Park and Ride to Albuquerque

I was dreading all week having to get up at 4:30am to catch the 6:35am Park and Ride bus to Albuquerque to meet spouse. I also doubted how I was going to catch the correct ABQ RIDE buses over to REI. ABQ RIDE, though, has a neat system where you email them where you're starting from and where you want to wind up and they email the exact buses to take. I printed out the schedules and carried them with me. Knowing the exact times of the bus routes was extremely helpful.

It was drizzling and the mountains were shrouded in clouds when I got to the bus stop at 20th and Central. A handful of people got off the bus and only I got on. We picked up a couple more people over at the lab and headed to Santa Fe. The driver made a quick stop at the Totavi gas station for coffee. After 3 stops in Santa Fe, the bus ended up having almost 20 passengers going to Albuquerque. I read magazines the whole time and used the bathroom once. It was a very enjoyable way to get to Albuquerque, especially since the bus wasn't completely full.

When we arrived at the Alvarado Transportation Center in downtown Albuquerque, I was at first flummoxed at not knowing where to stand to wait for bus #10, the 4th Street route, but I eventually figured out, by consulting the posted route map and my printed out schedules, that each bus route pulls up to a stop posted with a letter of the alphabet.

Bus route #10 took off from the Alvarado around 9:30am (the Park and Ride arrived around 9:10am, which gave me time to use the bathroom in the Alvarado). I was worried about making the 10:02am connection for the #157 route, Montaño Road, but the driver dropped me off near 4th and Montaño about 9:50am. The deal was that if I missed the 10:02am bus, another wouldn't be along for 47 minutes and standing in the rain holding an umbrella and a big shopping bag just didn't seem to be the ticket! It's only 1.9 miles to REI per Mapquest from the corner of 4th St. and Montaño but the rain and the big golf umbrella complicated things.

REI wasn't too productive a stop as I couldn't find some things (out of stock) and the shoes that I was trying to exchange for were road running shoes instead of the trail running shoes that I wanted. Turns out that Asics makes the GT 2130 in both trail and road running versions. I didn't make it clear when paid for the shoes over the phone that I wanted the trail running version. I tried on a stack of shoes but none of them were quite right. I'm ordering some Brooks in a larger size than the ones they had in the store and we'll see how that works. REI must think I have some kind of strange shoe fetish where I like to order shoes and immediately return them! I ended up buying six pairs of the black polyester gloves I wear for $8.83 each - they're usually $12. Spouse bought yet another shirt. He says a lot of his are tight. Well, I'm not surprised! : )

After REI, we went to Whole Foods. I bought some broccoli, cantaloupes, baby carrots, tomatoes on the vine, bananas and avocados. I love to buy and eat lots of colorful produce! Lunch was yellowtail avocado sushi which I ate on the car ride home.

We both were surprised that the Jemez had gotten snow Wednesday night. The mountains looked very pretty. I did my 4 miles on the La Mesa Trail and walking to the library. I saw a beautiful pink sunset. My left leg got stiff and the sciatica or whatever it is acted up.