June 25, 2009

Weekend with the Girls

Everyone needs a few really good friends and I am lucky enough to have some I have known since junior high and before. I started college with a few of them but then we all went our separate ways. Now we have an annual weekend together once a year, and this year we went to Santa Fe. As usual, it was too short but we managed to visit some cathedrals, Los Alamos, shopping on the plaza, and a few restaurants.

While it's nice to be able to get away and see new things, the best part is talking and just being with each other. Even after a year apart, it's like we left off conversations the day before. We have talked about this before, but as long as we have all known each other, and some of us go back to first grade, we have never had mean words among our group. When we are together, if someone really wants to see something, the others go along with it and find something about it to enjoy. For instance, we hadn't planned on going to Los Alamos, but Saturday was cool and rainy and none of us brought a long sleeve shirt, much less a jacket, so we looked for an inside activity. One lady wanted to see Los Alamos and I think she was most interested in the science there, while I was fascinated by the history, and another with the biographies of the people.

Here are four of us at one of the restaurants. Nice group, eh?


There's nothing like people watching in Santa Fe. We enjoyed trying to pick the native Santa Fe-ans from the visitors. Most tourists are easy to spot by the camera hanging around their neck, but a slow pace alone wasn't a clue because everyone in Santa Fe walks at a leisurely pace.

Our hotel had a shuttle service which we took to the plaza. On our way to the plaza, we gabbed in the back seats and one of the ladies mentioned that she had seen a cover story asking who was the sexiest man in a speedo, but since there were children in the airport, she didn't read the story to find out who it was. Of course then the subject turned to speedos and who should and shouldn't be wearing them. Meanwhile, the driver's shoulders were shaking until he finally just started laughing out loud.

When we had seen as much of the plaza as we could manage for one day, we called the shuttle service and the same guy said he would be there in about fifteen minutes, so we sat on a stone wall to wait. While we were waiting, a couple of open-air booths across the street began packing up. One of them had a truck he was putting everything in, but one man was nearby a bicycle with a trailer attached, and on the trailer were a couple of plastic tubs. Sure enough, he began packing his jewelry and t-shirts into those tubs.



The shuttle driver was late but we really wanted to see what the guy did with his two tables and hanging rack. We couldn't imagine how he would get them on the bicycle. After he had everything loaded, he wandered off to talk to the vendor behind him. We kept glancing up the street for our shuttle and getting anxious for the jewelry vendor to put up his tables. Finally he came back and began folding the tables and carried them out of sight to a storage building. Aha, question answered. Nice life if you can do it; most of the vendors didn't set up until after 10am and closed up by 5pm.

That was the last photo before my battery died, and then the couple walked by. She was dressed in an ankle length flowered dress with a big straw bag and a turban on her head. He had longish hair and was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a plaid shirt, unbuttoned and hanging over the shorts. Around his waist and hanging a few inches below his waist inside the plaid shirt was a small, sequined fanny pack which was brightly colored. Definitely Santa Fe-ans.

We had been waiting at least thirty minutes and finally we called the shuttle driver and he said he was right around the corner and would be right there, so we stood up and walked to the curb. Nothing. Right around the corner in Santa Fe must mean roughly the same thing as "in a minute, mom" at my house. So we sat back down and waited. When he finally rounded the corner, we all jumped to the curb with our hitch-hiker thumb out.

Until next time, may you have blessings and good friends,
Marti

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