Columbus, NM – Dec. '09

While waiting for my various dental appointments to come and go, I came to really like the bike I’d bought up in Socorro. But then on a nice Sunday morning in December, I’d rode it to the Patio Cafe carrying my laptop to try and listen to the Seahawks game. I did that simply because I liked the outdoor patio there at the cafe, and the bike ride.

There is a setup on the NFL’s website where you can sign up to listen to games. Since I don’t have satellite TV, that’s what I usually do. Anyway, there was something wrong with the WiFi at the cafe, I couldn’t connect. The cafe was closed on Sundays so no help there. The game had already started as I hurried back to my RV, leaned the bike up against the RV without attaching the locking cable, ran inside and turned on the computer. After 4 minutes of screwing with setting up the computer, I finally have the game coming through the speakers and settled down to listen to the game. Four feet away, within those three hours I listened to the game, someone walked up, grabbed my bike and rode away. As soon as I noticed it, I called the police, and a few days later had fliers up all over town. The cop was helpful but didn’t hold out much hope of ever seeing it again. And he was right, 4 weeks later, not a word about it from anyone. I really miss that bike, so comfortable to ride, so smooth, so easy to change gears. Oh, well. It’s original MSRP was $500. Even though I only paid $125, it felt like I’d lost $500.

On a return trip from the border, I took this shot of Columbus. Still had nice warm weather.

The weather had been very nice for a month with warm days and cool nights, but then that big winter storm rolled in. It really hammered the country, ruining crops in Florida and dumping feet of snow all over the Midwest and eastern states. Even we, in the Southwestern desert, felt it as the nights and then the days grew colder. Eventually culminating in this event:

This happened during the night and early morning. Stayed cold all day.

There were still some people staying here at Columbus Best RV Park.

And a shot up the alley towards the west.

So I spent the rest of 2009 in Columbus Best RV Park in Columbus, NM. Walking to downtown whenever I wanted to eat at the Patio Cafe or check out movies at the library. Every 21 days or so, I’d drive up to Deming to do some serious shopping for food but most of the time I just stayed home and worked on my computer projects while planning the journey into Mexico. Oh, and watching the nightly news from El Paso as they recorded each days massacre of another five to seven people in Juarez. Enough to make a grown man cry to be sure, but I had a mission of sorts, of the most selfish kind. I don’t have to go to Guadalajara, but I’d been planning the trip for a year in order to visit several small villages near there with world renown artisans plying their trade. Copper and gold smiths, painters, sculptors, and weavers. I wanted to see them and their work in the villages where they worked.

Oh, and enjoy the weather too. So, I waited out the cold weather in Columbus for a couple more weeks, got the last of my dental work done, and headed south on January 14th, 2010. Before I left Columbus, I got a couple more shots of the main street where I’d spent so many hours over the past couple months.

Main street, looking West.

Last look at the hotel where Villa's men killed two of the 18 they eventually killed during the attack. Main street looking East.

Well, that’s all there is from Columbus or from New Mexico, the next posting will be from inside Mexico as I head due south (nearly) for a thousand miles.