Vegas Baby! (Part 2)

We awoke Thursday and agreed that before we left we should poke our heads in a casino one more time. Neither one of us had placed a bet, and I didn't want to leave Vegas without spending even a couple of minutes at a blackjack table. We packed up the car, checked out of the hotel and made our way to New York New York where I quickly found a ten dollar minimum bet table (there were no five dollar tables just then). It was just the dealer and me, and as soon as I sat down the magic started happening. I was bulletproof, and eating the dealer's hands for breakfast. 19...20...21, it seemed I couldn't lose. The pit boss walked over and stared for a few hands and a small group of people stood over my shoulder and watched. (This is might be a little cooler in my head than it actually was, but please don't burst my bubble). I was at the table for less than ten minutes before I knew it was time to leave, but when I did I had turned my $10 bet into over sixty bucks. Sixty bucks which I felt I had a civic duty to reinvest in the local economy, what with the current financial climate and all.

"Hey Sarah, what do you think rooms cost here?"

Once I factored in my new riches, we could stay at New York New York for about ten bucks, plus get a free room upgrade courtesy of my two-years expired CAA card (shhhh). Things were turning around for us in Sin City, as in the period of a couple of hours we had gone from unimpressed passersby with our car pointed out of town, to energized revelers sipping Coronas poolside. We were living large on our sixty bucks, and looking forward to a night on the town. We got sucked in, and were loving every second of it.

We briefly looked for show tickets in the afternoon, but we were a little naive in our expectations, price-wise. Unless we wanted to see a never-was magician on the downside of his career, we'd be looking at spending well into triple figures between the two of us to see a decent show. We figured that walking the strip, having dinner and maybe gambling a little bit would be a much more sensible way to spend money we don't have.

Putting on our cleanest dirty clothes from the back of the car, we emerged from our room at 9:30 and the strip was in full effect, with the daytime tourists making their final rounds and the nocturnal carousers starting to emerge from the woodwork. We saw the water show in front of the Bellagio (because water is so abundant in the desert that they can just throw it around), a fire show somewhere else and talked to Elvis impersonators as we walked. Dinner was a late one, and it was nearing midnight when we were ready to have some drinks and do some gambling with full bellies. We were getting a little sleepy, though, and in perilous danger of fading away before making guaranteed financial gains at blackjack. Luckily, a quick swing by the convenience store in New York New York for a couple of tall boy cans of Miller Genuine Draft fixed that up, and feeling brave I went back to the tables.

I found another ten dollar table, pulled twenty bucks out of my pocket and went to work. My luck from the afternoon seemed to be continuing (except for the hand where I split aces, drew another ace, split again, and ended up with a push and two losses when the dealer drew 21) and I was feeling good. I was up as much as sixty bucks on the night (the magic number) but ended up losing twenty of that, so I was up forty bucks when I stepped away. We had an awesome night altogether, cruising the casino floor, making generous new friends, playing a hand or two at a time and, well, being in Vegas. I went to bed at four o'clock, but only because I felt that I had to. I had lost all sense of time (what happens in Vegas is carefully orchestrated by the people who run the casinos) and really didn't feel like slowing down. It was time to cash in, though, and by the time we factored in Sarah's winnings the next morning (when she played her first ever hands of blackjack), and my $1.50 windfall on a Price Is Right-themed slot machine, we were up about $140 at the casinos when all was said and done (although admittedly most of that never left town, and of course I would not be so proudly crunching my gambling numbers had we not enjoyed so much dumb luck).

I have a lot of issues with Las Vegas. It really is a ridiculous city - a paradoxical beacon of overindulgence in the middle of the desert. Even for those who don't gamble, drink or overeat (and why else would you go to Vegas, really?), simply turning on the tap is an exercise in the unsustainable, and Vegas as a whole is a metaphor for North American short-sightedness if their ever was one.

But my biggest issue with Las Vegas is how much I enjoyed it. Sure, I'll hike into the backcountry, sit in the woods and read for hours or even days on end and feel a deep inner calm, self-awareness and interconnectedness with the world around me, but damned if I don't feel alive when you put a tall boy can in my left hand and a stack of chips in my right. I remain annoyed with the toll that Vegas takes on the Southwest's water supply, and the unrealistic culture of consequence-free consumption that it seeks to promote and proliferate, but my personal turmoil lies in the fact that I'm already trying to rationalize my next trip.

Pleasure is Vegas's business, and they are good at it. They know exactly what buttons to push and how much of Pandora's Box to show you in order to rope you in, and it is all at your fingertips 24 hours a day. If we hadn't been able to gamble early in the day before we had planned to leave town, or buy cheap alcohol late at night from a convenience store in our hotel, we would not have spent as much money there as we did (which really wasn't a lot, even if it was more than we had planned), and wouldn't be talking about a return trip. Like six year-olds drawn to the cereal box with the coolest picture on it, we both fell for the inauthentic and fleeting satisfaction provided by a blindingly bright and placeless landscape.

Moderation is not something that you think of when Las Vegas is mentioned, but if I tell myself that future visits can be as budget-friendly and freakin' awesome as my first one was, perhaps I can justify poking my head in again at some point down the road. If anyone cares to come along, I'll buy the first round of tall boys.

Peace,

Hart

Vegas Baby? (Part 1)

The morning after our late-night brush with megafauna we were at a slight crossroad. We could either head back into California - possibly as far as the coast - and look for jobs, or continue the trip by heading to points east. Heading east would mean going at least as far as Grand Canyon in northern Arizona, and after a bit of head scratching we figured that we would be foolish not to take advantage of the chance to extend things a little bit. Plus, we would have to drive right through Vegas on the way, meaning we could cruise down the strip once just to say we did it.

On our way to Vegas and Grand Canyon we spent two restful nights at the Grover Hot Springs State Park. Located at elevation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the park has naturally fed mineral hot pools in the midst of a mountain meadow, which make for a soothing cap off to any day. We had a great site - on a bluff overlooking the park, with dense forests behind us - and deer would wander through our living area at dusk. It was almost over-the-top idyllic. After two days there where we didn't do much other than relax, we were headed to Grand Canyon, via Sin City.

The drive through the interior of Nevada is, well, depressing. If Vegas is the city that made it big gambling, then the small towns you have to pass through to get there are the ones who got addicted and lost everything. Boarded up businesses seem to outnumber those that are still clinging to operation, there are rows of slot machines crammed into every dingy convenience store, and I half expected to see tumbleweed instead of locals whenever we stopped for gas or food. All of this isolation and hardship is all the more pronounced when contrasted with a destination that is renowned for the way that people and money flow through its revolving doors at a mind boggling rate.

We pulled onto Las Vegas Boulevard ("the strip") just after dark on a Wednesday (June 10th), much to the shock of our wilderness-oriented systems (our time in L.A. and San Francisco notwithstanding). The lights were flashing, the music was blaring and the sidewalks seemed to be one continuous line of people, three abreast, on either side of the street. We weren't sure that time in Vegas would be to the enjoyment of either one of us, but it was getting late and we managed to find a modestly priced Travelodge in the heart of the strip, so we pulled in for the night. (While we paid a nightly rate at the Travelodge, there were enterprising young women in short skirts spending time in the parking lot and going in and out of rooms with a frequency which would indicate the inn might have had some sort of hourly special that night, but I digress).

After showers we cruised the strip, a daunting task in and of itself. Single resort/casinos take up entire blocks, so passing by only a few of them can take a while when you factor in the slow-moving pedestrian traffic. Added to that is the fact that they are all mazes on the inside (deliberately, of course) so "Let's go into the MGM to grab something to drink" can quickly turn into a forty minute side trip into a labyrinth of indulgence. New York New York looked inviting enough, so we wandered in just to spend a little time on the floor of a casino.

We were wearily making our way across the floor, both acknowledging that we probably weren't in the right frame of mind for a Vegas trip, when I heard "Hart? Hart Shouldice? Is that you?" Turning around and drawing a brief blank I saw an acquaintance from my days at school in New Brunswick. It was as surprising as it was comforting to see someone who had been a friend years ago so far from the last place we had been in contact. He was there with his girlfriend and another couple, also from our alma mater (Mount Allison University), and we had a pleasant though brief catchup. They were on their way to Utah for some hiking the next day, so we wished them well and continued our dazed meander, as I extolled to Sarah for the billionth time the virtues of going to a small school with a well-defined sense of community and a warm social network that an alumnus never seems to be far from.

The strip was too much to take, plain and simple, so we headed back to the Travelodge, looking forward to Grand Canyon the next day.