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Next Stop – Colorado

During the past year, Destiny has served as my office, bedroom, lounge and as an impromptu after hours club. Often when the bars close down a few interesting stragglers join me for a nightcap at the motor lounge. Even grown adults like a cute little playhouse on wheels, especially when it has a full bar, a vaporizer and a great sound system

In Taos, New Mexico at a back alley adobe bar, I met a guy who appeared to be the closest thing in Taos to Andy Warhol. I also met a woman who was part Navajo and very in touch with her inner savage.

They followed me back to the motor lounge and the three of us partied until dawn. Then they spilled out the back door into the twilight as a newly minted couple, leaving me with some very strange photos.

To learn more about the Andy Warhol of Taos visit his TraLaLaMedia website. I get the impression he watches a lot of TeleTubby reruns.

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Within only 27 months and under great secrecy Los Alamos went from breaking ground to rolling out two nuclear bombs for export to Japan. These two atomic bombs, “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, were dropped by B29 bombers first on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and then three days later on Nagasaki. Both cities were utterly destroyed with over 200,000 people dying within days.

Some claim that these two nuclear bombs ended the war early and thus prevented the need for a conventional land invasion of Japan. In such an invasion an estimated one million US troops would have been causalities, with even more Japanese casualties.

However, others now believe that the Japanese had come to realize the war was futile and were nearing surrender. Thus they believe the use of the atomic bombs was unnecessary.

The project to develop the atomic bomb, which also involved top secret installations in other areas of the US was known as the “Manhattan Project“.

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Today Los Alamos is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which continues to be a premier national security research institution. Its primary responsibility is ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the US nuclear weapons program.

However the Laboratory claims to also help curb a wide variety of threats to U.S. interests— such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the spread of deadly diseases, inadequate supplies of energy, or the effects of climate change.

It hosts the world’s most powerful hybrid supercomputer built by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Los Alamos National Lab. It can perform 1.02 quadrillion calculations per second. It gets its power from 12,240 IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell Broadband Engine(TM) processors — derived from chips that power today’s most popular videogame consoles.

Next Stop – Beautiful Northern New Mexico

But my theory, judging from the many condo like dwellings, is that the area became over built. Then the cliff side condo crazy collapsed, leaving many Indians upside down on their mortgages. This led to mass evictions and there went the neighborhood.

Perhaps there will be neighborhoods in Las Vegas, Florida and California that will suffer the same fate.

Learn more about the official version of the Pueblo Indian Dwelling in Bandelier National Monument.

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Next Stop – A Bomb City – Los Alamos, New Mexico

To wander through Santa Fe is to bask in natural and artistic beauty. Santa Fe exudes good taste and style that is in harmony with its pastel high desert surroundings.

There is no assault of commercial signage but rather thousands of beautiful paintings, sculptures and buildings as well exquisite jewelry and clothing. Santa Fe’s culture is a unique blend of Native American, Hisplanic and Anglo peoples.

Santa Fe was established in 1607, before the Pilgrims even landed at Plymouth Rock in New England. It has the oldest building in the USA, the Palace of the Governors, which has been in continual operation since for over 400 years.

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The serenity, charm and natural beauty of Santa Fe have a attracted world class artists for decades. Artists such as Georgia O’Keefe, D H Lawrence lived and worked on Canyon road in modest adobe studios beginning in the 1920’s. Today Canyon Road is lined with world class studios that contribute to Santa Fe’s reputation as the third largest art center in the USA, right behind NYC and LA.

Canyon Road in Santa Fe

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