Last week I was in the fair city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a quick business trip; integrating some of our software with some of Sandia National Laboratory’s software and testing to make sure it all worked before we deploy it in DC later this month. Unlike my DC trip a few weeks ago, this one went very well. The software I wrote worked right the first time, the people I was working with were friendly and wanted to solve the problems without worrying about the politics, and there wasn’t the pressure of working on a deployment machine that had to stay up. I didn’t have to stay up 24 hours in a row or do anything crazy. It was great.
But even better than the business part of the trip was the rest of it. I had no idea I would enjoy Albuquerque so much. The Sandia mountains are right there, with tons of interesting hiking, a gondola that takes you directly to the top with a fantastic view, and even skiing on the other side of the mountain. The museums were interesting, too, though I didn’t have nearly enough time to visit them. And the food, well, wow. One evening I was fortunate enough to meet up with Teandra, a friend who was an intern at the lab over the summer but goes to school at UNM in Albuquerque, for dinner. We ate at a place outside of town called El Pinto, which was an old hacienda. Our waitress was great, the food was tasty, the patio was fun, there was a live band playing, and Teandra’s company was much appreciated. I really like that I’m building up a network of people that I like all over the country. The breakfast burrito at Golden Pride totally lived up to the praise it had received. The city itself was easy to navigate and had local restaurants and stores all over. I was very impressed.
Definitely one of my better business trips.