Tag: Albuquerque

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Relive the Levi Chavez Murder Case On NBC's Dateline

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IF you want to relive the Levi Chavez murder trial or, like me ignored it when it was going on you can watch NBC’s Dateline program ‘The Officer’s Wife‘.

A police officer’s wife is found shot to death in bed. Authorities wonder if the 26-year-old took her own life or if someone else is to blame. Josh Mankiewicz reports.

What did I learn from this show? Tera Chavez’s family didn’t believe Tera could commit suicide. Levi’s family didn’t believe Levi could commit murder. You can’t believe people emotionally tied to the situation.

Also Levi Chavez is a dirtbag. I’m not convinced either way that he murdered his wife.

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Another Trip To The Ojito Wilderness

I made my third (what is becoming an annual) trip to the Ojito Wilderness in April of 2013. What I like about the Ojito is how close it is to Albuquerque and how short the actual hikes are to some amazing landscapes.

Campsite by gregjsmith, on Flickr
Campsite by gregjsmith, on Flickr

This time we took a hike up to the Bernalitto Mesa immedialty west of the hoodos. It was about a 500 foot climb to the top.

Large chucks of the mesa have broken off by gregjsmith, on Flickr
Large chucks of the mesa have broken off by gregjsmith, on Flickr
View of the campsite from the mesa by gregjsmith, on Flickr
View of the campsite from the mesa by gregjsmith, on Flickr
Cabezon as seen from the mesa by gregjsmith, on Flickr
Cabezon as seen from the mesa by gregjsmith, on Flickr
Looking east from the top of the mesa by gregjsmith, on Flickr
Looking east from the top of the mesa by gregjsmith, on Flickr
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Is Andy Kaufman Alive And Living In Albuquerque?

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/GSMPel97H38

KRQE reports that Andy Kaufman’s Son, Stephen Maddox, found Andy Kaufman in Albuquerque two years ago. There’s some fuzzy video evidence that makes it hard to tell if it’s Kaufman or Elvis.

As the story goes, fans say Kaufman has a biological son, known as Stephen Maddox , who spent years trying to track down his father. Maddox dedicated a website to it and eventually tracked him down in Albuquerque two years ago.

“He was having surgery, supposedly, and he finally guilted him into seeing him once – that’s how the story goes,” he said.

They say he created this cryptic video and posted it online after Kaufman apparently didn’t want anything to do with him.

It shows a man walking through a parking lot full of cars with New Mexico license plates and walking by an Albuquerque-looking apartment complex.

But it’s one particular clip that causes the most speculation, fans say Maddox says it show Kaufman at work in Albuquerque 2011.

“I don’t know if it’s him or not. But that one black and white one where it shows his face, it looks like it could possibly be him,” Bristow said.

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Bathing Bad Bath Salts: Cooked In Albuquerque

Inspired by Breaking Bad:

Indications
Do you find yourself worrying about taking care of yourself or your family? Do you spend time during your tv show wandering around in just your underwear? Even had a plane crash over your house? Are you looking for better ways than a carwash to launder your money? Then Bathing Bad is for you. We relax away the bad with every, long, hot, luxurious bath.

Ingredients
A proprietary blend of fine, course and jumbo ancient salts, organic blend of essential oils that relaxes away the Bad.

Directions
First, stop worrying about everything. Run yourself a nice hot bath. Sprinkle our blue “meth” salts into your water and smell the relaxation. Add yourself to the warm bath and soak as long as needed to relax away the Bad.

You can get:

81Er8Yi7NwL._SL1500_Bathing Bad Bath Salts for $15.

 

 

 

 
41aMHvCx4CLBathing Bad Bath Salts & Body Scrub for $32

 

 

 

 

 
61aX66ZDmFL._SL1240_Bathing Bad Bath Gift Bucket with a Los Pollos Hermanos Gift bucket for $67.

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45 Foot Fall From Santa Fe Ski Lift

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0zioMFv2_pk

From the Santa Fe NewMexican Teen who fell from lift to gain national TV audience after video goes viral

An Albuquerque teenager who was virtually unscathed after falling about 45 feet from a chairlift at Ski Santa Fe earlier this month said he was terrified he would die if he fell, but he couldn’t hang on any longer.

Sheppard said the teen was transported via helicopter to University Hospital in Albuquerque as a precaution because patrollers didn’t know the extent of his internal injuries.

The youth suffered a lacerated liver and tears in both lungs, as well as a hairline skull fracture and a gash on his forehead that required 16 stitches. He spent three days in the intensive care unit, but was released without the need for any surgery and without a single broken bone.

The teen said he’s mostly healed now, but he is still waiting for doctors to clear him to play baseball because of concerns his liver might start to bleed again.

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The Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire

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Image from Gila Forest on Flickr.

The Gila Fire is now the Whitewater Baldy Complex fire, named after the Whitewater and Baldy fires merged. It’s currently 15% contained and has burned 217,988 acres. It’s the largest fire in the US and the largest in New Mexico state history.

It was almost a year ago that I was posting about the Wallow fire in Arizona, which burned more than twice what the Whitewater Baldy Complex fire has burned. The Wallow fire produced a lot of smoked that end up in Albuquerque. So far Albuquerque has been spared most of the smoke from the Whitewater Baldy Complex fire.

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A Summer Time Trip Up The Sandia Peak Tram

Albuquerque, like many cites, has a number of attractions that locals consider tourist traps and therefore never go to. I don’t consider the Sandia Peak Tram to be a tourist trap and yet I’ve only rode the tram one other time in my 15 years living here.

The Tram was built in the 1960’s by the Swiss company Bell Engineering. At 14,657 feet long, it is known as the longest tram in the world. During the winter the Tram can be used to for skiing the Sandia Peak Ski area. It’s a convenience when Sandia Peak has good snow, it often does not. The 2009-2010 Ski season had some of the best snow in a decade and I threatened many times to take to Tram for skiing but never did.

During this trip I dined at High Finance Restaurant at the top of the peak. High Finance is not the cheapest restaurant in town, but certainly not the most expensive I’ve ever dined at. Understanding that getting supplies to the top of the mountain is probably more expensive than getting them in town, I have to wonder if the name of the restaurant has anything to do with the cost of the meals. In any case the food was excellent.

The most impressive part of this trip was the storms that appeared to the west of the city (and later that night made it into town). With the sunset behind the storms there was a spectacular show of orange rain that looked like fire falling from the sky. the storms highlighted the multiple mountain ranges, Mount Taylor, Cabezon, etc, where you could see them in layers. I had a tough time coaxing my Sony DSC-HX5V to focusing that far out and yet managed to get quite a few good pictures. Had I known I would be treated to such a show I would have brought my SLR.

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Pecos Hiking Trip

Last weekend I went on an overnight hike with two friends to the Pecos. Pecos is located east of Santa Fe, about 2 hours away from Albuquerque. Actually, the hike itself was to the Hamilton Mesa which is north of Pecos.

The original plan was to hike 7 miles in but when we were 2.5 miles in and found some good campsite, why keep hiking? During the day the weather was perfect and in the middle of the night it was piss-ass cold. A good sleeping bag helps with that.

This was an opportunity for me to get geotagging down with my SG-289 data logger and and to take some HDR photographs. The geotagging didn’t work out because the stupid SG-289 didn’t record more than a few dozen points. I swear I read 609 points on it at one time.

HDR photography was much more successfully. I took nearly every picture with auto bracketing on and about a quarter of the landscape photos made good HDR. The two problems with the pictures were moving objects such as wind blowing trees around and most of the photos were taken free hand without a tripod. Photomatix Pro did a pretty good job of aligning images but it can’t do much about the moving objects, at least in this case.

You can view all the pictures in my Flickr set: Sept 2008 Pecos Hike. Note that pictures of people have privacy set so you have to be a friend or family to view them.

Here’s an example of a non HDR and a HDR photo.

IMG_0716IMG_0716_7_8_HDR

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X Prize Cup Countdown Event

It was a cold and rainy day in Albuquerque on Sunday. Las Cruces wasn’t much better. Having drove from Arizona the day before, i wasn’t in a mood for another drive. I eventually got my act together and made it to the event by 3 PM. It cost $6 to get in and about $80 in gas to drive there.

Don’t be fooled by the name of the Las Cruces International Airport. It’s a dinky little airport and they were able to completely close it down for this event. They had us park several miles down the highway at the fairgrounds and bussed us to the airport. The area was set up like a fair, with some dubious businesses in the tents. This makes me think this is for real and private space flight will happen for sure.

I missed Armadillo Areospace’s launch of their craft. Despite the 20 mph winds, they were able to launch and control the craft. However on landing it 2 of it’s 3 feet landed off the landing pad and it tipped over. It didn’t explode but was damaged. Carmack and crew were out in the crowd showing off bits and pieces of their rocket. It’s an impressive machine for sure, they are clearly thinking out of the box with their design.

I did get to see XCOR Aerospace fly their rocketplane, which I have on video. It’s a impressive little craft and was flown as if there was no wind. There was lots of wind, the fact that it was blowing parallel with the runway helped.

Starchaser showed off it’s rocked engine. I think it blew up after it was ignited since there was a big boom, but there was no announcement either way.

When I was leaving the event about 5, they only had 2X and 3X t-shirts. Have I mentioned the wind yet, the winds had picked up quite a bit by this time. There’s nothing like 50 mph blowing sand getting in every orifice of your body. I had a handful of sand in my pockets!

I have pictures of the event on Flickr, and will post a video at some point.