Display by Label: Vegas

Monday, my horoscope read: Enjoy the outdoors - even if the weather is not what you expected. You mustn't let such uncontrollable forces control you. Now, I don't normally read my horoscope, but I did Monday because I spent part of my morning on a commuter metro car from West Falls Church to Metro Center during rush hour, packed in, butt-cheek to butt-cheek with fellow passangers, my nose buried in a Post Express, which I read from cover to cover to avoid having to look up at the woman standing directly in front of me. How did things come to this? Good question. I'll get there in a minute . . .

But first, the trip to Vegas (the one I took this weekend, not the one I took 10 years ago) was a lot of fun. We met Catherine's family in Vegas for her sister's 21st birthday. As is proper in Vegas, I slept very little, drank mightily, and gambled heartily. We stayed at the MGM Grand. We ate some great food, saw an incredible Cirque du Soleil show called Ka (which I highly recommend) and played a decent two nights of black jack in which there were several ups and downs, but we ultimately came out $50 ahead.

These pics tell part of the story - the part where it was appropriate to have a camera.

So I was already running on minimal sleep for the weekend when Sunday evening rolled around and I boarded a flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, where I would take a second flight to DC, arriving around 5:30 am local time. Catherine had to go to Kansas City for business, and we had parted ways in Las Vegas. I was sad to be traveling alone, but I didn't know how sad I would be until the next morning when I arrived.

The trip was destined to have a snag.

I had managed to avoid two potential pitfalls, which gave me a false sense of security. First, on the flight to Los Angeles, a snooty flight attendant threatened to gate-check one of my bags. The same thing had happened on the way from DC to Vegas. TED is a bit trigger happy about checking bags. They don't even let you take it down to the plane to see if there is still space available. They will just tell you at the gate that the overhead area is all filled up and that you need to check it. I knew a gate-check would end badly for me since I would be changing planes in LAX. If they checked the bag to IAD, I figured it would get lost. And if they checked it to LAX, I would have to exit the terminal in Los Angeles, pick up my bag, and then go through security again. I begged and pleaded with the attendant and was allowed to 'take my chances' in finding an overhead space for my bag on the plane. As it turned out, when I got on the plane, I saw at least three spaces for my bag, one which was directly above my friggin' seat! This really annoyed me. A tip: if you're on a TED flight and they try to gate-check your bag before you even get on board, insist that you'd like to take your chances in bringing it on. Both times this happened to me, there were spaces available when I got on the plane.

So I had dodged one bullet, but found another waiting for me at LAX. There was a group of high-school kids going on a field trip to our nation's capital. Yes, tourist season is in bloom in DC. For the past few weeks, I've noticed groups of kids walking around the city. Now I faced the terrifying prospect of being trapped in an enclosed space for 5 hours with one of them. Actually, I'm not sure if these kids were high-schoolers, or if they had just escaped from a maximum security prison. It was hard to tell. I just hoped I didn't end up in prison as a result of the flight. Fourty to fifty angst ridden teens on a red-eye flight from LAX to DC? Who had thought this was a good idea? I figured I would end up seated right smack in the middle of the group and I could not be held responsible for my actions. I needed to know who to blame when I was put before the judge for passing out kool-aid laced with dangerous levels of Xanax.

The group of kids wound up seated in one area of the plane, to themselves. I was far in back of them, seated next to a man who only spoke Chinese and who slept most of the way. Amazingly, I was able to sleep for most of the trip. Bullet number two dodged.
When I de-planed at Dulles airport, it appeared that all was good. Now, I would just pick up the car, which was in the remote lot, head home, get some more sleep, and hopefully feel better by the afternoon. It was a surprisingly cool morning in DC - 40 degrees - but it was nice and sunny. Maybe I would try to do something outdoors! (I had yet to read my horoscope, mind you.) The shuttle dropped me off in the Green lot, and that's when it hit me. Catherine had driven to the airport. Not me. I had NOT driven to the airport. Instead of me, it was Catherine who drove. As you can see, my brain slowed down to single-processor mode in an effort to fully grasp the lamentable reality of this situation. Since I had not driven, it meant I did not have the key. Since Catherine had driven, she would, ipso facto, have the key. In Kansas City. It was starting to make sense in my head. Still, in an act of desperation, my brain told my hand to go ahead and reach in my pocket anyway. My hand only laughed as it found a few spare coins. No key. Silly brain. No key here. But you knew that, didn't you? You were only playing, right? My brain would not be put off that easily. It told my hands to unzip the outer compartment of my suit case. This is futile, said my hands. It is not there, you idiot. Stop this right now. My hands found keys, but they were my house keys, no car key. See? You better start thinking of an alternative! The bus was rounding a corner at the far end of the parking lot and heading back in my direction. I ran to catch it before it went back to the airport. When I got back on the bus, I got some funny looks from the people inside. I started to say something, started to tell them about my situation. But I didn't want their sympathy. I just wanted to sleep. I knew if I said anything it would probably be something sarcastic. So I just kept my mouth shut.

I suppose I should look on the bright side: I found two alternate low-cost ways to get to and from Dulles Airport from downtown. This is good to know for anybody who normally avoids Dulles because of the parking or ground transportation expense.

Option 1: Washington Flyer has a shuttle that runs from the airport to Falls Church West every half hour on the 15 and 45. It's $9 bucks or $16 round-trip (they've added a $1 fuel surcharge to the normal rate). It's pretty convenient and relatively inexpensive. Still, after you pay $16 round trip, plus metro fare, you might be spending as much as $24 using this method. I got a one-way ticket and figured I might try option 2 for coming back to pick up the car later in the day.

Option 2: Metro has a bus (the 5A) which runs every hour and has five stops, including Dulles. The others are: L'Enfant Plaza, Rossyln, Tysons Westpark Transit station, and Herndon-Monroe Park & Ride. I took this bus back to the airport to pick up my car later in the afternoon after having a nap. The total fare, including metro ride to Rosslyn, was $3.65. So for under $9, it's relatively easy to get to and from Dulles, as long as your flight falls within the hours when the bus runs. (The first bus leaves each end around 5:30 am and the last bus leaves around 10:30 pm.) The bus is larger and more comfortable than most metro buses and even has luggage space overhead. Total trip time was about an hour, which is probably a little faster than driving, parking, and taking the shuttle from the parking lot to the airport.

So yeah, true to my horoscope, I spent most of Monday outdoors, taking various forms of public transportation. And while the weather was better than I could have expected, the circumstances that led to my time outdoors were certainly 'out of my control.' Still, I think I made the best of it.

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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.

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Later this week, Catherine and I are heading to Las Vegas for Mel's 21st birthday. I'm really looking forward to it. Vegas is a strange place. You come face-to-face with a kind of decadence that boggles the mind. The adult playground. So alluring, and yet, in many ways, so completely vile. In anticipation, I thought I'd tell story about my first trip to Vegas. So here goes: Part One - Storm Brewing.

My first trip to Las Vegas began with a bowl of Sugar Smacks. I've found many great adventures begin with a good bowl of cereal, and this one was no different. But it almost got off to a very different start. One without cereal. One full of doubt. But wait. I should back up a little. Cereal is only part of the story.

I was at the Grand Canyon, and I was mid-way through my post-college coast-to-coast solo road trip, which had started in Washington DC. The ultimate destination of the trip was the Grand Canyon. I yearned to see it. I figured it would certainly reveal to me certain truths. Truths about the earth. About the world. About myself. Yes, it's a horrible clich￩, but I intended there to be an element of self-discovery in the whole thing. I figured spending a little over a month on the road camping in the back of my pick-up truck would bring me that much closer to enlightenment, in a John Steinbeck sort of way. For the most part, it worked, I think. I'm not sure I ever 'found myself' in the pure Buddhist sense, but I did manage to find what can only be described as a certain feeling, a sort of mixture of fear, curiosity, and excitement. Whenever I get lost these days I try to remember that feeling and it helps to ground me.

So I had been camping at the Grand Canyon for the previous three days. I had explored the area, had hiked down into the Canyon and back up. Things were good. For a short period of time, I had no decisions to make about my next move. I just simply had to exist. I had reached my destination and, for a little while, I could just sit back and enjoy it. On the fourth day, during my morning excursion to watch the sunrise, I saw an ominous gathering of clouds out over the canyon. From that strange perspective, the storm was like no other I had ever seen and the whole thing actually made me a bit panic-stricken. I had to fight back an instinctive urge to flee. You could see lightning and dark swirls of clouds. What was strange, though, was that the whole thing appeared to be right at eye-level. And the swirling chaos seemed like it could land anywhere at anytime. I had been wondering if it might be time to make the move on to my next destination, which was Vegas. But I was full of doubt. If I left, I would surely miss the canyon. It would be a harsh change of scenery, and a part of me regretted giving up the quiet tranquility of the canyon for the loud din of Vegas. But Vegas seemed appealing in its own way, and I had to leave the canyon sometime. This was not reality. Besides, I had family in Vegas, and I was promised a warm shower when I got there, something I hadn't had in a while. What should I do? Like the imminent storm, my mind was filled with indecision.

I figured I'd decide over breakfast. I went back to my campsite and quickly realized I had little in the way of food. This was not good. I felt a hunger coming on and I had run out of cereal. I was also out of milk, and the OJ was running low. I wasn't sure I could stomach another granola bar, but it looked like that's where things were heading. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe it was time to leave.

Just then, I heard footsteps from behind me. I turned and saw a guy approaching with short spiky hair, faded jeans, and a bluish sweater. "You look like you're heading to Las Vegas." He spoke with an accent which I guessed to be German.

"Well . . . actually, I was thinking about it . . . " How strange was this? Who was this guy?

"Would you like some Smacks?"

"What?" I was confused and was trying to figure out how he had guessed I was heading towards Vegas.

"Smacks."

The offer was made in such a genuine, nice tone. Indeed, it seemed to be a gesture of friendship, and I wanted to take him up on it, but I had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe it was some kind of German custom, smacks. A sort of handshake maybe? I didn't want to seem rude, so I pretended to be thinking really hard about the offer. "Oh, well . . . I guess . . . man, smacks . . . sure! . . . I mean . . . "

He reached into his backpack. I figured 'smacks' was either going to be some benign token of friendship or he was going to shoot me. He took out a rolled up white paper bag of what appeared to be cereal and held it out to me.

"Smacks," he repeated.

Oh! Sugar Smacks! The clouds parted in my mind as I realized no granola bar would have to be consumed in my immediate future.

"Sugar Smacks!" I said. "Right on. I don't have any milk, though."

He reached into his backpack again and pulled out a quarter-gallon container of milk. I briefly wondered how long the milk had been in his backpack, then I realized I didn't care. God had sent me a saint baring gifts of cereal. I was not going to be picky. If this wasn't a sign, I don't know what was. Suddenly things seemed very clear.

"I'll get us some bowls!" I said.

We sat at the concrete table near my campsite and ate Sugar Smacks and listened to the thunder approaching. The guy's name was Alex and he was from Heidelberg. He was unusually direct and honest, which I liked. I immediately felt comfortable with him. He definitely seemed to be on the up-and-up. We talked a little bit about ourselves. We were both on solo trips. I'm not sure if the word had been invented yet in 1996, but I'd say now that his version of the 'solo trek' was a touch more 'Xtreme' than mine. While I had the comfort of a pickup truck equipped with an aluminum camper shell, Alex had nothing more than a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a walking stick. Also, I had come from DC, a mere 2,300 miles away. Alex had flown from Germany to Houston and had hitched his way from there. He was now trying to get to Vegas, where he would pick up his return plane tickets and head home.

As we talked, the thunder and lightning was getting closer. There was a strange electric energy in the air. And then I realized: Today was definitely the day to move on. The storms, the cereal. The signs couldn't be ignored. And it would be nice to have some company on the drive.

"Alex, I've made up my mind. Vegas it is."

He was happy with my decision. He helped me pack up the rest of my stuff and we were off.

On our way out of the park, we stopped for one final view of the canyon. The storm was just touching the south rim and it was beginning to hail.

We got in my truck and drove south toward I-40 with the storm at our backs.

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