Las Vegas

Vegas gets stranger each time I go there. 

This time the town was a buzz over a hotel fire. The roof of the Monte Carlo set on fire, and did some pretty ugly damage to the top of the façade on one side of the hotel (no, we didn’t stay there). Everyone was evacuated, the hotel was closed, guests were sent to other hotels and couldn’t get most of their stuff until two days afterward.  Luxury cars had debris from the fire melt their roofs, and Lance Burton had to cancel his shows. It was tragedy all over. Of course a few people were hospitalized, none except one seriously, but people were inconvenienced, which makes for sensationalized newscasts all over. The pictures of the annoyed old ladies that were forced to leave her lucky slot machines were just devastating. The worst of it though is Lance Burton can't go on for another month.  What will Vegas do? 

My big thrill was seeing the Starsky and Hutch car on proud display at the Automotive Collections exhibition at the Imperial Palace. You remember, the freakin’ orange and white striped Ford Gran Torino that flew on LA side streets sporting two guys with bad sideburns, out of control hair, ugly turtlenecks, loud shirts, and hideous polyester pants. The car where Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller did a remake so they could actually ride in the thing. So cool!

Oh, and Herbie is there too, but once I saw the disturbing sight of Lindsay Lohan behind the wheel in the remake a few weeks ago, Herbie all of a sudden made me nauseous. For someone who grew up in Detroit surrounded by classic American cars, this place was too cool for me. There were a lot of great cars there, including the family car of Johnny Carson, but I was too blown away by the car that looked like an actual 70’s acid trip. Sorry Supernatural fans, no Chevy Impalas.

Teller speaks! This was our second time seeing Penn and Teller, and I always wondered if Teller’s silent act (you know, the short one) was always a charade, but this was confirmed for me when he went to a volunteer in the audience right in front of us and started giving him verbal instructions. His voice was actually pleasant to listen to. Mystery solved.

The Palazza. Yet another over the top monument to excess and luxury that so defines our country. Geez, who the hell are they trying to impress? Just what Vegas needs, another luxury hotel with statues of goddesses (aka naked women with class), extravagant marble columns, lush indoor gardens and fountains, another no-win for cheapos casino and hi-falootin shops that most of us require a second mortgage to afford. Coach only needs to sell one purse a day and they stay in business. Wasn’t the Venetian, Trump, Bellagio, Wynn, Palms, and Mandalay Bay enough? How about the fact every single hotel also offers luxury suites and extra ass kissing for high rollers? Do rich people only go to Vegas now? Even my yard of margarita cost me $21 a piece now. The days of the dollar margarita are gone.

Then we heard the tragic tale of a bimbo shortage. Vegas is running out of bimbos to hire. Our cabbie on the way to the hotel told us how his wife had to go back to work and they were having a hard time finding a sitter. The place she works has been closed down for a month for renovation. Of course, he goes on to reveal she’s the manager of a topless bar, running it for an old man that considers her a daughter since his son died of a drug overdose. The hiring plan is simple, the old man picks women with the best ta-tas (his words, not mine) and it’s up to his wife to weed them out if they don’t have the right work ethic.

Needless to say, none of them are working out and they are having a hard time finding good help. Yes, tough times for titty bars in Vegas. I saw this fact supported when we went to a new Irish pub in the hotel we were staying at. The bar had been open a week and was staffed with skinny girls wearing skimpy tank tops, short shirts, and fuzzy black boots (no, I didn’t get it either). We looked at the bar and saw what was on tap. We ordered a Leinenkugel. Two girls took our order and both didn’t understand, looking at us like we were German or something. “The Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat, the stuff on that blue tap there.” Both bewildered girls went to the bartender asking if they had such a beer. We saw the guy slap his forehead, and we wondered how he would work out in the skimpy outfit. I wouldn’t object if it got me the beer I wanted. After all, what happens in Vegas, oh, you get the point. 

The Journey Home

Part 1 - Houston International airport

Our travel to Vegas was non-eventful, so this chronicles the adventure back.

Given my husband’s frequent flyer miles with Delta, all accumulated because of a multitude of meaningless business trips he had to take to Atlanta for his now ex-employer, we got a deal to get two free tickets to Vegas. Ah, but there was a rub. You had to fly through Houston International, and you had to fly Continental. Yes, Delta was dumping their unwanted baggage on another airline. Now I see why. They want you to appreciate how much better they really are.

It’s so hard to believe that at one point Continental was a bankrupt airline (heavy sarcasm here). Glad to see they’ve learned what it takes to survive. For example:

State of the art scheduling: Do the math. A plane arrives from Los Angeles, marked on the arrivals board as ON TIME at 7:37 pm. Another flight is scheduled to take off at that same gate at 7:45 for Columbus, Ohio. Unless they are good at breaking land/speed records for unloading and loading passengers and baggage (Star Trek beaming comes to mind), then it’s likely that the flight to Columbus is not leaving on time. How do they get away with this type of scheduling? Granted we weren’t the only ones a little miffed. A pilot, who arrived supposedly on-time, was a little appalled by this turn of developments and sat in the lobby in a snit. Too bad no one cared.

Top notch customer service: At the same gate, two Continental employees loading a very large flight to Philadelphia made their last call repeatedly, knowing that a couple of passengers were missing and a jet from Los Angeles wanted the space.  Finally, last call for the last time was made (after five last calls) and they closed the door. No more than 30 seconds later, a man comes running at fast speed, completely out of breath, explaining his connecting flight was late. Even though he was one of the missing passengers, one of these customer-focused clerks (the other went through the gate to deliver the manifest) unapologetically wouldn’t let him on the plane, or even make a call on his behalf, staring at her computer screen with a “deer in the headlights” type glare. He protested, but finally was sent over to another customer service desk. Five minutes later, a woman in Continental uniform came running over with the man behind her and opened the gate while these two ladies stared at her like she was some sort of renegade on a suicide mission. Sadly, the plane started backing out of the gateway, and Continental had to find this guy a new flight. The so called renegade trying to help gave these two women the what for, and these women stood at their desk afterward, in front of passengers waiting for a poorly scheduled Columbus flight, bitching about how out of line she was. I really, really hope that man got scheduled on another airline, like Delta maybe?

The Houston airport:  I whipped open my laptop, check for wireless networks, and found there aren’t any free ones. NO FREE WIFI. Even piddly little Port Columbus has free WIFI. I knew Texans were a little simple minded (so my mother says anyway), but living in the dark ages?? That’s behavior solely reserved for Ohioans dammit. I feel like there’s been some sort of trademark infringement. Then, in the worst type of torture possible, there are monitors everywhere showing nothing but a clamoring Wolf Blitzer filling needless airtime with his grating voice over results of the Florida primary like it was the true Presidential election. After that, I really wish it was. Let Hillary Clinton or John McCain be my president for all I care, if it gets Wolf to go away. That was when I hit the “kill me now” portion of my visit to Texas. Ever hear the quote, “If owed hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in hell?” I get it now.

As I waited, there were three clerks now over there bitching about the customer service mishap, Wolf Blitzer wouldn’t shut up, one very annoyed pilot was sitting across from me getting more pissed off the longer he waited.  This was one of the dudes that’s getting me home, AND- wait for it – no plane from LA yet.

Part 2 – We actually got to fly

Eventually, the flight did take off, about a half hour later than expected. Why so quickly? They had a rather large plane and few passengers, so loading was effortless. Nope, there is not an influx of people flying at 8PM Central time on a Tuesday evening from Houston to Columbus on a crappy airline. I know I was shocked too.

However, despite the light load, the efficient computer system still crammed everyone together. We got on board, and laughed along with everyone else to find a majority of the passengers were all seated in threes on the left side of the plane. The right side had maybe five people. Luckily, a stewardess figured out that uneven weight distribution on an airplane might be bad and allowed people to move. My husband and I got to have a three seat area all to ourselves, with no one in front of us and only one person behind. Not bad, considering our entertainment choices (more on that in a minute).

We spent so much time taxiing (is that a word?) on the runway I thought we had driven halfway to Columbus. Of course, that kicked off a Scrubs like fantasy sequence in my mind. Pilot announces it’s faster to drive, pulls out onto freeway, adjusts the mirrors, fires up the jets and off we go in turbo charged mania, blowing cars off the road one after another.

I brought my laptop, and on my iTunes I had some TV episodes of some of our favorite shows. Considering no one was around us, we felt it rather appropriate to watch the Supernatural episode, “Phantom Traveler”. That’s the episode from season 1 where a demon possesses people and crashes planes. We found the humor ironic. Come on, hasn’t anyone seen Airplane before? (One of my favorite all time films). They watched an in-flight movie about a plane crash (Airport I think).

Anyway, we thought it was pretty cute until we approached Columbus. The pilot turned on the seat belt sign and said that there were wind gusts of 35 mph in Central Ohio and the ride in would be a little bumpy. All I’m thinking is, “They allow planes to land in this weather?” We were lost in thick rain clouds for about 25 minutes, and then we emerged with the winds tossing us around like the plastic bag in that scene from American Beauty (okay, it wasn’t that dramatic. Just really bumpy). I was all of a sudden thinking serves me right for tempting fate. We landed fine though, so I guess pissed off pilot had something to fight his ire.

We lost our right to complain about our long day of travel though when we ran into a guy on the shuttle bus to the parking lot. He was supposed to be in Columbus half a day ago. He took off from Springfield, IL and was supposed to go to Chicago then Columbus, but his plane got diverted to St. Louis because of the bad weather. There were no flights from St. Louis to Columbus, so he ended up flying to Washington DC and then Columbus. He could have driven faster.

Anyway, that’s my travel adventures in a nutshell. Vegas once again prove to be an adventure. If anyone has a bad travel story to share, or wants to comment general, all thoughts are welcome!