Day 2: The Fellowship of the Bling

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Driving Cross Country - August 29th to September 6th
From: San Franciso, CA
To: Las Vegas, NV

Two States Traveled:
California
Nevada

Total mileage: 567 miles
Total mileage to date: 567 miles

After waking up at 7AM, we head up to the 36th floor for some breakfast, which is pretty tasty. The city is fogged in still but it starts to clear as we leave to pack. The entire hotel is mobbed by Southern Miss. fans who have flown into SF for their first away game at Berkeley. Walking out of the lobby to meet Bug, who left ten minutes early to get the car from the valet, I encounter a baffled and bemused bellhop holding a pillow in his hands. Apparently, Bug was opening a door in the car when something went thump on the roof. Some sleepy bastard threw the pillow off of a balcony where it fell into the street. A narcoleptic suicide or amateur stuntperson doing practice runs? A pillow fight in another suite where the balcony door also opens more than 4 inches? The world will never know.

Today, we drive to Las Vegas to convert the evil sinners to the light side of the force. Leaving the hotel, we swing by the camera store again where LJ and Bug give the sales guys some commission money and head out of the city into the San Joaquin Valley which is apparently populated by fruit. Yup, there's bupkis out in this valley. A large aqueduct feeds huge farms. Aside from wind generators on the ridges and slow-ass drivers, there's nothing out here aside from brown grass, scraggly brush, and the fading footprints of several billion migrant workers who harvest the fields seasonally.

Around 2 PM, we pull over to fill up the gas tank on the Mark XVII Chevrolet Tahoe main battle tank/RV. Gas prices are psychotic right now. It takes $50 bucks to recharge the fuel tank (23 gallons added to a 30 gallon tank). Considering that the EPA rates the Tahoe at 12 miles per gallon highway, we may end up washing dishes at diners to cover the fuel bill by the time we hit Georgia.

LJ also brought his XM satellite radio receiver which plugs into the car stereo system. To quote Cartman from South Park, "this kicks ass." This will be the major reason why I don't convert to right-wing, conservative, right-to-life Christianity by the end of this trip. But with a plentiful supply of Dasani water and beef jerky, all will be well.

So we cruise down through the Mohave Desert past Edwards Air Force Base. It's 40 miles long and seems deserted. No air activity at all. Maybe all the wings got deployed overseas? From there it's smooth sailing with a few breaks to stretch legs. Until we hit Baker, CA, however, where we get held up for 10 miles crawling at 5 miles per hour because of a fender bender. The entire time, we've been pushing the Tahoe performance envelope (apparently the Tahoe starts vibrating really badly at around 85 miles per hour where the dashboard moves two to three inches from side to side) and hoping to get to Las Vegas at 6 PM. But we arrived at 7 PM with no problems other than a tendency to call slow drivers a term normally applied to female dogs.

The descent from about 4000 feet above sea level into the Las Vegas valley makes your ears pop every thousand feet or so. But the sun was setting as we approached Vegas, Soddom in the Sand. With the sun behind the peaks, it looks like a scene out of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Welcome to Mordor. While you're visiting Mount Doom, stop in at the "Evil Wizard Buffet". All you can eat Elves for only two gold pieces.

I've never been to this land of bountiful freon myself, but LJ and Bug have been here a few times. We register into the Venetian and find out that our reservation is a sweet suite on the pool deck area. We check out the "ground level" (it's actually about 11 stories above the ground) patio and promptly become fall into deep comas for about an hour.

When we revive, we grab some chow at an Italian restaurant just off of the casino floor. After dinner we split up to to find Lady Luck, who is nowhere to be found. After a very brief sojourn at the blackjack table, I'm down a few Ben Franklins and Bug is up a few. We find LJ at the craps table where he's holding his own. Craps is an interesting game. It's more sociable and takes longer. These are good things. Especially since I got destroyed at the blackjack table. Bug had five words for me. "This is not your game."

So at this point, we've all lost a few hundred George Washingtons. While we try to decide what to do next, we decide to drop a few nickels into the slot machines nearby. It is at this point that future historians will comment that we discovered the mind-altering and droning ecstasy of computerized slots. Nickel slots that is. Yup. We're high rollers now. But it's kind of cool and besides, $0.05 goes a long way in some countries (such as Uzbekistan). I can see the appeal of punching little buttons in order to make $10 bucks last fifteen minutes. You still lose your money but you can drink for free and laugh at each other. On the negative side, you have to deal with about two metric tons of change if you want to move machines and you also run the risk of developing some nasty form of repetitive stress injury. In the end, I've decided to avoid this as a form of gambling until I'm about 70 and no longer have the strength or hand-eye coordination to put a pistol to my head.

So then we wander a few blocks looking for a purveyor of bottled alcoholic beverages so that we don't have to fork over our spare organs for the mini-bar in the suite. But alas, they had just closed. So we wander back to the Venetian and relax at the Z Bar where eurotrash from seven continents have converged to confuse each other. I swear that I saw Qusay in there. He's not dead. He's hiding in Las Vegas. Tomorrow, I'm forming a recon team to find, isolate, and capture the leading scions of Iraq's former government.

So it's really late now and we're all fading out. The final sign of the evening's apocalypse was when we started talking about work. Doh! But on the way back up to our suite, LJ decides to stop by the roulette table, "just to see what happens." Four minutes later, we've all recouped our losses and are ahead of the game. I swear that my spirit guide and animal totem guided my choices on that table. We had a good run, at which point, we all stepped away and rolled off to bed to dream of having a day to sleep in.

 

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