Advertisement
Published: September 22nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
American Breakfast TV
After being hooked onto a documentary about Hurricane Katrina on TV, i wanted to see if there was anything else decent on TV...and look what i came across! Thank God for midday check out! I wasn’t hungover, or tired from sleep. It was a nice day outside and man, did I feel good. The weekend was ahead, with one major highlight - Las Vegas, baby!
The airport shuttle was on time and was very efficient, if efficiency can be defined at driving 130km/h down the highway to the airport. I wasn’t in a rush anyway since my plane didn’t leave until the afternoon so I had plenty of time to scout out for more souvenirs. I found an awesome Dorothy snowdome for my sister, which I had to leave behind at the security gate thanks to the TSA regulations.
I had to change planes at Denver’s airport. This is considered the main hub of America’s air network. As soon as I got off the plane from KC, I sent a few emails home and emailed everyone a slight change in my itinerary. It wasn’t long before I heard the final call for my connecting flight to Las Vegas, which resulted in a mad dash for a gate I had no idea where it was. Of course, I went in the wrong direction and then I had
to run back in the opposite direction, all the way to the other end of the huge terminal.
I just made the plane and found that on TED (United’s budget carrier), my Mileage Plus status meant that I enjoyed economy plus seats on this plane I have to say, I was tempted to take advantage of Economy Plus from SYD-SFO but for $169, I can’t justify the extra 30cm that was barely noticeable today as opposed to every other flight I’ve been on.
We flew over the Rocky Mountains and then made our descent overlooking the desert surrounding Las Vegas. It really is an oasis of this desert, where dreams can be realised and hearts broken with the roll of a dice; the city of bright lights and hopefully great times. It is the modern day equivalent of the gold rush and now I was going to be making a trip there to test my fortunes. Brooke and her Contiki busload of friends were there too and they were probably there for the same reasons I was - to get drunk and have a really great time.
The plane did a horseshoe in its holding pattern as
it did a huge oval over Las Vegas. On our descent, we could start making out the individual casinos. The first one that was easy to spot was The Luxor, complete with pyramids and sphinxes out the front. Also in sight was the Stratosphere, which put Seattle’s Space Needle back in the toy box - THIS was a real tower. I wonder if the views would be as good at night as they were when flying in.
The airport itself looked like a big casino with billboards everywhere advertising shows and huge TV screens doing the same thing. It was 6pm and sure the sun was still up but there is no evidence of actual sunlight inside here, just a bombardment of illumination. This parallel world I was trapped in was further exacerbated when it took 40 minutes to get my bags! With so many people (including Rob Zombie) flying here for the weekend, I could only sit and wait for my bags to finally come.
Brooke told me to go to her hotel lobby and tell them my surname, her room number and that everything would be fine. I should have told Brooke that it didn’t matter
what her surname was; if everything would go to drunken plan, we would have the same surname by the end of the weekend! The guy behind the desk in the lobby gave me a hard time but when his co-worker overheard us, everything was smoothed out and it was off to room 127.
Baz settled down with Brooke’s bear friend Grae Bear and the pair of them wasted no time getting…wasted! Meanwhile, I had lunch/dinner at Coco’s (the name of the diner that serves the hotel) and when I came back, the two bears were blind drunk! It’s a miracle that they passed out before the Contiki bus got back, Baz in his drunken state would have sexually harassed the girls on board otherwise!
I turned on the news in the hotel room and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the Weather Channel. 31 tornadoes had made their way through the Midwest and dumped rain in Indiana and Tennessee. Most of the tornadoes had been in Kansas State, which was out of Ginny’s way. At the same time, I was glad that I was out of harm’s way by flying out this afternoon, oblivious to the
Tropicana Ave
Where the ladies at! danger that could have been coming my way!
I fell asleep in front of the TV but was woken up by text messages from back home. It was my birthday back in Oz and it would be my birthday here, tomorrow. 25, in style.
Summary
KC - Denver - Las Vegas: 1158 miles
Total American Miles: 5478 miles
Total: 12898 miles
Advertisement
Tot: 0.222s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0683s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb