Notes from the Crash Site
Created | Updated Jun 4, 2008
(This is the first in a series of at least one article from Southeastern New Mexico, USA)
Alien Pilot – We’ve just lost one of our drives
Alien Passenger – How far will the other one take us?
Alien Pilot – All the way to the crash site.
New Mexico is one huge crash site, if you think about it. Being most famous of these, of course, it is associated with Roswell. However, New Mexico also boasts the White Sands Missile Range which covers 3,200 square miles - an area equal to one-half of the county of Yorkshire. It makes a very large target (the missile range, not Yorkshire). Indeed, White Sands is a very fashionable address for things that make a lot of flash and noise, and so is a little like Hollywood in that respect. (Also, it can be unsafe to drive through because of ordnance, and so could be compared to the Los Angeles freeways, too).
Then of course, there's the people who came here to crash. New Mexico was a popular destination for hippies in the 1960s as there were numerous communes – including one, come to think of it, that appeared on film in Easy Rider – so there's the Hollywood thing again.
This month is the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. It's a huge gathering of hot-air balloons, which is a good thing as we have plenty of hot air, ideal for the purpose, just floating about.
There is a different kind of hot air invading the mountains just to the west of the alien crash site. It's the Cowboy Symposium, which brings truckloads of cowboys to town just like coals to Newcastle. Symposium is a ten-dollar word for what, according to the dictionary, is a meeting or conference for the public discussion of some topic. Not surprisingly, manure is the main topic here. Oh, they call it 'Cowboy Poetry', but your skill is measured by how many things you can come up with using manure as a metaphor. It can be quite funny, but I think I would call it Cowboy Compost instead.
There is, by the way, an actual spaceport in New Mexico - the first of its kind. Its first successful launch was on April 27 this year. Its first unsuccessful launch occurred on September 25 last year and resulted in a crash. Well, what better place?
General Travel and Place
Articles Archive
