MADRID (pronounced MAD-rid)! sunday, 6/18/06

first lesson in new mexico bar etiquette: never assume someone will wait on you just because you walk in or you look great. pam's good looks weren't enough to get anyone in the MINE SHAFT TAVERN to bring us a well-deserved beer and iced tea. we sat there like little stumps, looking around hopefully at NOSERING, the bartender and a couple of kids in black shirts who were lifting things off of tables, enough so that we assumed they worked there.

a description of the bar. it hangs on the side of the road, its back parked against a hill. it has a long front porch that you can hang out on to drink and talk and gaze at the touristas as they come in from the parking lot looking for adventure. at the end of the parking lot are a series of shops run by old hippies. we went into a few little stores on the return trip and talked to the owners, who seem to spend a lot of time sitting outside in chairs talking to each other and entertaining their dogs. dogs: everyone in madrid apparently has large ones that either wander slowly up and down the streets or sleep on the floors of their owner's shops! everyone(including the dogs) was nice, laid back, and seemingly content. madrid is apparently, as i said, the place where hippies go to die. according to one of the shop owners, that is really true. up on a hill somewhere out of town, many a hippie has taken his final big toke and is now residing in a graveyard that is described as being quite colorful. only the locals know about it, and according to the gal we talked to, you have no problems telling which section belongs to the local mexicans/indians/oldtimers vs. where the liberators from the '60's are buried. apparently a tie-dye motif is popular in that area.

what caused the deer-caught-in-the-headlights-look posted on both our faces? hmmm, let's see...could it have been the skinny, 60ish woman with the shaved head and skin tight red biker shorts? i couldn't decide if she was a chemo patient out for an afternoon ride or just a healthy buddhist nun looking for adventure. this place is also the home of the ponytailed 50ish male. i haven't seen that many longhaired men since lynyrd skynrd came to town. evidently, before they leave this earthly plain, the madrid residents gather in the tavern to celebrate diversity. besides nosering, there was also a little short dude with missing teeth and a hat who was grooving to jeff beck's album "blow by blow." (NOTE: apparently, a requirement to being a real new mexico resident is to forgo the use of teeth...more later.) there were an a few interesting possible lesbians. also note that children in madrid are welcome in bars, and that there is quite a bit of ethnic diversity and blended family action going on there. i kept wondering what would have transpired if pam and i had had our boys with us. perish the thought...

so we sat there awhile...a long while, as a matter of fact. now, when you first go into a restaurant or bar, it is pretty normal to sit and wait for a waiter to appear, right? you just assume that everyone knows you are there for a drink and that when someone gets free, you will be waited on. but after 15 minutes, when the clientele and the bartenders are looking at you, you start to wonder if you have a boob unloosed or a fly down. did one of us have B. O.? where are the menus? fortunately, we were rescued by ken, who had seen us from his perch on the front porch, and apparently felt pity upon us when he came inside and saw us sitting there. gee, do you think it might have been the neon signs blinking over us saying IGNORANT TOURIST? in any case, ken rescued us from dehydration by explaining that if you wanted something, you had to go to the bar and ask. no one, apparently, would be climbing over said bar to find out what we wanted. that done, nosering, the bartender with a HUGE nosering, dreads and a beard, brought me an iced tea and pam the beer she craved. ken parked at the table with us, and proceeded to fill us on on the local scene in madrid, new mexico.

ken said that he lived in the next town over, and by the looks of what he had on, ken was a painter, or at least for that day. apparently, people in madrid just live off of the grid, and money is no big deal. i asked him what people did for a living there since there was obviously nothing industrial for mucho miles. he made some wiseass crack about people moving there and living off of their trust funds, but the general gist was that people in madrid weren't exactly interested in money. judging by the lack of teeth, i would say he was right.

in any case, i thought he was there to pick up pam, but he just turned out to be a nice guy. so was nosering and the jeff beck one-tooth dude. the locals were the norm there and i was kicking myself for not haven worn my tie dye shirt that day...this might have just been the one place i could fit in...:)

after finishing our drinks, we hit the road again for sante fe, and as we passed out of madrid and its narrow main (and only, apparently) street, we noticed all the cool shops and a sign at the end of town over the road saying MADRID CHILE FESTIVAL. HOOHA! we would have to come back for that one, and we did...later.

dropping out of madrid and onward down the road to sante fe was really awesome. it wasn't that there was anything much to look at, because most of it was pretty desolate in a spiritual way. but then again, it did fill me up... it was early evening, the sun was coming down slowly, and the mountains and the land on either side of the highway seemed to be picking up some special light. we had on the KANW new mexican music that pam found on the radio, and both of us were zenned out! there was a real good vibe there, one that we talked about the rest of the week, and one we returned to.

the turquoise trail turned into cerillos road in sante fe and we found our hotel, THE PARK INN, in short order. after dumping off the luggage, we went out and settled on eating at a place called Tortilla Flats. pam checked out the enchilladas, again, and this time i tried posole for the first time. this was very good, and i developed a taste for it over the next week. this posole had beef in it along with green chiles and hominy. pam also got an order of sopapillas, which she didn't finish but carried with her around the rest of new mexico until it came to be eaten somewhere, i think, in colorado. and she said it was very good, even later...so there...

this was one of the few nights that we actually got separate beds. despite the fact that we booked double beds, no one seemed to pay much attention to it. we did switch rooms this night after they gave us ONE queen bed and a dead tv.

thus endeth our first night in new mexico!