Lost in Albuquerque

We got to Albuquerque, NM yesterday afternoon. It is a cool little town; lots of cafes and an interesting native American culture. We walked to the university to get some internet to find somewhere to camp. We ended up in the mechanical engineering department. There is no camping within an hour of the town. We searched couchsurfing.org and contacted two people in the area but it didn't work out. We walked around the campus and tried finding possible spots to pitch the tent. After talking to a couple students on campus we figured it would be a really bad idea to camp on campus. Around 9:30 we were getting desperate and drove to a national forest about 15 miles away. We weren't sure where to park so we pulled in to the ranger station. There were lots of woods but some of it was privately owned. There was a Pueblo in sight and we didn't want to trespass on native American land. By now it was dark. We found sings giving tips about encountering cougars and bears. If you encounter either animal you are supposed to face it, walk back slowly, and if it attacks you it says to fight back aggressively. Great advice. We kept hearing foot steps around us and we decided to drive back to campus. We had met a girl earlier that day and told her out situation. She is living in a dorm on campus and offered her room. I gave her a call and we ended up crashing there.

The next morning I got up early to move my car to avoid a parking ticket. I drove to the closest hotel and for a continental breakfast. I got a message from the girl saying that Dan says to meet at the entrance of campus. He didn't have his phone on him and I couldn't find him anywhere. After about an hour I headed to the mechanical engineering department and by chance he was just leaving there.

So after that we met up with one of our mechanical engineering professors from Binghamton. He does research at the University of New Mexico, designing robots for multiple applications. He showed us his lab and gave us a couple demonstrations. The video below shows a swing-free system. This robot lifts and moves an object that has 4 pendulums, each with a different length and different frequency. The purpose of it is to move the objects and account for the acceleration so there is no swinging motion.

Afterwards we ended up checking out Old Town before leaving for Flagstaff, AZ.