I just got back from Vegas this morning on the red-eye via Los Angeles. It was a crazy weekend, but more on that later. For now, here's the wrap-up to my last post, which I never got a chance to get live before I left.

I intended these posts to be about my first time in Las Vegas 10 years ago. But in the end, they've sort of become about the getting there, and the new contact I made along the way. Strange how that happens - how in the telling of something, it winds up being something else.

So here's where things stood: Alex - my new traveling companion who'd been kind enough to share his cereal with me earlier in the morning - and I were on our way to Las Vegas. We were both on solo trips in search of new places. Maybe in search of ourselves. But we had other lives away from here, and in the six-hour car ride to Sin City, we chatted about those lives.

Alex was a Physics major and was almost through with school. He just needed to go back home and take some final tests. He thought it was strange that so many Americans didn't know what they wanted to do with their lives. I guess that means he thought I was strange, because I was pretty clueless myself. He said that in Germany you did your basic schooling, then you did civil or military service, then you specialized in what you wanted to "do." I told him that knowing what you wanted to do seemed strange to me. I said just about all the people I knew had spent four years at college learning Highly Important Things, and that they were now stumped as to what they were actually going to do with that knowledge. Speaking for myself, I had just graduated with a fancy Greek designation and a nice GPA, and my immediate ambitions (as soon as my trip out west was over) involved embarking on a prestigious career as a bartender. Here's a bit of irony: Alex really liked technology and thought I should "get into computers." "Ha!" I said with disdain, "I'm sure that will never happen . . ."

So we chatted a lot about school and that evolved into a more general discussion of culture. Alex said he felt a lot of Americans he'd met were kind of insincere - that they would say they were going to do something and then not do it. He gave an example of how he'd asked a woman for a ride in Corpus Christi and she had said she would "really like to," but then gave half a dozen reasons why she couldn't. He could tell she was lying and that she really just didn't want to. So he didn't understand why she hadn't just said that. It kind of rubbed him the wrong way. "She was probably just scared," I told him. "And at the same time she felt she should not be rude." He understood. He just thought it was kind of annoying. "Yeah, I guess Americans can be pretty annoying," I said. To think: this was pre-Bush. I wonder what he thinks now.

Somewhere along the line, the conversation shifted to our girlfriends. We were both in relationships that needed space. Actually, mine needed more than space. Mine needed a nuclear bomb dropped on its ass. But that's another story. Alex said he and his girlfriend never argued and I said that was good and he said it wasn't, that they had reached a boredom where they didn't even feel it was worth while to fight anymore. I thought it was an interesting observation, and kind of sad, and I could see what he meant.

We both felt conflicted about traveling alone. On the one hand, we liked the freedom of it. On the other hand, we both admitted that there was a constant nag for companionship and a connection to people that made us long for home.

We stopped at Hoover Dam and looked around a bit. This was pre-9/11, so you could still drive right over Hoover Dam on your way to Vegas from the east. Apparently, post-9/11 they began construction of an alternate route and they closed off traffic along the dam, which was probably not a bad idea. Anyway, I remember getting out and doing a mini-tour of the dam, which was a lot of fun. And somewhere there is a picture of Alex and me and Lake Mead in the background, but I can't find it.

When we got to Vegas, we exchanged contact info. Then, as easily as he had stepped into my campground that morning, he walked off west on Charleston Boulevard toward Las Vegas Boulevard (yes, its a cliche, but he really did walk off into the sunset). I remember how thin and insubstantial he looked beneath his huge backpack. He still carried his wooden walking stick, which seemed odd and out of place clicking against the hot Vegas concrete. It made a strange visual image: this person who looked like he'd just hiked the Appalachian Trail, walking along a city street, his jeans faded and dirty, his old leather shoes thin and worn. It's the last time I saw him or spoke to him. I never did drop him a line.

So there it is: Vegas. Sometimes a story about a place isn't so much about that place as it is about the getting to it. I've had lots of other Vegas memories since then, but when I think about that first visit, I inevitably think about that ride from the Grand Canyon and Alex walking off toward his life, and me driving off toward mine. We had shared a brief moment in our respective timelines, we were on the final legs of journeys, and now we were both about to head home. I think we had both been grateful for the temporary companionship, the chance to speak to somebody other than ourselves, but now we were equally grateful, and a bit relieved, to be on our own again. And, for me, Vegas sort of went on to become a symbolic delineation, a turning point, between two halves of my trip. Up to that point, it had largely been about escape, about not confronting the decisions I had to make. Ironically, Vegas, the great adult playground, the great escape itself, helped bring reality back into focus. And after four days exploring it, I wound up leaving with a new resolve.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Vegas  Travel