santa Cafe, said to be the best restaurant in town. My lamb rack was too fatty for my taste, so I can't attest to that reputation. But then, I'll hopefully return to Santa Fe a few more times to find out more. Nevertheless, my friends were as entertaining as ever, and for me this ended the fourth week of continued dining out.

Later that evening, Angela and I went out to dance at a local dance club, Club Alegria, which had opened its doors only three weeks ago. They played an interesting "world music" version of what would otherwise be standard (electronic) dance club themes. This quite original music was accompanied by a stage show consisting of three or four sparsely clothed female dancers, a cross-dressing saxophonist, and a male belly dancer. The women played with fire and danced to it, while the saxophonist and belly dancer did the obvious. Quite interesting and big fun to watch!

At 4am the next morning I drove down to Albuquerque to catch my 6:35am flight to Boston and on to Germany.

Copyright (©) 2007 Dirk Riehle. Some rights reserved. (Creative Commons License BY-NC-SA.) Original Web Location: http://www.riehle.org