Can’t do much more
Our full day in Vegas was just about as full of activities as you can imagine. It was so much that it made it feel we spent longer than day doing it all. We started the day with a cheap breakfast at a diner/casino across the street from the Stratosphere. I found it odd that it did not accept credit cards. After that we went back into the hotel so Cindy could score a deal on some cheap Vegas themed t-shirts.
We decided to explore the in house attractions of the Stratosphere, heading up the 1000 foot plus observation tower. We showed up right before it officially opens at 10AM. After a quick 37 second ride we unloaded into the main observation deck which gives you and incredible 360 degree view of the greater Las Vegas area.
Cindy and I have both been to the Strat before to do the rides and we originally did not intend to do them this time. However after watching the ride that simulates driving off the side of the building Cindy seemed to be interested. While she was in the bathroom I made a command decision to buy two all access passes. Each of the three rides cost 15 a pop to ride. You can buy the unlimited pass for 28 bucks a person which allows you ride everything as much as you want until 1AM so it seemed like the better deal.
When Cindy came out she initially was not very happy with my spur of the moment purchase that meant she now felt obligated to ride the rides even if she didn’t want to. I told her I thought she said she wanted to do them but if she didn’t I would just go on them myself. Eventually she calmed down and we ventured up to the “drive off the building” ride.
There were only a handful people up there this early so we were first in line, meaning we got to sit in the two front seats, maximizing the feeling of going over the edge. The car is similar to a roller coaster set up except it is mounted on top of a long single beam. When the ride begins the beam tilts downward and the car hurdles towards the edge at a pretty convincing speed before the brakes are slammed on. This is repeated several times. Even though you know you are safe, getting shot downward at a 45 degree angle off a 1000 foot building is enough to get your blood pumping.
We next moved to the sky spinner thing. Once again Cindy and I were the only ones in line. The weight needs to be balanced on the ride so we actually sat on opposite sides of it, facing each other. The support arm for the ride rotates outward so riders are totally suspended over nothing but open air. It then begins to rotate. As it does this the arms that support each 2 seated rider compartment angle outward so that you are facing the ground at close to a 45 degree angle.
For the first few moments I felt ok however once it got cranking I felt immediate nausea sweep in. In the last 10 years or so I have become drastically less able to endure spinning motion without feeling sick, another wonderful side effect of the aging process. Ironically Cindy was the one that was more worried about getting sick on the ride. She felt fine and I was the one that was trying to stare at a stationary spot as I counted down the seconds until the fcking ride was over. I emerged from my seat pale with two very wet palms.
The final ride was the best, the tower on top of the building that shoots you upward with 4G’s of force and allows you to feel weightless for a few moments as you reverse direction. The ride again was only partially populated, we had to wait a few minutes to have a person show up to balance the ride weight distribution. Despite doing this ride before the sensation was still awesome and terrifying for brief moments. Doing it on top of a structure that is so high just adds a new dimension to it.
Although we could have continued riding more we called once per ride as good enough due to other things we wanted to see/do during the day. Each ride we did was photographed extensively of course by staff with the hope you will buy the prints afterward. There were some really good pictures of us but the pricing was f’ing ridiculous, $17 for one and $25 for two.
I think the people that run these photo outfits are idiots. Instead of making them so outrageously expensive so that only maybe 5-10% of people actually buy them, why not drop the price and have a lot more people buy them? Plus they need to get with the times, no one really wants a big 8×10 print anymore. Charge me $5-$10 to have all the pictures emailed to me or thrown on a 50 cent USB stick. It’s a bad business model as is.
They added a new “ride” to the Stratosphere since I was last there called the Sky Jump. It is over priced at something like $120 to basically bungee jump off the side of the building. We watched a few people take the jump. I was a bit concerned about the rig that was used, it appeared to have a single point of failure, a pretty narrow steel cable. There were rigs to guide wires on either side of the jumper as well but they appeared to just keep you straight and would not help you if the main wire snapped.
When a person jumped you heard the spool unraveling for quite awhile as the jumper descends something like 900 feet. If money was no object I suppose I would make the jump but I had other things I would rather spend $120 per person on at this time.
We headed down from the tower and out onto the street to catch the bus heading north. I told Cindy I wanted to check out the Old Vegas scene by Fremont street. In many ways I prefer this section of Vegas to the main strip. Cindy had never been to that area before so I thought it would be cool to show her.
It didn’t take long for the visual oddities of Fremont to show up as Cindy saw two men, one of them looking old enough to be collecting social security, in banana hammocks that left their ass cheeks fully exposed and barely covered whatever they had up front. It was visually disturbing which of course why its funny. She later posed for a very funny picture with both of them.
Cindy and I also did our first and only extended gambling session of the trip at the roulette table. We sat down at one table that only had one older man playing. I only knew the basics of roulette and Cindy knew even less about the game so we made a few mistakes that the dealer corrected us on. The old man obviously did not like having roulette newbies at the table. He got especially annoyed when Cindy won a few rounds while he had his chips all cleared. He left after a few minutes.
We later went to another table where I gave Cindy 20 bucks that she did very well with, making it last for damn close to a half hour. Once she got the basics of the game she seemed to have fun playing. I just bankrolled her play, to me it was just as fun watching her play as it would be playing myself and the potential for loss is cut in half.
So a few weeks ago I stumbled across a first person perspective video of people zip lining over Fremont street, another new attraction that has been added since my last Vegas visit. It looked cool and I thought it would be fun. I figured it would be pricey but I was actually mildly surprised when I saw it cost $40. Sure it’s not cheap but it seemed like a decent value, zip lining above Fremont street is a pretty unique experience. We decided to do it.
Luckily again since it was relatively early in the day we didn’t have to deal with huge lines. We walked up the launch tower and got outfitted in our harnesses that suspend you in a flying position under the support wire. All of your belongings go in a zipped bag that goes down the line with you. The way you get hooked into the wire is cool. Beneath each of the four lines is a blue padded table that lifts up so an attendant can hook you in. It them retracts a couple feet, leaving you suspended above it.
There is a wide door that opens up in front of you, after which the lock on your carriage releases, they instruct you to push off and go. I basically rocked myself backward and then shoved off out of the loading area. The sensation as you fly over the ground bound tourists below is cool. I did not know if fear would be a factor at all, for me it wasn’t.
The zip line is pretty long, I bet you travel at least the distance of two football fields. You notice a distinct difference on how fast different people travel on the line and that difference is all about bodyweight. The more you weigh the faster you will go. I was significantly ahead of Cindy and a big guy to my right that probably weighed at least 250 pounds was way ahead of me.
The worst part of the ride comes at the end. There is an ABRUPT stop to your forward momentum when they stop you. I felt a jolt of pain shoot down my back when it kicked in, it was pretty damn severe. I thought it was sort of stupid that they did not give riders a heads up about the jarring finish so you could brace for it a little bit. I exited the ride content my $40 was well spent but also glad I didn’t pay more. It was cool but not spectacular. I would imagine doing the zip line at night when everything is illuminated would add some extra wow factor to the experience.
We grabbed a simple slice of pizza for late lunch before finding the bus stop to head south on the strip. This marked the start of my most annoying section of the day. So when we got to the stop a bus was already there, sweet. Well the bus was there but the driver was not. Another potential passenger said when the bus pulled up the woman driver did not open the door, she instead retreated out of sight towards the back of the bus. I bet we stood there for close to 10 minutes waiting for her to return. When she did she was sucking on a soda so my assumption this is how bus drivers handle lunch breaks.
When we finally got into the bus we found a seat on the upper deck near the front, figuring it would give us a good view as we drove back south. Well that view did not change for at least another 15 minutes as the bus remained stationary. I had no idea what the fck was going on but I was getting really perturbed.
Once the bus finally did get going the misery only continued, we advanced to the south at a snail’s pace. Each stop seemed to be loaded with more people than the bus should be able to accommodate. We got to enjoy the woman driver repeatedly telling people to either move backwards to stuff more people in or warn others that they could not stand in the stairways. It was such a slog to get to the main strip, I bet in total we spent at least an hour traveling 5-6 miles. I exited the bus in a very foul mood.
Our plan was to get to the Linq hotel to see a permanent old car exhibit that Cindy had seen when she was last in Vegas. We exited the bus one stop too far and had to make our way back against the now sizable flow of humanity that was clogging Las Vegas Blvd. You could not have paid me to smile at that point. The 95 degree heat and human being soup I was immersed in made me yearn for the quiet solitude we experienced just the day before at the salt flats.
Even though I did not need any more reason to be grumpy, I found some when the directions to the car exhibit inside the Linq were unclear, sending us on a goose chase for at least 20 minutes. I remarked to Cindy I hoped the exhibit was worth all of the effort and aggravation to see it, a comment that made her feel bad. Well it turned out the exhibit was indeed worth it.
We weren’t thrilled they charged something like 12 bucks a head to get in, Cindy thought it was free last time. The good news was they let veterans in for free so we only had to pay for myself. When you walk into the exhibit you see just car after car, ranging in age from the late 90’s to the early 1900’s. I also thought it was interesting that more cars than not were for sale, with their price listed on their information card.
Cindy and I took our time checking out all the vehicles, they were all just in exquisite condition. We passed a guy that apparently works there as he buffed out the trunk of one of the vehicles. He must just go around a shine the cars all day long.
It was amazing seeing vehicles decades old looking like they just rolled off the showroom floor. They had some interesting vehicles in there and even a little morbid like the car that JFK was assassinated in. I took A LOT of pictures while there. It was a car lovers dream.
So our plan was to take in the Eagles/Falcons game. After some searching we found a mexican style bar that had some free seating at the bar. We settled in and ordered some drinks since we had at least 3 hours there. My drink of choice was Bud Light, something that I can drink for long periods of time without hitting a wall due to it’s smaller alcohol content. Cindy had a couple ciders. We ordered some food later into the game, scrapping our original plan to go out for a more fancy dinner later due to time constraints.
The game was rather aggravating. The Eagles played poorly in the first half, basically getting next to nothing done offensively. The running game was especially anemic and the defense seemed to have no plan to stop Julio Jones. In the second half the offense got things into gear but a missed game leading field goal attempt by Cody Parkey late doomed the Eagles, earning them a loss in a game that most people would say they surely should have won. Unfortunately I expect this will be the case a few more times before the season is up. It was a disappointing way to start the season after all of the hype of a preseason where the Eagles were putting up points by the bushel.
After the game we made our way back to Hexx for some more ice cream combined with people watching. Both activities didn’t disappoint. The ice cream was great and the people watching even better. Before catching the bus back to the hotel we spent some time walking through the Paris hotel which is very beautiful. Cindy and I agreed the next time we go to Vegas we would try to be more centrally located, the Stratosphere is just too far north. A stay at a hotel in the Fremont area would be interesting too.
During our travels I was sad to see that O’Sheas, a small little casino that Troy and I had spent MANY memorable hours at years ago during a Vegas trip had been knocked down and absorbed into the Linq. There is a small section of the Linq that is now dubbed as O’Sheas with absolutely not a shred of the original feel of the old place outside of the sign above the space.
The O’Sheas discovery was a feeling that I felt repeatedly since arriving in Vegas. The Vegas I knew from my prior trips was substantially gone. There are so many things that have been torn down in that 10-15 year time period it is kind of sad. There are HUGE plots of property with construction walls where the latest and greatest mega-resort is underway. It all just makes me a little sad for some reason.
When we got back to the room last night we were very tired. I am not sure how we expected two days in Vegas to allow us to “rest” from the prior 8 days of travel. Sure we haven’t had to drive for a couple days but we were basically on the go non-stop since arriving.
This morning we checked out of the hotel after breakfast, a quick stop in the gift shop, and a few unsuccessful pulls on some progressive slot machines on the off chance we become instant millionaires. We headed over to the Hoover Dam which is only 25 miles or so away.
I had been to the dam before but again, a lot has changed since that visit. It looked like they made a lot of improvements to the area that I didn’t remember from the last time I was there, including finishing the massive overpass bridge that was only partially underway when I was last there. We opted to just do a self tour, opting out of the pay tours that let you go inside the dam. We just had too much driving to do to spend a ton of time there.
The massive horizontal line on the walls of the river where the water line used to be is a shocking reminder of just how dire the water situation is in the west. The water level easily looked 75-100 feet below the marks on the wall. Cindy found the dam to be really cool, it’s such an impressive structure and rivals any other man made feat of engineering I have seen on my travels around the country.
We are now on the road to Albuquerque, losing an hour along the way thanks to our switch back to Mountain time. The end result will be us not getting to the hotel until around 9PM local time. The rest of the trip now is the long sprint back to Naples. We are planning chewing up roughly 650 miles a day from here on out. The total mileage for this trip is going to smash my original estimate. I would not be surprised if we crack the 6500 mile mark, making this my longest road trip ever by a large margin.
We have had a fantastic time on the trip with more memories than I can stuff into my old brain. It’s a very special way to experience the different areas our beautiful country offers. Getting to share these memories with Cindy makes it even better since she appreciates it all to a level that I can’t even approach to reach.
A quick addendum:
We just stopped at a gas station located off an exit on route 40. It just happened to be at the entrance of a petrified forest national park. The station actually had old style analog pumps, something I have not seen for at at least 20-25 years. I was worried if they took credit cards or not. I poked my head inside and asked the woman that was working there. Sure, she said, just pump it and let me know what the total is. Haha, wow this was truly like a step into the time machine where you did not have to pay in advance and they took your word as to how much gas you pumped.
After pumping and going back inside I told the woman how much I pumped and how cool it was the place still had these old style pumps. She said they were built in 50’s and installed in the early 60’s. She said they were originally built to accommodate gas prices up to 99 cents a gallon. When prices rose above that they had to be retrofitted to accept gas prices up to 1.99. After gas prices exceeded that watermark there was one final retrofitting that would allow gas prices to go as high as 9.99 a gallon.
She said when gas prices were very high the pumps would break down quite a bit, the internal guts of them were not designed to spin at the velocity that 4 dollar a gallon gas requires. I found this gas pump history entertaining enough to add it to today’s blog entry. 🙂