Tag Archives: las vegas

Las Vegas, Part Two: Oddities of The West

16 Nov

from August 25, 2008

Nevada is the farthest West I have ever been, taking the crown from Houston. As I flew towards McCarron Airport, it was mainly thoughts like “I’m out West! WEST!” that crowded my mind, but there were other things too.

Nevada is home to some serious Air Force bases. In fact, a large part of the air traffic in Las Vegas is military, and I saw a large number of military personnel in and around the airport. Groom Lake is where every aircraft since World War Two has been tested. Most of them were Top Secret, like the stealth fighter and stealth bomber. The Raptor, the plane due to replace the F-16, was developed there. Every X-plane came out of there, as did some of our very first astronauts. Not coincidentally, Nevada has a very high percentage of America’s UFO sightings. Much of this is due to the testing of planes like the stealth bomber, which even today, unclassified, is still reported as a UFO due to its very odd triangular design. It is speculated that the TR 3B, the new, still alleged, “silent triangular UFO” was developed there. Groom Lake is also near the infamous Area 51, home to much of our classified and still denied extra-terrestrial material. If you believe that sort of thing. Which I do. Reports of the last few years seem to indicate that much of the Area 51 operations have been moved to a new location. At any rate, I saw no strange planes, no odd lights in the sky, and no UFOs. But I was out West! WEST!

Pahrump, Nevada, is the home of the infamous Art Bell and his “Radio Ranch.” Art is the founder of the immensely popular Coast to Coast AM overnight radio show and has several AM, FM, and ham radio towers on his property. Here’s bit from Wiki about Art Bell and Area 51. Note the date:

At about 11 p.m. PST, Thursday, September 11th, 1997,he designated one phone line for Area 51 employees who wanted to discuss the secretive base. Several callers claimed to work at Area 51, but the bizarre highlight of the night came when a seemingly distraught and terrified man claimed to be a former Area 51 employee recently discharged for “medical” reasons. He cited malevolent extraterrestrials at Area 51 (“extra-dimensional beings” who are not “what they claim to be”) and an impending disaster that the government knew would take out “major population centers.” Midway through this call, Bell’s program went off the air for about 30 minutes. After talking to network engineers, the official explanation was that the network satellite had “lost earth lock” or forgotten where the earth was. Network officials were baffled, and the cause remains a mystery.

While all of this was forming the background of my thoughts, I was looking out the window, really bothering the old woman next to me, and wondering where Las Vegas was because we were getting kind of low and very close to those hills up ahead.

Then we were over the hills and there was Las Vegas spread out before me. It really did seem to be nestled in the foothills, at least at first, then it spread out far and wide. Low, though. Except for the Strip, Vegas is a very low town, with virtually no tall buildings. In the middle of nothing, it really is an oasis in the desert. An oasis designed to rip you off, but an oasis nonetheless.

The airport is very close to and directly behind the strip. We flew behind every major hotel and casino: Luxor, shaped like a pyramid; Caesar’s, which took up more space than any other two casinos combined; and New York New York, which looked not so much like New York as it did a moderately talented child’s idea of what New York looked like, despite never having been there. Plus it had a roller coaster that went around the Empire State Building.

We got off the plane, skipped baggage claim, and right there, in the middle of the airport, was a glass-enclosed room filled with slot machines. Who would play a slot machine in the airport? Aside from, like, a gazillion casinos just a stone’s throw away, those slots have to have the worst odds in the world. They must never pay off. Who would sit down to play one of those? Not me, but a lot of other people, all of whom seemed to have gotten off the same tour group. They wore jeans, denim shirts with some embroidery that I could never make out, and odd little straw cowboy hats. They were all over, I’d estimate, 120 years old and they all smoked.

But we needed to get out. My brother and I had traveled far and we made our way to the taxi stand and then we were off to the Rio. I spent the whole time looking out the window. Sure, I had a fantastic view of the Strip, but it was the hills I was entranced by. West! And all of the vast nothing stretching out past the hotels. I also spent too much time looking at the palm trees. Palm trees! In the desert! Yes, it was a very long flight and I was very tired and maybe a little punchy. But I was out West! The cab driver, who was not Middle Eastern and spoke excellent English, being a citizen of Nevada, born and raised, asked us some questions, made small talk, and said he knew we were in a hurry and that he’d take a short cut to the Rio. And as I found out later, he actually did just that.

The Rio is located just behind the Strip. It is an all-suite resort complex, with four swimming pools (one was “Brazilian,” which is a code word for “topless”), two theaters, a spa, more restaurants than you’d expect, and a bowling alley. Yes! After leaving the relatively unsophisticated NYC I was dying for an exotic bowling alley. Our suite was on the side of the tower (there are two) which faced both the Strip and the pools, giving us a great view. Seventeen floors up was a little high to see much detail in the Brazilian pool, but you’d be amazed what a high resolution digital camera and good editing software can do…… or so I hear.

Our suite had a huge sofa and a separate area for eating, plus a mini bar. I wanted to take a look. I was dying to see what a $5.50 bag of twizzlers looked like but, and here I caught a break, the door was stuck and I never did open it. I was just sure that in the middle of the night I’d get up and drink a $13 bottle of orange juice.

Well, after a quick shower and a change of clothes, we went down to the casino and ate in one of the dozens of steakhouses that seem to be located within ten feet of any slot machine, twenty from the tables. I think they used an algebraic algorithm to place them for the most strategic steakhouse density per gambler.

Bowling seemed very tempting, but we pulled ourselves away from the allure of the lanes and headed out to the Strip. Besides, I had forgotten to pack my bowling shoes.

The Rio, being close to the Strip but separated by a highway, offered free shuttles to spots on the Strip and back. We took a shuttle to Caesar’s. We had one goal: Find the M+Ms store.

My brother has a woman on staff who is an M+Ms fanatic. She collects all kinds of Blue (and only blue) M+M memorabilia and Las Vegas has one of the only three M+M World stores in the United States. She had put in a request and my brother, being a good boss, said sure. We decided to get it out of the way early.

So, there we were, on Day One in Las Vegas, trekking to the M+Ms store to buy a blue M+M.

 

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED

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Las Vegas, Part One: Hard Travelin’ Heroes

16 Nov

from August 23, 2008

Traveling. The word conjures up images of exotic locales, far off lands, romantic getaways, or perhaps your family’s trip to see Grandma in Scranton last year. You remember, there were like fifty of you there, all cramped in two bedrooms in Grandma’s condo because she’d just die, right there on the floor, if you dared insult her by staying in a hotel. At least, she would, if only there were any room for her on the floor upon which to fall.

But in the most basic sense, traveling is simply moving from point A to point C. (Avoid point B. It is nothing but an overpriced tourist trap.)

I traveled to Las Vegas this past week. The trip there was close to five hours. It was shorter than my eight hour trip to London, but a lot longer than my old 10 minute commute to work. However, that isn’t accurate. You see, only the flight was about five hours. The actual traveling time was much more.

The flight was due to take off at about 10 am. My brother and I left the house about 7:15. You may think that was a little early but you are likely to encounter traffic on the Belt Parkway at anytime. Four in the morning, Easter Sunday? Traffic. Giants win the Super Bowl, midnight? Traffic. Belt Parkway closed to traffic? Traffic. We were going to Las Vegas because my brother had been there once before, two years ago, and they comped him a room. Right away we were ahead- a free suite at the Rio.

We got to Kennedy Airport (their motto: Hey, it happens.) and located long term parking by following the totally helpful and not at all confusing, vague, or just plain wrong, signs straight back out of the airport. “What the hell was that?” my brother asked.

This time I went back to the airport and found long term parking by stopping alongside a fence, getting out of the car, and spotting it with my own two eyes. Luckily, I got back to driving before Homeland Security wondered what I was doing peeking over a fence at the cargo end of the complex.

Long term parking was full. I think I parked a full nautical league away. It was strange, though, because as full as the lot was of cars, we didn’t see another person anywhere. Not at all. To be fair, we did see a Port Authority bus drive by, but since we were on the passenger side and didn’t look for the driver I stand by my statement- we didn’t see another person anywhere. It was very quiet and odd. Even the train to the plane was pretty quiet. In fact, the only thing that broke the silence was when I shouted “If I don’t find a fucking cart soon I’m going to drop these bags!”

I was only carrying two bags but they were heavy. The secret of air travel, which I reveal here for the first time, is to never, ever, check a bag. If it is at all possible to take everything carry-on, and even if it isn’t possible, do it. Your bags can never get lost and you will never have to wait and wait and wait at the baggage claim. You can be all smug as you jet past all those guys and beat them to the taxis. OK, your shirts will be wrinkled and your pants will be smashed flat but you’ll be out of he airport sooner, and isn’t it more important to be first than to have a smooth shirt?

I had crammed all my clothes into a duffel bag that I knew from experience would just make it in the overhead. That was on one shoulder. Hanging from the other was my laptop bag. It had my laptop, my camera, my iPod, my cell phone, assorted charges and cables, and whatever random this’s and that’s that seem to have made their way into that laptop bag and call it home. There was a CD-R with the label all smudged, some kind of USB converter that doesn’t have diddley to do with the laptop, an instruction book to a printer, and cables, cables, cables. So the bag was a bit heavy.

We found the carts and they were stuck in a machine and cost three dollars to get one loose. No, I was going to Vegas. There are about a billion and two fun and dangerous ways to lose money in Vegas, I wasn’t about to squander three bucks on a cart at JFK.

Besides, there was one sitting on the street four feet away.

We loaded the bags on the cart and soon found why it was abandoned- it had a gimpy wheel. But I didn’t care and, even with a gimpy wheel, it was better than breaking my shoulders marching across the long term no man’s land. And march it was. We were heading to the Air Tram, which was so far away I was sure it was a mirage. It was going to take us to the airport which was so far away I couldn’t even see it. We walked, no joke, almost ten minutes until we found the shuttle bus which would take us to the tram station.

It was parked right outside the tram station.

Saying a teary farewell to the cart, we shlepped our bags up the escalator and plopped down in the station. Here was we saw our first people- two teenage kids sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags.

We got on the train, which I must admit was very nice, quiet, and clean, and it took us to the terminal. Well, no, not quite. It took us across the street from the terminal. There was no cart and we trudged across the street after what seemed like an eternity waiting for the cop to stop traffic for us (what was it, the Belt Parkway?) and continued our trek.

Inside the terminal we stopped at the automated kiosk and got our tickets and went to the gate. Oh, sorry, wrong way. The gate was the other way. No? But the sign said… I think this is it. Oh, wait, there it is, back the other way. JetBlue has some perks but just getting around their terminal is not one of them.

We found the entrance to the gate and got on line for the security check. A bellowing man informed us of the following:

“You cannot bring on any liquids. Water is a liquid. If you can’t breath it and it isn’t hard then it is a liquid. Ice is a liquid. No metal. This rail is metal. My badge is metal. Your watch is metal. Metal is a solid. It is hard. It is not a liquid.”

There was more, a lot more, but I’ll stop the physics lesson here, before his discourse on gas. He walked up and down the line and bellowed it all. Twice.

We got through the checkpoint and followed more signs to our gate. HA! If only it were that easy. We followed the signs which informed us that, due to construction, we’d have to go down a rickety flight of stairs to a shuttle bus to our gate. So check me on this. Before I ever got to the plane, I’d driven to the airport, walked to the train, rode the train to the terminal, and took a bus to the gate. If I could somehow work in a ferry ride just before I got on the plane I’d have hit all the major modes of transport. I had done a whole lot of traveling before I even left New York.

We got off the bus and walked, again, with heavy bags (did I mention that I don’t check bags? I wasn’t feeling so smart at that point.) to our gate, which was the farthest away, of course. We had about 45 minutes till boarding and I was hungry. I bought an orange juice and a tuna sandwich there and it only cost me $11. I was afraid to see how much a donut would set me back. I only had a couple of hundred on me.

Well, after a while the crew came out and started setting up the desk and it looked like we were soon to board so about half of the people waiting got up and stood in a line. This is stupid in every way because they call priority seating (wheelchairs) first and start boarding from the back so most of those people weren’t getting on right away anyway. Plus they had to stand while they could have been sitting and relaxing. What was the rush to get on the plane and get into a cramped seat?

The joke was on them. After they were standing for over ten minutes, and it became obvious that the flight wasn’t taking off on time, they announced that the flight was going to be delayed an hour for routine maintenance.

An hour. For routine maintenance. No way. There had to be something seriously wrong. “Routine” maintenance doesn’t delay a plane for an hour. The announcement went on to say that this was only an estimate and no one should leave the gate because it may be sooner. About twenty people left the gate.

And just five minutes later we started boarding.

I never did find out what was wrong, but as we walked down the jetway I saw two guys on the wing. One was straddling the engine and bolting something down, the other was just standing there.

You don’t know the utter joy this gave me. Really. Invariably, no matter who I am traveling with, sometime during the flight I will look out the window and, with an expression of fear on my face and urgency in my voice, turn to my companion and say “there’s a man on the wing!” OK, it makes me laugh. But this was too perfect. I stopped dead on the jetway and turned to my brother, pointed out the window, and said “there’s a man on the wing!” He was ready to slug me when he saw that yes, there really was a man on the wing. For the first time ever! I had actually made the joke in the correct context! He stopped in mid-slug, laughed, and shoved me ahead.

We found our seats and soon a JFK miracle occurred: We took off nearly on time.

The flight was relatively uneventful. JetBlue offers 36 channels of satellite television and even more XM radio. And as you could have guessed- nothing was on. But I watched reruns of Family Guy on TBS and saw The King of Queens on UPN and watched some other stuff that I wouldn’t have bothered with had I been in my living room. The flight was smooth and I didn’t look out the window much, due to cloud cover.

Eventually, after the nineteenth hour of the five hour flight, I looked out and saw the American West spread out below me. Mesas, dunes, sprawling emptiness, and a lot of what looked like the Forbidden Zone where Taylor landed in The Planet of The Apes. I was impressed. I had never been that far west before and I spent a lot of time looking out the window. I wasn’t sitting in the window seat and this really bothered the old lady who was. But who cared? Besides her? It was The West! Just a hundred and fifty years ago cowboys drove cattle across these plains! The cavalry fought the Indians here! Clint Eastwood was Hung High there and Henry Fonda sang My Darling Clementine in a saloon while John Wayne wooed Pocahontas just below the wings of my plane. Or something sort of like that.

The Captain announced that we were beginning final descent into McCarran Airport. I looked. I craned my neck. I spilled a bottle of water on the old lady with all the craning but I didn’t see the city. All I saw were some hills ahead. Then we were over the hills and there was Vegas spread out before us.

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED

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