Albuquerque

One summer day I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico – in “Old Town” – and I asked someone to recommend a good restaurant to me. Their reply: “Have you been to the top of Mount Sandia?”

I had not. Turns out there was a very nice restaurant at the peak of Mount Sandia. However, the only way to get to the restaurant was by aerial tramway, a metal and glass box suspended on cables hundreds of feet above the ground.

The ride to the peak of Mount Sandia was interesting and the view was outstanding. One of the passengers on the tram explained that all the restaurant’s supplies also came up by tram and that the restaurant’s water did double duty, serving first as ballast in the bottom of the tram. I don’t know the truth of that, but it’s what the guy said.

I left Albuquerque and thought no more about that tram for years, until one day I turned on the TV news and there it was. It had been a windy day around Albuquerque, and the wind had buffeted the Mount Sandia tram causing the cable to become jammed. The result was that the tram was stuck and so were the people in it. After hours of hanging a hundred feet in the air, the passengers eventually got to the ground ... by being lowered, one by one, on a rope!

I thought back to my own trip on that aerial tram, and what I remember is ... the tram operator made us wait a long time before allowing us onto the tram because, as he told us, “The winds are too gusty.”

I want to say to that unknown tram operator, “Thanks so much for making us wait.” I much prefer the “stepping out onto a platform” method of debarking to the “coming down on a rope” method.