Why, why, why, Delilah?
It was a long, long trip.
It takes quite a while to drive from San Diego, California to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T5K 1P4. That's for damn sure. If you don't believe me, just try it yourself. Somewhere in the middle of Utah you'll realize that you're in for one whale of a trip.
So the Bassett and I started out on a Tuesday. The plan was to make it to Las Vegas by lunchtime, and begin our little two-day mini-vacation. The trip up to Vegas was surprisingly pleasant, in retrospect. We had planned on making use of some of the various audiobooks we had obtained, and the first day was taken up with a substantial bit of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Which I must say I enjoyed more than she did. It was read by the author, however, so that was a nice touch. It was a mite creepy, however. After all, the guy's dead.
It's a funny thing, driving to Las Vegas. It's basically driving five hours through solid desert. Only occasionally, surrounded on all sides by the desert, is a sprawling patch of green, some golf course, or some planned retirement community. The first thing that going to Vegas does is make you realize how ridiculous some of the developments are in terms of water use. Yikes.
Anyway, you'll know when you're in Nevada. No kidding. Here's you. You're driving in the car passing the Nevada/California line right....now. To your left and right you will see two gigantic casinos, with three more in the distance. They don't look all that glitzy, but they sure are huge. And I'm not kidding. Literally, I think the casino floor ends about 16 inches from the California border.
Finally, after passing more desert, and even more signs for various crappy magicians you could see at the Monte Carlo, you arrive in Vegas. I have to say, driving on the 15, I was less than totally impressed. I expected to be blown away as soon as I got into town, you know, "Vegas, baby, Vegas!" But it wasn't like that at all. Mostly it was a bunch of urban sprawl that eventually led you toward a biggish town, that eventually led you to some hotels on your right. Didn't blow me away.
That is, until we got off the interstate, and on to Las Vegas Boulevard. We exited on Tropicana, which is at the south end of the strip, intent on driving the strip on our way up to our hotel, the Sahara, which is at the north end. Really, these things are huge. These hotels, I mean, wow. The first one we saw was New York, New York. And jeezus, it is really gigantic. Roller costers, huge towers, impressive. The MGM Grand is across the street, and, well, despite being the largest casino, is somewhat less towering than NY, NY. Driving up, you eventually see all the famous ones, including the new Wynn, which has, I must say, rather gorgeous architecture. Finally, we got to the Sahara (and I do mean finally, because it took us about a half and hour to go 3 miles on the strip). We got our room number, and decided to go for lunch. We knew we wanted to have lunch at the Hofbrauhaus, which I knew was over by the MGM Grand. So we decided to take the Vegas monorail to the MGM, go to lunch, go back to the MGM to pick up our show tickets for that night, and then head back to the Sahara.
Boy, when things go wrong.
So we get to the MGM. We walk out. I hadn't really gotten a whiff of the Vegas heat just yet. But it was big. BIG HEAT. It must have been something like 110 degrees. But, according to the map that I saw, the Hofbrauhaus was just right behind the MGM, so I figured, it'd be a hot walk, but short. Boy was I wrong. We're walking along Tropicana Avenue, or Boulevard, or whatever, and we are finding that, well, we don't see any Hofbrauhaus. There's a cross-street. No beer steins. I ask the gas station attendant, he points me further east. So we keep walking. And walking. And walking. Basically, we walked at least two miles in the punishing heat, not knowing precisely where we were going, because apparently, the HBH is nowhere NEAR the back of the MGM Grand. Finally we get there, drenched in sweat, and tired as hell. Red-faced. Keeling over from heat-stroke. Nothing cures that like a liter of beer, which we drank liberally, along with some decent saurkraut and sausage. So, I have to say, on this trip to Edmonton, things started off badly.
But they got better. We took a cab back to the MGM, got the tickets, and went back to the Sahara on the monorail. We just relaxed for a few hours, I paid a few bills, and then we took the monorail again to the MGM. Got out, and looked for dinner. Ate at the Wolfgang Puck grill, made it to the theatre and took in Tom Jones.
Tom Jones.
Wow. What a show! It was in a really small theatre, and we were close to the front. To be honest, it took him a few songs to really get into gear, but when he did, it sounded like his voice hadn't aged a day since 1964. Basically it was a rundown of his hits with a few newer things mixed in. He did "Delilah", "You Can Leave Your Hat On", and a bunch of others. He didn't do "Thunderball," though, at which I was disappointed. Brought the house down with "Kiss" as the finale. It was basically an hour and a half. Good show. A decided lack of panties, however. Oh well. One thing I could have done without was his encore kickoff, "I Like the Way You Move." You know. That song from all the commercials? Eh, but I guess you have to keep the material fresh for the younguns. And by that I mean young people, not young guns.
After the MGM, we went to New York, NY and had a little pizza. The Bassett played some video poker. I had some drinks. We eventually headed back to the Sahara, and more drinks and some gambling. I dropped 20 bucks at the craps table.
The next day we took in the strip. Here is a rundown of the casinos we saw:
Harrah's
The Venitian
The Mirage
Caeser's Palace
The Bellagio
Monte Carlo (where I won 37 bucks playing craps. Apparently, I am the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.)
Paris
We also went back to NY, NY for a few drinks and some appetizers. We then proceeded to Paris, where we hung out and gambled a little (I won 10 bucks each at Roulette and Blackjack). We ate dinner at their buffet (which was really cool), and hung out in a piano bar for awhile. The piano bar basically consisted of two dudes with prop baby-grand pianos and circa-1990 keyboards set on top of what would have been the keyboard were it a real piano. (Pointer dudes, real pianos don't come with pitch and mod wheels.) But I forced them to play "Suffregette City" and "Carry On Wayward Son." They only screwed up about 25% of the songs. I was saving the serious gambling for the Sahara, because they apparently have the best gambling on the Strip. If by "best" you mean, "fastest at which I lose money," you're basically right. I started off playing craps, and won about $25 bucks, but lost back $50 at a different table. Lost $15 at Let it Ride, but made a bit back moving to craps. Basically, I broke even for the trip, which was nice, considering I figured I'd lose about $100.
After that gambling spree, the sleaze of Vegas was catching up to us. So we hit the Mandalay Bay breakfast buffett on our way out of town, and they kissed Vegas goodbye. It was an enjoyable stay for the most part. If you get a chance to see Tom Jones, I say do it.
Driving that day was through the rest of Nevada, some of Arizona, and Utah. To be quite honest with you, there was basically nothing particularly remarkable about the drive. Some mountains, I guess. But I expected hairpin turns. I expected to have to dodge gigantic boulders. I expected to run right off the freeway, use my car's moonroof to somehow simulate a parachute and inform the Bassett at the bottom that I'm a loner, baby. A REBEL.. None of that happened. I honestly can't remember where we stopped for lunch, even. The best part of that day was listening to "Right Ho, Jeeves" on the old iPod. A really, really great story. Absolutely hilarious. I recommend it in every possible dimension. As audiobooks go, I don't think you'll find a better one.
Ogden, Utah that night. The next day, pushing on through Idaho to Great Falls, Montana. That drive was actually quite nice. Idaho is surprisingly beautiful along the 15. I expected Montana to really win the scenery sweepstakes, but it had nothing on southern Idaho.
Lemme tell ya' a little something about Great Falls, Montana. The Bassett suggested that we go downtown to find a place to eat. But as far as I could tell, downtown had just been hit by one of those space-age nuclear warheads that doesn't destroy any buildings but shuts off all the power and disintegrates all living things. I mean, the place looked like a ghost town. I had no idea where I was going, and no one to ask for directions. No cars, no nothing. I felt like putting on a dress and running through town carrying a shotgun and the head of a local mutant I found charred by the side of the road while searching for the juice. So we get to the address of a restaurant. I'm skeptical that we'll find anything but corpses inside. But no! As soon as we open the door, we realize that this place is jumping! There's an irish band playing, people are singing along, beer is flowing liberally. We order buffalo burgers. Who knew? One minute, you're convinced that it's Red Dawn, another you're singing along to some sea chantys over a patty made from the hide of a near-endangered species! What fun!
Took off in the morning for the Canadian border. The funniest part of the trip was seeing a father and son in a motercycle and sidecar combo. The pass through the border was fairly unproblematic. I got myself a temporary worker's permit, and there I was, in Canada. Which, if you're driving through Alberta, is one of the most boring places on Earth.
Trip lessons: Las Vegas: fun. Tom Jones: pantiless. Dale-at-gambling: so-so. Wodehouse: excellent. Great Falls, Montana: possibly supernatural.
It takes quite a while to drive from San Diego, California to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T5K 1P4. That's for damn sure. If you don't believe me, just try it yourself. Somewhere in the middle of Utah you'll realize that you're in for one whale of a trip.
So the Bassett and I started out on a Tuesday. The plan was to make it to Las Vegas by lunchtime, and begin our little two-day mini-vacation. The trip up to Vegas was surprisingly pleasant, in retrospect. We had planned on making use of some of the various audiobooks we had obtained, and the first day was taken up with a substantial bit of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Which I must say I enjoyed more than she did. It was read by the author, however, so that was a nice touch. It was a mite creepy, however. After all, the guy's dead.
It's a funny thing, driving to Las Vegas. It's basically driving five hours through solid desert. Only occasionally, surrounded on all sides by the desert, is a sprawling patch of green, some golf course, or some planned retirement community. The first thing that going to Vegas does is make you realize how ridiculous some of the developments are in terms of water use. Yikes.
Anyway, you'll know when you're in Nevada. No kidding. Here's you. You're driving in the car passing the Nevada/California line right....now. To your left and right you will see two gigantic casinos, with three more in the distance. They don't look all that glitzy, but they sure are huge. And I'm not kidding. Literally, I think the casino floor ends about 16 inches from the California border.
Finally, after passing more desert, and even more signs for various crappy magicians you could see at the Monte Carlo, you arrive in Vegas. I have to say, driving on the 15, I was less than totally impressed. I expected to be blown away as soon as I got into town, you know, "Vegas, baby, Vegas!" But it wasn't like that at all. Mostly it was a bunch of urban sprawl that eventually led you toward a biggish town, that eventually led you to some hotels on your right. Didn't blow me away.
That is, until we got off the interstate, and on to Las Vegas Boulevard. We exited on Tropicana, which is at the south end of the strip, intent on driving the strip on our way up to our hotel, the Sahara, which is at the north end. Really, these things are huge. These hotels, I mean, wow. The first one we saw was New York, New York. And jeezus, it is really gigantic. Roller costers, huge towers, impressive. The MGM Grand is across the street, and, well, despite being the largest casino, is somewhat less towering than NY, NY. Driving up, you eventually see all the famous ones, including the new Wynn, which has, I must say, rather gorgeous architecture. Finally, we got to the Sahara (and I do mean finally, because it took us about a half and hour to go 3 miles on the strip). We got our room number, and decided to go for lunch. We knew we wanted to have lunch at the Hofbrauhaus, which I knew was over by the MGM Grand. So we decided to take the Vegas monorail to the MGM, go to lunch, go back to the MGM to pick up our show tickets for that night, and then head back to the Sahara.
Boy, when things go wrong.
So we get to the MGM. We walk out. I hadn't really gotten a whiff of the Vegas heat just yet. But it was big. BIG HEAT. It must have been something like 110 degrees. But, according to the map that I saw, the Hofbrauhaus was just right behind the MGM, so I figured, it'd be a hot walk, but short. Boy was I wrong. We're walking along Tropicana Avenue, or Boulevard, or whatever, and we are finding that, well, we don't see any Hofbrauhaus. There's a cross-street. No beer steins. I ask the gas station attendant, he points me further east. So we keep walking. And walking. And walking. Basically, we walked at least two miles in the punishing heat, not knowing precisely where we were going, because apparently, the HBH is nowhere NEAR the back of the MGM Grand. Finally we get there, drenched in sweat, and tired as hell. Red-faced. Keeling over from heat-stroke. Nothing cures that like a liter of beer, which we drank liberally, along with some decent saurkraut and sausage. So, I have to say, on this trip to Edmonton, things started off badly.
But they got better. We took a cab back to the MGM, got the tickets, and went back to the Sahara on the monorail. We just relaxed for a few hours, I paid a few bills, and then we took the monorail again to the MGM. Got out, and looked for dinner. Ate at the Wolfgang Puck grill, made it to the theatre and took in Tom Jones.
Tom Jones.
Wow. What a show! It was in a really small theatre, and we were close to the front. To be honest, it took him a few songs to really get into gear, but when he did, it sounded like his voice hadn't aged a day since 1964. Basically it was a rundown of his hits with a few newer things mixed in. He did "Delilah", "You Can Leave Your Hat On", and a bunch of others. He didn't do "Thunderball," though, at which I was disappointed. Brought the house down with "Kiss" as the finale. It was basically an hour and a half. Good show. A decided lack of panties, however. Oh well. One thing I could have done without was his encore kickoff, "I Like the Way You Move." You know. That song from all the commercials? Eh, but I guess you have to keep the material fresh for the younguns. And by that I mean young people, not young guns.
After the MGM, we went to New York, NY and had a little pizza. The Bassett played some video poker. I had some drinks. We eventually headed back to the Sahara, and more drinks and some gambling. I dropped 20 bucks at the craps table.
The next day we took in the strip. Here is a rundown of the casinos we saw:
Harrah's
The Venitian
The Mirage
Caeser's Palace
The Bellagio
Monte Carlo (where I won 37 bucks playing craps. Apparently, I am the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.)
Paris
We also went back to NY, NY for a few drinks and some appetizers. We then proceeded to Paris, where we hung out and gambled a little (I won 10 bucks each at Roulette and Blackjack). We ate dinner at their buffet (which was really cool), and hung out in a piano bar for awhile. The piano bar basically consisted of two dudes with prop baby-grand pianos and circa-1990 keyboards set on top of what would have been the keyboard were it a real piano. (Pointer dudes, real pianos don't come with pitch and mod wheels.) But I forced them to play "Suffregette City" and "Carry On Wayward Son." They only screwed up about 25% of the songs. I was saving the serious gambling for the Sahara, because they apparently have the best gambling on the Strip. If by "best" you mean, "fastest at which I lose money," you're basically right. I started off playing craps, and won about $25 bucks, but lost back $50 at a different table. Lost $15 at Let it Ride, but made a bit back moving to craps. Basically, I broke even for the trip, which was nice, considering I figured I'd lose about $100.
After that gambling spree, the sleaze of Vegas was catching up to us. So we hit the Mandalay Bay breakfast buffett on our way out of town, and they kissed Vegas goodbye. It was an enjoyable stay for the most part. If you get a chance to see Tom Jones, I say do it.
Driving that day was through the rest of Nevada, some of Arizona, and Utah. To be quite honest with you, there was basically nothing particularly remarkable about the drive. Some mountains, I guess. But I expected hairpin turns. I expected to have to dodge gigantic boulders. I expected to run right off the freeway, use my car's moonroof to somehow simulate a parachute and inform the Bassett at the bottom that I'm a loner, baby. A REBEL.. None of that happened. I honestly can't remember where we stopped for lunch, even. The best part of that day was listening to "Right Ho, Jeeves" on the old iPod. A really, really great story. Absolutely hilarious. I recommend it in every possible dimension. As audiobooks go, I don't think you'll find a better one.
Ogden, Utah that night. The next day, pushing on through Idaho to Great Falls, Montana. That drive was actually quite nice. Idaho is surprisingly beautiful along the 15. I expected Montana to really win the scenery sweepstakes, but it had nothing on southern Idaho.
Lemme tell ya' a little something about Great Falls, Montana. The Bassett suggested that we go downtown to find a place to eat. But as far as I could tell, downtown had just been hit by one of those space-age nuclear warheads that doesn't destroy any buildings but shuts off all the power and disintegrates all living things. I mean, the place looked like a ghost town. I had no idea where I was going, and no one to ask for directions. No cars, no nothing. I felt like putting on a dress and running through town carrying a shotgun and the head of a local mutant I found charred by the side of the road while searching for the juice. So we get to the address of a restaurant. I'm skeptical that we'll find anything but corpses inside. But no! As soon as we open the door, we realize that this place is jumping! There's an irish band playing, people are singing along, beer is flowing liberally. We order buffalo burgers. Who knew? One minute, you're convinced that it's Red Dawn, another you're singing along to some sea chantys over a patty made from the hide of a near-endangered species! What fun!
Took off in the morning for the Canadian border. The funniest part of the trip was seeing a father and son in a motercycle and sidecar combo. The pass through the border was fairly unproblematic. I got myself a temporary worker's permit, and there I was, in Canada. Which, if you're driving through Alberta, is one of the most boring places on Earth.
Trip lessons: Las Vegas: fun. Tom Jones: pantiless. Dale-at-gambling: so-so. Wodehouse: excellent. Great Falls, Montana: possibly supernatural.
posted by dd0031 at 1:17 PM
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