101+ Reasons That I Miss Albuquerque (living in, moving, bill)

[mortimer]

Originally Posted by EnjoyEP

All the way down I-25...through the Springs, Pueblo, down through Trinidad, etc., the highway conditions / blizzard conditions ...
Literally...LITERALLY!...the minute I got on the Pass, the snow started to greatly break up to flurries. And...I kid you not...the second I hit the divider ...the snow not only completely was gone, but the sun started to shine brilliantly overhead!

I had that EXACT experience on that exact road in 1988 or 1989.

Doo-doo-DOO-doo - Doo-doo-DOO-doo ... <== ObTwilightZoneTheme

[EnjoyEP]

Originally Posted by marlowe

now my wife and I are moving to ABQ next June.

Awesome marlowe - congrats!! I will hopefully - HOPEFULLY!! - be joining you by next summer in ABQ as well! If I can't make it, I will expect to live vicariously through experiences like yours (like manna on the tongue of the starving)...

Originally Posted by marlowe

I appreciate everything on your list, but I will warn you - as someone who moved away from Milwaukee - that there are things about that town you will miss as well. Luckily Usinger's brats do ship well!

Yep, I hear you here. Actually, I have come to the realization that unless extreme wealth hits, my ideal situation (of owning homes in a few different regions and being able to regularly shuttle up to visit MKE) simply cannot exist. So, I will eternally and always miss aspects of living in MKE if/when I again do not.

However, after evaluating this realistically, and just realizing that no where on earth can you have everything unfortunately, I realize that I miss living in ABQ so extremely more than I missed living in MKE - it isn't even comparable. So while I did (and will) miss aspects certainly of living here (first and foremost for family and long-time friends, but also for things like frozen custard, Lake Michigan, Downtown Milwaukee popcorn wagons, Brewers' baseball, etc.), I just can't live away from ABQ much longer!! Just too, too hard. For me, that area truly did become the "Land of Entrapment"...

[lobo]

Great list, EP! I was born in Milw. and moved to Alb. when I was 10 years old, but do remember the awful winters and the dirty black snow everywhere. We wouldn't see the grass for months!

When my mom goes back to Milw. to visit (she's actually there right now), she says our relatives always say, "Oh, don't ya miss all of the green in Wisconsin?" She's says, "Nah.. When I'm here, I miss the brown rocks in NM!"

I hope you make it back here soon. I'm sure you'll eventually find your way "home" because that is where your heart truly is.

[EnjoyEP]

Originally Posted by casden

Take it from someone from Albuquerque who now lives in the Midwest (Chicago) - the winters in ABQ are mild.

And short. People forget about that.

Sure, ABQ will get a handful of semi-"cold"ish days in the winter, however, they are well over by late February.

Here in Milwaukee (just north of Chicago), I literally used by furnace at night for a couple of days in early June! The last two nights - here, mid July - I have been out walking around 8pm and the temperature already was below 60! Cold or cool or chilly weather lingers in so many regions of the US for so much of the year...in ABQ, you get enough to remind you what a winter kind of semi feels like for a few days, but by the time you even realize it, it is over with.

[EnjoyEP]

Originally Posted by mortimer

I was really amazed to see that in the first 11 responses to your post, no one was rude/idiot enough to QUOTE the entire friggin' thing.

Uh oh, mortimer, now you did it - you jinxed it!!

Originally Posted by mortimer

#42 - going into a restaurant and having the waiter/waitress/order taker (ObFrontier) ask you:
........ "red or green?"

EEP: I'm assuming that I can insert that #42 there and you can just keep adding #43, etc.

Yep, there we have #42. It is in my new round. I can't tell you how ultra-geekily excited I got when I was explaining back in the day to my wife (via ultra-anal long distance research) just the whole "red or green" ABQ phenomena, and how dorkily excited I was to proudly proclaim "Christmas"!!



Fortunately, Desert Gardens Chile & Spice Company (amazingly to me) actually supplies a local large grocery store up here in the Milwaukee area, so I am able to buy stuff like green chile stew regluarly and feed still my authentic NM chile-infused fix occasionally. Still, it isn't the same as being down there as they slather the green all over a burrito plate.

[nmweatherman]

I hate to be contrary in regards to las vegas drunk, but after 35 years in the "Valley of the Sun," all I recall now about winters there is that it never really cools down, the cockroaches procreate there all year 'round, and they have massive temperature inversions that produces brown/gray clouds of smog that puts LA to shame. But then Phoenix is on the road to becoming just another sprawling, over-developed Little Los Angeles. In the process Phoenix has lost all is charm and character. Albuquerque is everything Phoenix used to be in the early 60's. I live in dread that as people all over the world discover Albuquerque, and they are, the same will happen here! And God forbid, Albuquerque will lose its ambience, rich mix of culture heritages and its arts, and gradually its architecture and 300 year history will be eaten up by freeways, glass monolithic office buildings and it will become just another sprawling, impersonal "heat island" like Phoenix & suburbs. I pray Albuquerque never loses its soul like Phoenix did...I would have to move again...maybe Las Cruces? Silver City?

BTW...the person who began the thread mentioned Blakes Lotaburger...BINGO! Oh man, I love their double Lotaburger with cheese, green chili, and an order of onion rings, and you cannot get a Blake's Lotaburger outside New Mexico.

[EnjoyEP]

Originally Posted by mortimer

I had that EXACT experience on that exact road in 1988 or 1989.

Doo-doo-DOO-doo - Doo-doo-DOO-doo ... <== ObTwilightZoneTheme

Now that IS odd!! Throw our experiences with nmweatherman, and this thread just took a spookily ironic twist!!



I always loved driving I-25 between the Raton Pass and Santa Fe. So vast, so open, so barren except for some scattered plateaus, hills, etc., in the distance. Just you and a wide open road. Ahhhhh..... ahhhh.....(GOOD CALL ENJOYEP ON THAT MOVE BACK IN 07, GOOD CALL YOU BIG *#($ BOZO!!)...

[AlisonL]

Originally Posted by las vegas drunk

I am from Phoenix and a friend I grew up with moved to Albuquerque to go to Sipi college. He ended up graduating and getting a job at Intel. He told me how great it was up there, so I moved in with him in January of 2005. I only stayed there for a month and about died, I ended up coming back. I did not hate the city, but I cannot fathom how anyone would say the winter is nice. The winter in Phoenix is nice, the winter in Albuquerque is brutal. I remember days only getting up to the high 30's, and lows in the teens. If I had come in the summer, I am sure I would have liked it better, but I didn't.

Brutal??? LMAO

Try Maine if you want a brutal winter. Our last winter in Maine, we had over eight FEET of snow. Yep, ABQ has real brutal winter.

[EnjoyEP]

Thanks so much for the kind words, Lobo!!

I actually live next to a house that has had a car parked in the driveway the past few days with the yellow zia license plate on it (which struck me so because you almost never see the NM plates up here!). Maybe it is your mom visiting!

Originally Posted by lobo

When my mom goes back to Milw. to visit (she's actually there right now), she says our relatives always say, "Oh, don't ya miss all of the green in Wisconsin?" She's says, "Nah.. When I'm here, I miss the brown rocks in NM!"

The green of Wisconsin doesn't do it as much for me as it does for others, however, I have learned to appreciate its beauty and it is beautiful in its own special way.

However, I always found the desert - and especially Albuquerque - to be so, so very much more colorful than people give it credit for, starting with the unbelievably vast, bright, blue skies and glowing orange sunshine on a nearly daily basis.

Furthermore, I always remind people here that while it is gorgeous when it is green, it is actually "brown" here much longer than its "green". Once the foliage all goes dormant and the trees all go bare in early-to-mid October, things up here don't "green up" again until early to mid May. Between then, it is nothing but very, very barren and brown.

I don't point that out to "slam" this area at all...just to illustrate to people that yes, it is green for a chunk of the year, but not nearly the whole year or even close to it.

[EnjoyEP]

Originally Posted by nmweatherman

I live in dread that as people all over the world discover Albuquerque, and they are, the same will happen here! And God forbid, Albuquerque will lose its ambience, rich mix of culture heritages and its arts, and gradually its architecture and 300 year history will be eaten up?

Amen.

After my wife and I get into ABQ, I promise to shut the door behind us (and lock it). Just no one close 'er up until I get there!

Originally Posted by nmweatherman

BTW...the person who began the thread mentioned Blakes Lotaburger...BINGO! Oh man, I love their double Lotaburger with cheese, green chili, and an order of onion rings, and you cannot get a Blake's Lotaburger outside New Mexico.

Blake's is incredibly good. The only fast food burger that could give it a run is ABQ's own Griff's!