El Paso

Stella and I are on a lengthy winter road trip. We started by departing Malone for family Thanksgiving in NJ. From there we did the big long drive toward El Paso. We stopped in Roanoke, VA the first night and enjoyed a nice hotel. We then headed west on I-40 and spent the second night in Jackson, TN. We made it all the way to Oklahoma City on the third night and then into El Paso the next day.

I got a monthly membership at Sessions Climbing and Fitness and have been going almost daily. I got back up to about v4 grade problems. We stopped into the local fabrication company FabLab, which we were kind of hoping still had some maker space activity going, but they're essentially just a private company doing client work at the moment. We did meet the staff though and Stella volunteered several times to help them with a big project they are building for the new Children's Museum. I mostly did business development work for FRC as well as some assorted linux and keyboard tinkering.

We did a hike up at Aztec Caves one day which was neat. We went to the art museum and saw the exhibit of Salvador Dali's illustrations of the Divine Comedy and some other nice exhibits. Stella ordered many dishes with mole sauce.

Overall there were some neat things in El Paso, but it's so extremely dominated by huge, fast multilane roads and highways that even local driving is harrowing. We had to turn on "avoid highways" in google maps the entire time, but even with that, big streets like Mesa were very stressful and chaotic. Glad we visited but unlikely to return.