The Drive

In many other places, such a stretch of roadway doesn't exist. Tell your friends from the East Coast that there's an hour's worth of nothing between our state's capital and the closest metropolis and watch their eyes widen. I've never heard of another major chunk of interstate as steep as La Bajada (literally, "The Descent"), where you can legally take it at 75 miles an hour and feel your ears pop.

From time to time, everyone has a reason to take the trip; like Santa Fe's attic, Albuquerque is where we keep all the things we don't want laying around the house but couldn't really live without. Whether it's to catch a show, take care of business, visit an old friend from high school or hit the airport and light out for the territories, you'll find yourself driving that same curvy length of asphalt.

And the more you do it, the more it turns into a sort of meditation. Since I started driving it myself ten years ago, it certainly happened to me. I always have a bit of a panic attack when I first get on the on-ramp, my mind suddenly thinking of all the thousands of gallons of gas being burned in all the engines of all the oversized pickup trucks around me and traversing this route at all hours of the day and night. That melts away as I get spit out onto the interstate itself, now just a lymphocyte in a blood vessel, milling around between the others, all of us heading to the same place at our own pace. That moment as I pass the inevitable stalled-out, abandoned car on the side of the road, a tombstone of someone else's ruined day. The ups and downs, trying to gain momentum heading into the valleys so as not to drop below the speed limit on the way back up (all while hoping there isn't a state trooper hanging out waiting for someone to do exactly that). The wind shaking my car as I pass San Felipe Casino. The steadily increasing industrial infrastructure as I skirt Bernalillo. Then come the billboards, the median walls, the lowered speed limit, the urban sprawl, the ironically termed "safety corridor" (where I've seen the worst car accidents of my life). Some kid in a small loud car with UNM plates zips across four lanes of traffic doing 90 and vanishes into the increasing darkness.

And then it's several hours later, and the show's done or dinner's over, and it all happens again, but backward. It's usually dark, and the asshole behind me tailgates me in his raised truck with his brights on for at least a third of the way home. I make the mandatory stop at the Santo Domingo gas station for the 10-cents-a-gallon savings.

To me, it's the perfect drive. It's a little less than an hour. Ideal for a long conversation or a good album. Or both. The last hour I ever got to spend with my dad was on that stretch of freeway. We were driving to the airport, listening to Tom Waits' Rain Dogs, as I headed back to what was then my home in Bellingham. I couldn't tell you what we talked about, I only remember really enjoying the drive. And I still always listen to that album on the way to the airport.

Miljen spends his days thinking deep thoughts about shallow things and drinking good beers with interesting people. Become one of them by emailing miljen@sfreporter.com

Santa Fe Reporter