I sleep from midnight until 2am, and then i am wide awake with antissipation… from 4am on i sit in the buslounge and watch New Mexico pass by… the silvery moon light on the blooming chamisa, the dark dots of pinon and juniper… shortly before 7am the bus drops me off at the Albuquerque airport… it is surprisingly cold – i pick up a rental car and drive to Santa Fe… i arrive at my house shortly after 8am… the leaves on my cherry trees are bright red, and the aspens are beginning to turn colour… the chamisa is yellow with blooms and the wildflowers next those are purple – and it is quiet, no bus engine, no generator… i drink from this landscape and soundscape… the Huevos Rancheros Christmas (Santa Fe term for ordering both green chile and red chile with your meal) at Tecalote Cafe is still as wonderful as i remember it… At 2pm i drive back to Albuquerque… Tingley looks pretty frightening – like a hockey arena or a tractor pull location with big neon advertisements for beer and beef… the amount of concrete promises lots of slap-back echoes all over the place… our show at Tingley is the closest we have ever come to the taste of the Rock & Roll experience… when the lights go out and we walk on, the crowd roars in anticipation… there is a huge pit for people with general admission tickets and they holler and move… and we love every second of it… the reverberation in the big hall does sound like a propeller plane circling above or like a herd of cattle stampeding… it starts with the first note and ends half a minute after the last… we have a good time though, ’cause the audience is into the music… we go through the set smiling… it’s time: next year we have to do a big show in Santa Fe with our 9-piece FLAMENC-O-MATIC, RHUMBA-PHONIC, LUNA NEGRA XL… oh yeah, and there was a bomb threat at 9pm as Santana was supposed to go on… but, since no bomb went off at 9:15pm as threatened, the Santana show started at 9:20pm… the 2 songs we play with Carlos sounded good and rounded off the Tingley experience nicely… oh, and i almost got a ticket from a state police officer, but that’s an entirely different story…