A few people have been asking me for an update on my adventures with the New Mexico snowstorm, so here's a more detailed account of my vacation:

December 22: I left St. Louis, heading southwest via I-44 in the general direction of Arizona. I made it through Missouri, then the Oklahoma turnpikes, via Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then across the state line into Texas, and then took a nap at the rest stop that's about an hour east of Amarillo. It's a *great* rest area by the way. Lots of effort went into decorating it, from the soaring architecture of the main building, plus huge picture windows, and even the bathrooms are decorated with elaborate mosaics of the desert skyline.

December 23: I arrived in Albuquerque, staying with my friend Cindy. In the evening I visited her son Ian, who's got a house with some of his friends. Nice "gaming" house, with a pool table and a dartboard and lots of people coming and going, and I partied there until about 5 a.m., then heading back to Cindy's.

December 24: I set off for Page, Arizona, arriving at my sister's house that evening. I felt a bit like Santa Claus, arriving with a car full of presents.

December 25: Normal Christmas stuff. Gifts and wrapping paper strewn everywhere, kids and toys and loads of food. My nephew got a PS2, and I'd brought a lot of games and accessories for it.

December 26: Mostly hung out with my niece and nephew, playing PS2 games. We especially enjoyed "Okami." Though it was a single-player game, the art is beautiful and we all enjoyed watching it, plus the dialogue is fun. My young niece would generally be the primary player, and as we encountered various NPCs, I'd read the dialogue aloud, playing the different voices. Then if a difficult combat situation came up, my niece would hand off the controller to her older brother, who would get through the battle for her and then hand the controller back. Eventually we were all playing different characters, reading aloud in different voices, helping my niece with some of the harder words. It was really a lot of fun. Since I'd brought a Multi-tap and some extra controllers and memory cards, we also played 4-player Gauntlet, which was chaotic but fun.

December 27: Played Okami in the morning (when I left we were working our way through Taka Pass and Kusa Village), then in the afternoon drove down to Flagstaff, and spent the evening with my parents.

December 28: Drove to Albuquerque, had dinner with my father and Anatoly K., the two people who helped with the final part of the solution on the Cyrillic Projector Cipher. It was at "Macaroni Grill", and since we were there fairly late and most of the other customers had left, they let us take over one of the tables for a game of "Settlers of Catan." :)

December 29: My birthday. It was starting to snow at that point, but still pretty light. I spent the morning with a friend from St. Louis 2600, Electrojoker. We had breakfast at the "Frontier" restaurant, then walked around Old Town, and visited the science museum and nuclear museum. In the afternoon I visited Cindy's place of work, Betty's Spa, where I had a massage and soaked in the hot tub a bit. They have an outdoor hot tub, so it was kind of surreal sitting there in the warm water in the middle of the snowy patio, and feeling snow falling on my face. In the evening, we'd had plans to go to dinner, but the city started shutting down around 6 p.m. because of the weather reports. At the time, I thought it was "just a little snow", and the shopkeepers seemed to me to be over-reacting. I had no big trouble driving in it (after all, I'd lived in Denver for a year), but I saw several cars getting stuck by the side of the road, with hazard lights flashing. The snow did get heavier and heavier though, and by the time I got to my friend's house, my car was having trouble too. We ended up having to kind of push and "pivot" the car into a parking space by the curb.

December 30: Woke up to a winter wonderland. I was in the foothills of Albuquerque, which looked to have received about 3' of snow (consider that this is a city which gets an average *annual* snowfall of about a foot). My car was buried up to the headlights, and even if I could have gotten the car out it wouldn't have done any good since the interstates were closed. We spent much of the day shoveling snow off the driveway, and knocking snow off the tree branches to keep them from breaking. Also played a fair amount of "Settlers of Catan," since I'd given a set to my father for Xmas.

December 31: More Settlers. Someone also loaned me a 4-wheel-drive so I could get back to Cindy's place, which is where I spent New Year's Eve, with her and her family. I was actually lucky to have a place to stay. Many other motorists were stranded, and all the hotel rooms were full. The police were checking on people in their cars, handing out food and blankets. The governor had listed the area as a disaster zone.

January 1: With the 4-wheel-drive, I drove up to Bernalillo to the Tamaya Resort, where my dad was spending the holiday. Spent much of the day playing more Settlers. I-40 was listed as "open but dangerous."

January 2: Drove back to Albuquerque, and made a concerted effort to get my car unstuck. Took a couple people and some shoveling, but we got the car free, and then I skidded through the icy sidestreets to get back to the section of town that had actually been plowed. I-40 was in "fair" condition at this point, so I decided to see if I could make it out of New Mexico. The drive was relatively good. A few icy patches though, and the riskiest part was heading off the highway to buy gas, since coming back *on* to the highway, the acceleration lanes usually hadn't been plowed yet, so merging onto the highway was a bit of an adventure. Once on the road though, it was pretty clear. It was another surreal moment though, driving through what I knew *usually* looked like flat New Mexico desert, but on this drive was coated with white, with just the tips of some brush and yellow grasses poking through.

January 3: Once I got into Western Oklahoma, I was in a whole different climate zone. The temperature was in the 50s, and there was no visible snow anywhere. I took a nap in a truck stop somewhere, and then pushed on to St. Louis, arriving in the evening. after a little over 3,000 miles of roadtrip.

Overall, I enjoy long drives. For the first hour or so of the trip, I'm usually feeling impatient, and my brain is usually running at high-speed because of work stuff and internet projects and other recent distractions, and I find the travel going "slow." I'll morosely stare at the odometer and think, "Damn, I've only gone 10 miles? This is taking forever. Am I there yet?" But then after about an hour, something in the process of travelling flips a switch in my mind, and things become much more Zen. The miles and hours flow by, and I suddenly realize I've gone 200 miles, and then 400 miles, and then a thousand miles, and then I might see a sign that says, "Flagstaff: 75 miles", and I'll think, "Damn, only 75 miles? That's close. I could go for hours yet." I really like the almost meditative state. Plus I went through a couple Books on Tape on this trip. On the way out I listened to, "The Devil Wears Prada" (recommended, especially the way the narrator does all the foreign accents), and on the way back I listened to the unabridged, "Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception."

So, I'm back home safe, after a definitely memorable New Year's! Thanks to everyone that offered me food and shelter while I was in town, and to those outside of the area who sent me well-wishes via IMs and email.

Here's wishing a Happy 2007 to everyone,

Elonka :)