TR Snippet-Plane trip to Vegas

It is incredible to me that I can be awake and totally refreshed at 5 AM just as I am every single day at home. How does my body know it is 5 AM here in Vegas? And what am I doing awake and refreshed after playing poker and other assorted games until almost 3AM?

But here I am ready to go find some breakfast.

The plane ride was a mixture of delightful napping ease and long and tortuous noise. I had fine seats. On the way to Chicago I was alone in my row and from there to Vegas I had a delightful traveling companion, a twenty year old Filipino girl who now lives in Chicago, but has lived in Texas and in Vegas. She works in financial services selling investments. She was friendly and perky, and we were good companions. We knew when to stop talking and grab some quiet time and some sleep.

Which is more than the folks behind me knew. Two raspy voiced women spent the entire journey interrupting each other with there intense raspy voices and shouting over each other simultaneously about every nasty bit of gossip they could remember or create concerning their mutual women friends. These women were from Chicago as well, but they were annoying and the one who had so misued her voice over her thirty some years of life that the nodules in her throat had been erased was the worst. She broke into my naps and day dreamin.

A twenty sometime sat in the end seat next to them and his bud sat in another end seat one row up and just across the isle from me. This spiked haired too full of himself spent much of the trip shouting to his pal who behind me and that shouting was just about two feet from my right ear. It made we wonder whether my desire to sit near the rear so as to easily get to the lavatory was a wise decision after all.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not interested in sports. Well, these two knew every single fact about every baseball and hockey player and applied those facts in the way sports talkers do, with the hidden theme that as well as the factual trivia, they speakers knew exactly what should be done by each player, his coach, the team manager, the people who designed stadiums. And if reality was not enough, they also had plenty to say about exactly how to design and play fantasy baseball teams. It was awful for me. Son Dan may have like this banter, but I suspect even with his interest in such topics, his patience with the volume and tone would have annoyed him as well.

The kid next to me sucked alcohol as if he was not going to Vegas and drink all night at clubs. His diction was well spiced with “awesome!” and “dude” and even “rock on” which I thought someone had made up for the old Rocky character in the Brit sit com “As Time Goes By.” I can't imagine anyone in the aircraft liked this crowd, but we were quiet about it.

And then the four of them, the know it all boys and the raspy voiced women, found that they had some Chicago DePaul University athletic director in common and gushed on about her and everyone they might know in that network or in greater Chicago. The women, who may have been trying to pick up these young boys for a bit of a Vegas fling, invited them to some sporting Chicago social event where this athletic director would be accessible and the thought of meeting here had them fawning “thank yous” until the whole thing annoyed me. Once I went to the bathroom just for some peace and quiet and I stayed a bit longer than I needed to. In fact, I wished I could ride the rest of the route in the bathroom.

Conversation shifted. Now it went to proud militancy and the women's outrage against some young people the women knew who must have had some anti military attitudes. Well, they raked those kids over the coals for a while. It seems the fellow behind me was in the military, probably the guard, and so the women who were trying to get in good with the boys gushed and fawned and vented outrage and wound this fellow up so he went into a long Rush Limbo rant celebrating everything Bush did, justifying Iraq, and comparing our need to go to battle in Iraq it to the need to fight the Japanese and the Nazis.

I tolerated his rant better than the rest of the dribble because he had been in Iraq, I guess as part of a National Guard or Reserve unit. It is hard to go to was and come home and know that it just was a stupid war. Most everyone else agrees with that now, even conservatives who still supported it when there was no weapons of mass destruction.

I think at one point I actually heard old raspy voice say this would not be over until Sadam was dead. I suppose she meant Osama. Did she know the difference?

So I was going nuts and it was very hard to sleep. In the back it was endless repetitions of “Oh, my God!” and “ I am NOT kidding” while next to me was “awesome” and “duuude”

Later at the baggage claim I was again next to these young guys and they were trashing those two women they treated like new found best friends on the plane. What hypocrites! This was same guy who had told them he'd buy them mimosas all night if the slow river at the MGM was working ( the women managed to give the boys their phone number by asking if they would check to see the status of the slow river for them)

The sweet Filipino girl did sleep some. She brought her plug in music and that must have helped. I was jealous. At the drink break, she gave me an empanada her sister had made and I enjoyed it. She had a huge bag of them on route as a gift to her family/friends in Vegas. I was on her good side as soon as I mentioned some of the Filipino dishes that Bernadette's family makes. I think I won the day with ponsit.

The car rental went smoothly. I have the cheapest little Kia because I have it rented for almost a month. $597 at Alamo. I had to initial and sign my life away. I am personally responsible for this car and they won't bill my insurance company or my credit card. I think there is an Alamo rack where if there is any damage, they stretch you until you pay up. I hate car rentals.

The GPS took me the expressway to downtown and that was fairly easy. I would not have taken the expressway at night without it. Traffic was light, but there was some road construction that made lane decisions difficult. The GPS taught me a better exit than the one I use at Main Street Station. To get to El Cortez it is better to take the second downtown exit and end up right on LV Blvd.

Check in was a breeze and after a shower and change of clothes I was playing poker again at my favorite table. The floor person and Albert the dealer greeted me by name. I knew over half the players at the two tables and remembered how they played as well. So when the tough aggressive guy who took me down when I played with Keith last year joined the table of already very good players, I moved to the other table. It was a good move too.