Fiesta (Blogophilia 39.9)

It wass the best time to be in Santa Fe, not too hot or cold. It had been a beautiful wedding, he had to say. The bride was radiant, the groom nervous and the church charming. The Mariachi Band at the reception had been a nice touch. The sister stealing the disposable cameras meant to supplement the wedding pictures could have been skipped. The-off the-cuff testimonial to the couple had gone better than he expected. And he wasn't even that hungover at 5AM when he started the trip back to Albuquerque to catch the 8:30 plane to go home.
At the last minute, a bridesmaid from Los Angeles asked if she could hitch to catch her flight home. Sure, why not. She was kind of cute and it would make the trip little less boring. It didn't work out that way, she slept all the way through the Bernalilo Pass. Oh, well.
Traversing the southern end of the Los Cerillos valley wasn’t much. Dry scrub punctuated with windblown cottonwoods posed as shadows along either side. Probably a good thing it was dark the coming up. Cruise control set a eighty and soft classical music made the quiet snoring in the passenger seat almost pleasant.
A bank of Aspens lit up with golden fire as the sky went from indigo to lavender to blue as the rental car climbed Sandia Mountain. The scenery was incredible. If you had to drive I-25, this is the section and October is time of the year to do it. His mind was split on whether to miss the plane and hike up Spirit Mountain north of town, or just go on back home. The Boss wouldn't like that much. She was expecting him at 5 and he didn't want to deal with the explanation.
Topping the bald at the Pueblo, the long descent into town started. Interesting rock cuts in places where they had to blast the road into place became visible. It was somewhere around he almost hit the guy walking in the middle of the road, wasn't it? The sky had turned an interesting shade of orange tinged with pink. He guessed it was about twenty minutes until full sunrise and his mood lightened. Could he live out here? He'd miss his trees too much, but it was always fun to visit.
The girl in the passenger seat stirred, then jumped and pointed to a winking sunflower that had appeared in the sky.


It seem to float like a dream across the mountain on the zephyr. It was one of those sights when you realize everything's going to be alright, now. Marley was right, as usual. As the car made the next bend, the sky exploded into balloons bobbing across the valley in the annual hound and hare race.


With a jolt, he swerved to miss a slack jawed idiot stopped dead in its tracks. Jesus! Haven't these people seen a mass balloon launch before? I mean Fiesta is quite a sight, but you don't have to cause a twenty car wreck. He'd stop himself, but the plane was still waiting. He judicially slalomed and went on.
He'd have to smell the roses another time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Topic-Dave Coon
Pic-Dahlia Ramone
Pic-Dream (in blog), Balloon (in blog), dream (in blog), future, wish, trip (in blog) in the air, around the world, adventure, hopes, rainbow.

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