Talks and Tours

New Mexico is sometimes flat and sometimes extremely bumpy. Bill and Jill explored Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque and came to some conclusions:

	How horrible for the poor saps in the first wagon-train to discover the Rio Grande gorge near Taos. You appear to be crossing a flat plain, until Nature pulls a nasty gotcha in the form of a spectacular 650-foot crevice. Bill and Jill crossed via the bridge.
	Santa Fe won the best-town contest among the three. How odd to see a city of adobe huts with more art galleries than people. Bill and Jill walked Canyon Road early Friday evening and came upon three separate gallery openings, all with wine, cheese, and artsy people sizing each other up.
	Snow-capped peaks are neat.
	Every five miles one comes upon a glitzy casino with hundreds of gamblers. Slot machines dominate the gambling floors and oldsters dominate the slots. Old ladies wear cotton gloves so the coins don’t stain their hands.
	Coyotes howl in the night down by the Rio Grande.
	There are more chili peppers in the food than there are grains of sand in the desert.
	Taos-Pueblo Indians, though without electricity or running water, make beautiful jewelry in styles ancient and modern.
	Taos-Pueblo Indians use mud ovens that look like colossal beehives to make bread that smells better than it tastes.

What about the speech and book-signing? Sandia National Laboratories is on Kirtland Air Force Base, home of one of the nation’s most advanced weapons laboratories, birthplace of the bunker-buster bombs that were falling in Iraq at the same time Bill sought to enter the base. Security was tight. Fortunately, Bill’s route had been well prepped by Mike Skroch, head of the Sandia Information Operations Red Team and Assessments group. So as Mike and Bill strode up to the auditorium where Bill was to talk, they were not expecting the grim platoon of uniformed security androids with Geiger counters who warned that the place was contaminated, with no one allowed in or out.

Bill at least had a respite—an interview for Sandia’s video magazine, a cable TV program that is broadcast around the base. Dave Sparks interviewed Bill about the College Cyber Defenders Program, an initiative to involve college students in Sandia work. Without a mirror to check his appearance or a makeup person to powder his head, Bill meandered through his first TV experience wishing Jill were there to give him hand signals.

As the time for the speech approached, the security force announced that the auditorium had been deemed safe. The The contamination scare had been triggered by a small amount of powder found on several pay phones in the building, which caused Bill to wonder at the havoc that could be caused on the base if women really did powder their noses in restrooms.

The speech itself went well. Mike Skroch, who recently appeared in a nation-wide PBS Frontline broadcast on Cyberwar, introduced Bill, who will appear in a cable TV program broadcast on a small base in Albuquerque. Oddly enough, the 180-person crowd bought only seven books at a mini-signing after the talk.

Updated: 19-Oct-2005