The drive down and Day One...

I can't really start this without talking about some of the stuff that happened in the previous day that led up to the long drive down to Vegas.
I worked the night shift the Saturday night to Sunday morning, then came home and slept for a few hours. When I got up, I finished Mario's computer, then went over to his place to set it up and install his wireless networking. When I left there, I went over to Jimmie's place and picked him up. We went over to his parents' house to get some luggage that he could use for the trip. While there, it came out that he didn't have his birth certificate or a passport. That could get tricky getting across the border. You could tell that he was a bit down in the dumps at this point. His mom said that she would check their safety deposit box the next day and give me a call if she found anything (she didn't). After I dropped him back off at his place to pack, I went back home to pick up Lynette's computer and brought it over to her place so I could finish setting it up there. I didn't leave there until around midnight. Back over to Jimmie's to pick up his suitcases of clothes. Geez! He packs like a girl. A change of clothes for every day that he going to be there. Hehehe... Back home around 2am to start work on Allice's cropping and resizing of her boobie pictures so that she can show her surgeon the healing process. I'm dying by 2:30am so I crash. In the morning, I make up a spiffy checklist for the stuff I need to bring to Vegas. That chews up too much of my remaining, very valuable time. I get back to work on Allice's pictures. In order to get them to her, I decide to make them into a quick and dirty website. That way, she can just giver her surgeon the web address and not have to worry about bringing him a disk, etc. Then I still have to pack... Jimmie calls a couple times during the day. With the second call, we decide that it'd be better if he catches the skytrain to Braid station and I'll just pick him up there. This is awesome because it gives me an extra 30 minutes. I pack all my clothes (even some dirty ones that I didn't get a chance to wash - they'll have to be done in Vegas), pack the car, go to the bank to deposit all of my vacation fund and take out 300 US, go to Superstore to deposit the $200 I made the day before from Mario and Lynette, get the last of my hygiene supplies, then go pick up Jimmie at Braid station. Sounds simple. It could have been. They're doing construction at Superstore, so half of the parking lot is roped off. Their gas station had gas on for 79.9, so there was a long line-up of cars that was barely moving - the line I was in btw. I finally get in to Superstore and when I'm at the cash, the guy in front of me decides to count out his pennies. Even the cashier looked ready to throttle him. I leave Superstore to go get Jimmie. Literally, it should only be a two minute drive. About 10 minutes in, I still hadn't made it to the first set of traffic lights. I try to call Jimmie on his cell phone, but he's talking to someone else so it goes straight to his voice mail. Almost 10 minutes later I'm driving by the small pickup truck that had an engine fire and subsequently had blocked off an entire lane of traffic (during rush hour build-up time) with its melted front end and the firetruck that came to put it out. I don't get to pick up Jimmie until almost quarter to 5, then we head for the border.
We stop at a Chevron before the border so I can buy my Super7 tickets. Hey, it's 35 million. While we're there, we see this awesome Rand McNally road atlas for Canada and the US. It's a bit pricey, but we get it anyway. I used to have one before and they're great. We go over the border at the truck crossing, following the travel plan I printed out from Mapquest. The border guard asked up for proof of citizenship and didn't really give us a hard time about Jimmie not having his birth certificate. He just said that he'll need to get one before coming down again. What we did have a hard time with was getting the guard to shut up about Vegas and where we should go and what we should do. Seems like he had a great time the last time he went. :) Smile and nod, smile and nod. Humor him until you're across the line.
Washington state goes on forever. Especially if you're going diagonal across it like the travel plans called for. We gas up in Yakima (where they're known for their apple harvest - according to the gas attendant that Jimmie was talking to while I was in the can) and get some Arby's (where the roast beef is delicious! Hehehe). We keep following our plan and drive into Oregon, where we're going to cut the corner off the state and head into Idaho (Boise area) before turning south. Right on the Oregon/Idaho border is a city/town called Ontario. We had just under a quarter of a tank left so we stop at this gas station/truck stop. This time when we're talking to the gas attendant, she tells us that the Mapquest driving guides are next to useless and take you way out of your way. She shows us a more straightforward way to get to Vegas on our spiffy road atlas. When she sees out atlas, she mentions offhand that they sell them at the truck stop for 5 bucks. Hmmm... even with the exchange rate, 5 bucks US doesn't equal 17 Canadian. We got ripped off. We go in and walk around the store. It's huge in there. I see a wireless ethernet card for sale and there's an internet plan you can sign up for to get online at any of these hot points. Cool. That's got to be perfect for truckers that want to stay in touch with their friends and family. The map book turns out to be 10 bucks, which doesn't sting as much, but has a $5 mail-in rebate. The sting is back. They had just taken some giant apple fritters out of whatever they fry apple fritters in and were selling them for 2 for a buck. We couldn't pass that up. The other person working in the store confirmed the new route to Vegas and shows it to us on the map. She says it's about 620 miles from there to Vegas. The other one pipes up something about taking about 6 hours. Yeah, if we drive 103 miles an hour. :) This is a good thing all this redundant showing on the map though, as both Jimmie and I are getting a bit punchy from the long drive and lack of sleep. I haven't let Jimmie drive yet because he had even less sleep than I did before we left.
We follow the new route, which takes us into Idaho for a bit so that we can link up with the highway going south. Back into Oregon and the long straight roads going south. Jimmie sees an even shorter, more direct way than Lewis and Clark in Ontario showed us, so we take that. About 3 hours out of Vegas I have to pull over to walk around a bit. Jimmie isn't doing his job of keeping me alert and awake by talking to me. He's been sleeping off and on since Ontario. I'll give him credit though, he doesn't snore too loudly. We pulled in to this roadhouse thing and go in. Jimmie uses the can while I look at the menu. Nothing really appeals to me except for the can of Rockstar! I saw in the cooler. I got a can (3 bucks!) and we leave. We were getting a little too many stares from Cletus and Buford. Might have been Jimmie's stylish shades, or me in my shorts, Hawaiian shirt and sandals. One of the jeeps in the parking lot even had a cow skull roped to the front of it. Yeah, hello. I let Jimmie drive because I'm just not feeling up to it. My gut was starting to complain from the diet pills and the inadvertent double-dosing I was giving myself due to the sinus pills (which contain pseudoephedrine) I was taking to keep my sinus headache at bay. I hold off on the energy drink so that I can try to get some sleep. Jimmie looks a bit nervous in the driver seat. :) It had been awhile since he'd driven any car, let alone one with the power and weight of one like mine. Hehehe... the roads were pretty much straight lines, not like those endless, twisty mountain roads in Oregon, so I wasn't nervous and was able to catch almost 30 minutes of shut down time. So much more relaxing in the passenger seat, not having to have the precise focus needed for the distance drives. I got another 10 or 15 minutes of sleep(ish) before we pulled in to this gas station to get gas on the outskirts of Death Valley. Walking was fun. It made me remember why I prefer to drive when I'm in my car. I hadn't been able to move my left leg for pretty much the entire time I was on that side and when it came time to walk on it, it felt like someone had knee-capped me. I decide to take over driving again because I was feeling refreshed and didn't want to go through the whole knee thing again. We check the map again and add up the distances and we're only about an hour and a half out of Vegas. By using the new and improved route, we successfully shaved between 3 and 6 hours off our arrival time if we would have stuck to the Mapquest route. Bah! Good thing to know for the future.
We drive into Vegas and due to some construction, it's a bit difficult to figure out how to get to our hotel from the highway. We break out the Mapquest printouts again for the address and follow the directions on getting there. As we're pulling in to the Bellagio, it occurs to me that I put in that address when I was getting the travel route and not Ogden House (where we were staying), a substantially less extravagant accommodation. This was ok though. It afforded us an opportunity to travel down the Strip and see all the big casinos in the daylight. I knew roughly where Ogden House was from my previous time in Vegas when Eric pointed it out to me and that was waaaaay at the other end of the Strip, and then some. We drive around and pretty much drive right to it. Kinda. Parking was a bit confusing at first, but we get it sorted. Mark pulls in to a parking lot behind the Ogden building (5 stories) We weren't sure that this was the right spot to store his vehical while trekking around old Vegas, so I stayed with the car. Hot - I stared at Mark as he walked around the corner and then to the ball of fire in the sky... 'I need sunscreen.' I hear some yelling off to the right - I look... I see a gorgeous woman standing at the end of the lot. She was wearing just a white t-shirt. (doing laundry ~ outside?) The yelling came from a man standing the floor right above her. " Are you done? When are you coming back? I need to talk to you. " he stated as he walked from his room to the suite next to him as he did a homie handshake with his fist to the brother standing at the door. I glance back at the woman. She's getting ready to go up ~ Then it occurred to me that this was like the Hastings of Vegas ~ I was thankful to know that when Mark came back, we were in the wrong spot. We ended driving onto 7th; past Ogden and pulled into a garage 'not a parkade.' We parked 3 stories up next to the elevator that brought us to the El Cortez back entrance. Our hotel was across the street. We come in to register and they don't have any more non-smoking rooms left despite the fact that I had reserved one. We go up to our room and it smells like my Nanny's apartment used to smell. Fortunately, our sense of smell deadens pretty quickly and turning the air conditioner on high helped. We stow our gear and take a little tour of the neighbourhood. We walk into the El Cortez across the street and as the cigarette smoke assaults me I think of two things. The Great Canadian Casino rocks for being non-smoking and that it really doesn't matter that we don't have a non-smoking room, we're going to smell like it anyway. We witness one of the Fremont Street Experience light shows and aren't overwhelmed. The computer controlling it is a bit screwed and there were glitches in the display. We go to the place where I used to get the pieces of pie for a buck and it's gone up to a buck 50. Oh well, still a cheap piece of pie. We have supper at this Mexican restaurant that turns out to be rather pricey. It would have even been pricey in Canadian bucks. We share an entree, which was probably a good thing. Both of us weren't all that hungry after eating the pie. Back to the hotel room to get the car keys and my sinus pills, then we drove to the end of the Strip, the Mandalay Bay, to buy our tickets for the Yes concert and to walk around. It's a beautiful casino. The smell of cigarette smoke doesn't hang as heavily in the air. From there, we go to the Excalibur and the Luxor, then cross the street to New York, New York, the Tropicana and the MGM Grand. I started my collection of dollar coins from the casinos we go to. In Excalibur, the one I got from one machine was a bit crappy, so I tried putting it back into a video poker machine to see if I could cash out and get a new coin. Yeah, that didn't work, I had to play my dollar. I lucked out though and hit a 10 to 1 payout and got 10 coins to choose from. :) We stayed at the Mandalay Bay until 2:30 in the morning listening to a live band (Joy Ride) in the lounge. We found a nice place to rest our feet from all the street hiking we've done. It was located to the far left, where I was able to see a boob shot from this bra-less beauty. Her shirt was being constantly fondled and pulled up by the hound she was dancing with. 'I love those mental snapshots.' unfortunately Mark didn't have the luxury of capturing the moment like I did. Although he was smiling for a different reason. He was being entertained by the haggard air guitar guy, who was first with the oriental girl, then with the woman in the black dress - all smiles. Jester was putting on a good show... I noticed that the drinks he had drank started to take control, leading him in this foolish dance; taking him off the dance floor and over to the sculpted rock beside us. Looked like he was done, even though the song wasn't. Finished with a bow not because he was waiting for an applause but for the room to stop spinning. They did cover tunes of lots of different bands and styles (not only that, the female singer was muy caliente!). Pretty good, but by the end of it both of us were starting to really feel the exhaustion. Driving back to the hotel was a nice, relaxing drive. Well, most of it anyway. There was the left hand turning traffic light that didn't go green for three cycles of the lights. We ended up going right and pulling a U-turn (just like all the taxis) to drive back down the Strip. After getting all of our shit together, we were in bed by 3am. Bam! Out like lights.