Let's talk Albuquerque

Robert Nordhaus went to Switzerland and returned with a vision to create the longest tramway in the world and he wanted to build it in his backyard - the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico.  I saw his house.  He had a big backyard.  So forty-four years ago he built the Sandia Tram.  At 2.7 miles it was the longest in the world...until a year ago, when a tram in Armenia beat it by over a mile.

In the pictures above we were over nine hundred feet above the ground (or 8.5 seconds down as the tram guide stated...evil tram guide).  Also in the ravine below was a TWA plane wreck.  The plane crashed with sixteen people aboard before the tramway was built.  When TWA heard that a tram was going to run overhead they came in and hauled off all the pieces that had TWA on it and left everything else.  All up and down one of the ravine you can see pieces of the plane glinting in the sunlight.

As we headed back down we saw a beautiful mansion that was so perfectly blended in with the scenery your eye would simply pass over it if you didn't know where to look.  The guide heard that it was the HGTV Dream House.  I believe it.

On the way to the airport after our appointments we saw this sign:

Sorry it is blurry.  It reads "The Best Airport Parking on PlanetEarth."  Wow.  That is really reaching for a level of superiority that is completely beyond a parking lot that charges $3.67 per day and has another sign that reads "Buckle Up and Prepare for Fast Service."  I felt a tremendous urge to stop in and ask the manager if he was in some sort of competition with airport parking lots on Mars or Jupiter.

But there were other signs in Albuquerque that had me just as perplexed.  One said "Hurt...Call Bert."  And another said "Jeff has your back."  Both had head and torso shots of handsome men in suits and reminded me of LA Law...just in New Mexico.