Archives 2015

So after work last night I made a pit stop to my old gym stomping grounds, RetroFitness. (formerly Royal Fitness and then RetroFitness before that).  As soon as I stepped in the door I could tell they gave the place a thorough cleaning, it looked practically brand new.   I immediately spotted Luis, the guy that was managing the place before I left.  Like I mentioned earlier, he was pretty much the only person on the staff that seemed to have a clue about how to treat customers.  He was very happy to see me and greeted me by name.

I had at least a 15 minute good conversation with him by the front desk as he filled me in on why things went downhill before and how much better things should be moving forward now that there is new ownership in place.   In addition to cleaning the place thoroughly they did renovations/tune ups on all of the equipment.  They also are going to restore the cardio theater room which was turned into a junk room and have bought the adjacent vacant space which will be used for fitness classes and some medical/health services.

I left there totally on board with signing back up.  My 40+ glory days of fitness all went down inside the walls of Retro.  I like their equipment more as they have dumbbells that go all the way up to 120lbs, a squat rack, and spare olympic bars that can be used for stuff like deadlifting.

All of these are items missing at Planet Fitness. Also, the locker rooms/showers are mediocre and the gym can get annoying full at times, even in the middle of the day when I go. I also question Planet Fitness’s decision to fill their staff mostly with individuals that are very overweight and not representative at all of a healthy lifestyle.

To be fair, Planet Fitness has not been awful.  The Lunk Alarm has not sounded off once in the 8 or 9 months I have been a member.  They keep the place relatively clean and I like that they have the Concept 2 rowers, something Retro does not have.  I wound up getting better workouts in there than I did at the Wellness Center at least.

I need to inquire at the PF membership desk about how financially painful it will be to cancel my membership early.  I signed up for the 10 bucks a month plan which includes a 1 year contract which I still have a few months left on.  If the penalty is very stiff it may actually be cheaper to just keep plopping down 10 a month until the contract is fulfilled.  Either way I plan on rebooting my membership at Retro asap.  I am excited about getting back to my fitness roots after drifting around for 18 months inside of the Wellness Center and The Judgement Free Zone.

Speaking of fitness, I awoke today with extensive lower body soreness from Tuesdays lower body resistance training backed up with yesterdays cardio brick which included 20 very difficult minutes on the rower.  Cindy is feeling much the same after her first full session at Orange Theory yesterday.  The workout she described to me sounded very intense.

Hey, the Pope is here.  Evidently there is a rock star aura surrounding his visit with 24/7 media coverage and throngs of catholics surrounding his every step and and hanging on his every word.  Don’t get me wrong, as far as popes go, I think the current pope is the best I have seen in my lifetime.  He seems to be willing at times to inject a little common sense into his positions on various issues that contradict the normal religious narrative which is a good thing.  I am also glad he just looks like a good person, not look like Satan spawn, as the last pope did.

I can’t say I have watched 10 seconds of pope coverage.  It just doesn’t move my interest meter a single tick.

Last night when I got home the skies were very menacing but I already had it stuck in my head that I wanted to get the Prius oil change completed.  When I get in that mindset it is tough to get me to change directions.  I quickly changed clothes and drug out the stuff I needed to do the work.  Doing an oil change immediately after driving home from your commute is never a great idea as the engine oil can be hot enough to burn you.  I used extra care when removing the drain plug and filter to minimize my contact with the hot used oil.  I had the oil swapped out in the span of 15 minutes as the thunder rumbled overhead.

Yesterday I found myself spending a good portion of the day dealing with running club related issues regarding various events.  I have been doing chip timing for the club for something like eight years at this point.  The core group of people that handle most responsibilities for our races have been pretty much the same for that amount of time or even longer in some cases.  With this being the case you would assume when it comes to putting on races it would go like clockwork more often than not since it is something we have done literally 100 times or more.  Well unfortunately that isn’t the case.

Even after all of that experience it seems every event has some basic breakdowns in execution or preparation that you just would not expect.  Of course a race is a living, breathing, dynamic beast that will always have unforeseen issues.  It’s the foreseen issues that should not be popping up on the radar at this point.  The frustration that results from these issues has to be tempered however since almost everyone involved is on a purely volunteer basis, graciously donating their time and effort.  It’s a tight line to balance upon.

Last night after work I made a couple pit stops on my way home from work.  First was to grab supplies for a Prius oil change, the maintenance light came on with over 1500 miles to go on the trip.  I used full synthetic oil for the last change which holds up much longer so I am not that concerned but I do need to try to get it changed tonight.  I am also thinking the car may be ready for a shock/strut replacement after 165,000 miles.  I noticed on the trip the ride is getting on the harsh side.  Since I did the shock/strut job on the Tacoma I think I could do the same on the Prius without much fuss.

The other stop was to check out the race course for the race I am timing Saturday.  With the new race equipment I need to have a good idea of how wide the start line is going to be so I bring the necessary amount of 1 meter wide mats.  I also need to get an idea of how far it is between the start line and the finish line since I need to haul ass between those two points on race day.  This is especially critical with 5K’s since the first finisher crosses the line anywhere between 15-18 minutes from the start gun.

Over the weekend I got a surprise email from RetroFitness, the old gym I went to for over 5 years before I jumped ship for the Wellness Center.  Well technically by that time the gym was actually rebranded as Royal Fitness after they dropped the RetroFitness franchise.

Around 6 months ago Royal Fitness shut their doors.  I heard they had not paid their rent for months and they were looking to sell the gym to new ownership. Well that sale never happened and the gym remained closed with it’s lights out but all equipment still intact ever since.

So the email said the new gym is once again open under “new ownership” and the Royal Fitness name is now flipped back to RetroFitness.  Although Planet Fitness has been a serviceable gym and is very close to my office, I liked the equipment and spaces available to me at Retro more.  When I quit the gym it was not because of equipment, it was other factors like staff and upkeep.  I didn’t enjoy staff being more interested in checking their smartphones more than acknowledging customers or their tendency to play really obnoxious music at decibel levels that approached concert level.  They also did a poor job of keeping the place clean, cobwebs and dust were as prevalent as weights by the end.

So when my gym buddy told me he saw the same guy that managed the gym (not owned) under the Royal Fitness name was back as the relaunch Retro gym it did not thrill me.  I like the guy personally as he is friendly and one of the few that treated clients nicely.  However he was also the one that allowed his employees to be slugs so in the big picture I would much prefer a new face in there running the show.  Even so, I plan to stop by after work this week to take a look and see if there is enough change there to warrant me coming back.

Every year after a road trip it feels strange to be home.  The idea that a few days ago you were on the other side of the country and now find yourself back in familiar surroundings with familiar routines just screws with my head a little bit.  When we got home on Friday about 5 of course one of the first things we did was head out back to say hi to the chickens.  I guess they were as excited as chickens get which means not very.

We immediately worked on unloading the Prius whose interior looked like a homeless person was living it after 13 days on the road.  I went back to front, systematically removing items, many of which first went into the middle of the garage for Cindy to sort and sanitize as needed.  Cindy also was out in the coop tending to it since we told the chicken sitters we would handle cleaning it since we would be home.  In total we were plugging away a solid couple hours until we actually settled down to enjoy our traditional Friday night pizza and start catching up on our huge backlog of dvr’d content.

Saturday I headed outside to start on what I knew would be a pretty miserable session of yard chores.  Two weeks of it not being touched combined with heavy rainfall had left the grounds in a pretty jungle-like state.  As the heat and humidity poured down on me I instantly yearned for the crisp, cool air we just experienced in Wyoming and Yellowstone.  Florida wet season is really getting old.

After weeding the yard I hopped on the tractor and mowed the soppy grass wherever I could.  A lot of areas were still too submerged to touch.  Some of the areas I did mow were still very mucky resulting in the tractor looking like a swamp buggy when I was done with mud splattered everywhere, including on me.  Cindy was busting ass during most of this time giving the coop a very thorough scrub down.

After taking a shower to get all the scuzz off me most of the rest of the day was spent inside tending to pulling and editing the various videos which is a lengthy process.  You can catch what I published so far either on my YouTube channel or on Cindy’s channel.  There is still more content for me to dig through.

On Sunday morning doing any endurance training was not even mentioned.  Both Cindy and I were not feeling up to it plus it felt that there was still a ton of things that needed to get done.  Among those things was the monumental task of auditing the trip where I had to reconcile a HUGE pile of credit card receipts and enter them into Quicken.  As I did so I categorized the expenses into a few categories, gas, lodging, food, souvenirs, rides, and other.  Seeing the final numbers were interesting.

Despite driving an additional 1600 miles this year we basically paid the same for gas as last year thanks to lower gas prices.  Driving 6600 miles on $380 of gas is pretty amazing.    Our average cost for lodging per night was $91.  That number was inflated by two nights at Cody, Wyoming during our Yellowstone visit which cost more than $150 a night.  Ironically during the entire trip we did not stay at a single La Quinta.  On most prior road trips La Quintas were the destination of choice most nights.  This time around they always seemed to be priced slightly higher than comparable chains.  Since dog accommodations were not a concern  it wasn’t a big deal.

Originally I had set a loose mental goal of us spending basically the same amount of money as we did last year.  The final tally came in about $500 higher than last year but with one night and two extra days of travel which included Vegas I think we did ok.  That final total is inclusive of cash I pulled out and money for two weeks of chicken sitting.  I bet I spent well over 90 minutes getting everything accounted for.

After a quick trip in the SSR to blow out the cobwebs and grab some coffee I got back onto the tractor to mow most of the areas that were impassable on Saturday.  A couple days of hot, bright sun had done a nice job of getting rid of a lot of the water.  The tractor still required a thorough bath after mowing again.

So on both Saturday and Sunday I spent over 35 minutes on the phone with a Directv representative.  This is something I go through every year and every year it annoys the shit out of me.  I have Directv just for the Sunday Ticket, something they allowed me to do years ago when I dropped my main package.  It is a non-standard configuration that they won’t allow a new customer to do.  When the season concludes I suspend my service for 6 months and then have it reactivate when the season begins.

Well each year I have to call to get the Sunday ticket working again.  They can’t simple turn it on since I have no normal package, it always requires the intervention of a supervisor.  So on Saturday I call and explain to a guy the background of my situation.  I told him that last year I specifically requested that the rep notes in my account what was done to get the service working so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel again.  He said there were no notes about that on my account which pissed me off.

Despite my advice to get a supervisor involved he insists on going through vanilla troubleshooting steps like restarting the receiver (I already did that) and resending the authorization several times, which did nothing.  He then tells me that we can’t really tell if the Sunday Ticket will work until Sunday, closer till game time.  I told him that wasn’t true, even before the games there will be a placeholder image on the Sunday Ticket channels if you are authorized for them.  The guy just seemed out of ideas and was trying to get me off the phone with “just wait to see what happens on Sunday” advice. I wasn’t accepting it.  I kept pressing him to dig deeper as I knew there was more that was required.  Well after 35-40 minutes I was abruptly disconnected which of course infuriated me but I had no time to sit on the phone another half hour again.

Fast forward to Sunday morning.  I once again call and this time get an older sounding woman on the phone.  I once again explain the background of the issue.  The woman says that she doesn’t see my account as even having the Sunday Ticket included on my account, nor does she see record of my call from Saturday.  Well that is just lovely.  Since I do not have a basic programming package the woman was not able to add the Sunday Ticket to my service.  However, after a long wait and some intervention by a supervisor, finally the channels started working.  I once again asked the woman to please document exactly what was done so we don’t have to go through this again next year. Ironically, since the Eagles/Cowboys game was a national broadcast I couldn’t even use the Sunday ticket this weekend which blacks out locally broadcast games.

After bearing witness to the game, I almost wish it was blacked out entirely, it was that bad.  In the offseason Chip Kelly came under a great deal of scrutiny based on his dismantling of the core of the team, especially on offense getting rid of our starting QB, RB, WR, and two offensive lineman.  After the strong preseason performance by the Eagles a lot of those critics adopted a wait and see attitude, maybe Chip is not only a strategic but also a personnel genius?  Well after two games of the regular season this outlook on Chip’s player decisions are looking much bleaker.  The Cowboys game was an utter disaster.

The defense, surprisingly, were the far better of the two units, despite being out on the field for 40+ minutes thanks to the Eagles absolute failure to sustain any sort of offensive momentum.  DeMarco Murray, the LeSean McCoy replacement ran for negative yardage overall for the entire game.  The fault for this was largely the offensive line that seemed to routinely let D-lineman into the backfield every time Murray was handed the ball, it was miserable.

The receivers did little to help move the ball dropping a number of balls that a pro should normally pull in.  Sam Bradford, who I assume was supposed to be a Nick Foles upgrade, looked flustered and confused in a manner that befit a rookie, not a guy that has been a starter in the league for a number of years.  I really don’t like the passing game that has been in place for the first two games.  I don’t think I have seen a single pass that has traveled in the air more than 20 yards down the field.  I don’t know if it is because the Eagles have no receivers fast enough to beat anybody deep or Chip just wants to exclusively do dump and run pass plays.

There is nothing that will get Eagles fans to turn on you faster than coming up small against the Cowboys.  If Chip hangs a couple more consecutive losses around his neck (he has lost 5 of last 6 games dating back to last year), there will be a roar of dissent calling for his head.  It seems like the league has now figured out how to deal with his hurry up style of play.  It scares no one.  Chip’s style of viewing players as trading cards you can just plug into and out of a team without consideration of overall team chemistry is looking to be his fatal flaw.  The team looked absolutely awful on Sunday.

As if the Eagles awful performance was not bad enough, my fantasy team is now in shambles as well.  Two crucial parts of my team were Dez Bryant and Tony Romo,  whom I spent high draft picks on, both are now going to be sidelined for months.  I may as well raise the white flag now as my bench players are marginal at best.

Later yesterday and overnight there was another round of torrential rain and storms that made me very glad to have had the opportunity to knock down the grass over the weekend.  It’s going to be an interesting week as I try to adapt back to the daily grind after two weeks of taking each day as it comes.

Last night we decided to split the difference between Tallahassee and Pensacola by stopping at a town named Bonifey which is almost dead center in between.  We got lucky and found a very nice and new Holiday Inn Express to stay at.  It was right around the best of the places we stayed at during this road trip.

Our dinner on the way in was an extravagant Subway meal. Both Cindy and I have had more than our fill of convenience food during this trip.  After we get back from road trips we normally have a lot of resolve to eat very clean to make up for the dirty road eating.

So like I said the hotel was very nice.  The shower was clean, the bed was comfortable, and everything was well tended to.  Despite these things I got yet another miserable night of sleep.  Why you ask?  Somewhere on the second floor there must have been a smoke detector with a low or dead battery.  The result of that was it beeping every 20 seconds or so the entire night.

I was exhausted when I fell asleep last night so the detector sound couldn’t stop me.  However once I woke up around 3AM it became like Chinese water torture.  I did not feel like going down to the front desk in the middle of the night. Instead I laid in bed trying to ignore the noise and fall back asleep, unsuccessfully.  I then grabbed one of the extra pillows and sandwiched my head in between it, fashioning some makeshift ear muffs.  The thick pillows did a good job of blocking the sound but also was warm and uncomfortable.  Having pillows jammed against my ears also made me hear/feel my pulse which was just another thing to keep me awake.  I basically laid in bed awake until maybe 5am and then was awoken at 5:40 by the alarm.  I am looking very forward to recapturing a more normal sleep schedule starting tonight in my own bed. I let the clerk know about the beeping this morning, I find it impossible that nobody else on the floor would have complained about it prior to me.

When Cindy turned on the tv this morning there was some Alabama public access tv channel tuned in.  The show that was on was called Hobo Pantry.  At first I thought the chubby man seated to the right was a woman as he had a bizarre 1975 haircut and a plaid button down shirt that would have passed for a blouse.  Once he spoke there was no doubt he was a hard core southerner.  To his left was some sort of park ranker type guy.  He sat in a large wooden rocking chair with his hands folded across his lap.  The set looked like it was straight off of a Hee Haw set.

While I watched they covered a variety of topics, including how to not shoot yourself during hunting season, fishing regulations, and how the host was glad to hear someone he knows that supports same sex marriage was moving out of town. It was strangely compelling, enough so that I filmed a few seconds of it.

We were pulling out in the Prius by 7AM and have had an uneventful drive south so far.  Our eta is 4PM but we need to make a grocery store pit stop on the way home so we probably won’t get home until closer to 5.  Once we do a whirlwind of unpacking, laundry, and cleaning will be unleashed, unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Just like all of our road trips, this one has had so many memorable moments it is pretty much impossible to pick them all out.  But let’s run some numbers first.  It looks like out total mileage is going to be just over 6600 miles, making it the farthest road trip I have ever done.  To be honest I think it was a bit too ambitious.  As I mentioned yesterday Cindy and I have both been going a bit nuts being in the car so long.  Just for perspective our trip last year was around 5000 miles.

We spent about $1100 on hotel rooms during the trip, not bad for 12 nights that included Vegas and the Grand Canyon area (most expensive of the trip) Believe it or not to cover all those miles only cost us $375 in gas, I added it myself a second time because I couldn’t believe it.  We averaged a little over 45 mpg for those 6500 miles.  Our best tank average was 54.7 mpg and our worst was 38.7.  The most we paid for gas was $3.29 in the Vegas area, the least we paid was $1.99 in Georgia somewhere.  The lowest price we saw posted anywhere was $1.80 a gallon somewhere in Texas.

So as far as highlights of the trip, every spot we targeted delivered in one way or another. There are 13 days of blog entries you can pour through if you would like them in detail.  There was so much beauty to be seen in many forms from the man created Mount Rushmore, Las Vegas and Hoover Dam contrasted by the natural awesomeness places like Yellowstone, Craters of the Moon, and the Bonneville Salt Flats possess.

I really couldn’t establish a clear leader in the best of those attractions but if I were to pick the worst of the five I would probably choose Vegas for several reasons.  Only spending one full day there made everything seem rushed and when combined with all of those damn people, cigarette smoke, and pricey entertainment I found Vegas to be the only time during the road trip where I really found myself in a foul mood.  I also was not happy that they have torn down so much of the strip and rebuilt it in the span of 10 years that I hardly recognized sections of it.

The bad luck I had with my aerial sorties during the trip were pretty funny in retrospect although they certainly didn’t feel that way at the time.  To crash the Phantom at both Yellowstone and Craters of the Moon after basically never crashing the drone in two years of ownership is pretty nuts.  The feelings I had of embarrassment and anger at myself as I maneuvered the dangerous, restricted lava field area of Craters of Moon trying to find the drone are something I will not soon forget.  I was literally a minute away from just giving up and walking away from $1400 of quadcopter and camera equipment.

Of course road trips are all about the travel as much as the destination.  We saw so many things, met so many different types of people and got to experience a seat of your pants style of life that is such a contrast to our mostly regimented day in and day out existence.

Cindy and I pretty equally split the driving on the trip which made things more bearable. My distraction of choice when I was not driving was either punching out the blog or playing dozens of games of Hearthstone on the iPad.  It helped long periods of time pass by pretty painlessly.

As I have mentioned several times the length of the trip was something that was a bit problematic.  It’s very hard to cover those kind of miles in 13 days and not have any conflicts which there have been a few of.  Luckily Cindy and I are normally pretty good at putting stupid things behind us.  I think our experiences will help us when it comes to planning future ventures out of the state.  Less miles and a more casual driving pace would probably make a road trip less about the grind and more about the great.

Our drive into Dallas was long but mostly uneventful.  We got to our hotel about 7PM, now on central time.  While I was in the passenger seat I was trying to remotely restart our chicken coop dvr which became unreachable remotely.  I was in the middle of trying to find a way to do it when we got a call from our chicken sitter who was at the house.  I just had him unplug the dvr for a few seconds and plug it back in which got us back online.

After a day of nothing but driving neither Cindy or I felt like going out to dinner, we had food delivered to the room.  Speaking of the room, it was actually a suite with a full second room and pretty nice accommodations.  It was sort of a bummer when Cindy saw what she said were baby roaches around one of the sinks this morning.  Once she saw that she couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Last night while we ate dinner we caught a good portion of the republican primary debate which was a big tv event.  Mostly thanks to Donald Trump, there is more interest in the 2016 republican primaries than any other time in my life.  People just love seeing Trump throw his weight around, plain and simple.

I found the debate both entertaining and aggravating.  Let me go candidate by candidate and give you my feedback (if I can remember them all)

I felt bad for Rand Paul as Trump repeatedly mocked his current 1% polling rate as not being worthy of being on the stage.  I do agree with a lot of Rand’s ideas and he probably has a better command of the US Constitution than anyone else on the stage.  I also liked that he is not afraid to still characterize the US decision to throw military contractors a bone with the Iraq war as a major mistake and poor judgement.  Rand’s hair is very odd, it almost looks like a hair piece.

Mike Huckabee is a dipshit with his bullshit religious right agenda.  I thought it was laughable when he made a comment about how we should focus on finding the cures for ailments instead of treating the symptoms.  In the list of ailments he wanted “cures” for was diabetes and heart disease.  I laughed out loud that this man who looked to be very obese wanted a cure for these two diseases that are mostly lifestyle related.  Eat a salad you idiot.

Ah Ted Cruz, I can’t stand that guy even a little bit.  He is as smarmy as it gets even with his neck spilling out over his collar.  Every single word he says annoys me as he is the epitome of a tea party zealot.  He seems like he needed to be spanked more as a child.  He has zero shot of winning.

Marco Rubio, who is famous for dry mouth, came off as a mega-hardliner who wants to nuke the world and do nothing about climate change because China won’t.  His thoughts on immigration were interesting because of his background obviously.

Ben Carson who before the debate was polling at number two behind Trump has no shot either.  He seems like a calm, intelligent, logical man, which is why he has no shot.  He doesn’t have the presence or persona most people are going to want in a political candidate.  The fact that he is black dooms him in the republican party no matter what anyone says in public.

Trump was next and he seemed to be quite hot and bothered, literally.  His face looked flush for most of the debate.  I wasn’t sure if it was from the heat of the lights or if he was embarrassed a few times when other candidates called him to the carpet for a few things that he didn’t have real solid answers for.  I am sure he felt he won the debate.  I think it sort of exposed some of the holes in his plan.

Jeb Bush was next to Trump.  I heard the general consensus was he did better because he fought with Trump more, including asking Trump to apologize to Jeb’s wife for making a remark that Jeb was more sympathetic to illegal immigrants because his wife is Mexican.  Personally Jeb didn’t impress me at all and in fact said one of the dumbest things of the night when the moderator asked all of the candidates which woman they would want to see on the new 10 dollar bill.  His answer was Margaret Thatcher.  What the fck Jeb? It was a true George W moment where you could tell for sure they were related.

Jeb also defended W’s time as president, summing up his countless missteps with “at least he kept us safe”.  Huh? What does that mean exactly?  If the definition of keeping us safe is no more buildings falling down I guess that means Obama has kept safe as well? Who knows, to me it was like when you give somebody a very involved and thought out criticism and their response would be “I know you are but what am I”.  Adios Jeb.

I had never seen Carly Forina speak before and after last night I hope I never do again.  I found it amazing that the press was characterizing her performance as great.  I thought she came off terribly.  I don’t know if it is the gallons of botox she has injected into her face but everything she said came out as robotic and sterile.  You have to be somewhat likable to be the president.  She came off as an ice witch to me who repeatedly tried to log jam in her well rehearsed statements when it wasn’t her turn to talk.  She has as much shot as Michelle Bachman.

Ah I forgot about Scott Walker who was in the middle somewhere.  He is another guy with an image problem.  He has a permanent expression on his face like he is wasted.  As another tea party champion I of course spend most of the time he is talking being annoyed.  He of course has no shot either but maybe him and Ted Cruz can hang out and compare checks the Koch brothers wrote them.

The Ohio governor (Kasik?) seemed like a solid guy with a good track record.  He had some weird appearance issues as well.  He talks with constant duck lips, something I found myself concentrating on.  He is in a similar boat with Rand Paul, on the stage but far in the rear of the pack.

Finally there was big Chris Christie that was trying to throw his weight around, coming off as the big burly guy that doesn’t take any shit.  Despite his record of being more of a moderate republican candidate he seemed to be making a clear effort to come off as much more conservative than his past actions would indicate.  His crowing about enforcing the federal marijuana laws if he takes office is an instant turn off and a very stupid thing to hang your hat on.

I thought a lot of things about the debate were dumb as the moderator threw out many questions designed to solely incite conflict and nothing else.  The question about what woman each candidate would want on the 10 dollar bill was pointless and the following question about what secret service call sign they would want for themselves if they become president was even dumber.

Like I said earlier, I couldn’t believe the debate was 3 hours.  I also was surprised there were commercials.  I never recalled a debate having commercial breaks.  Thanks to Trump these debates have become HUGE money making opportunities for the networks, of course they are cashing in.

I was surprised you heard multiple candidates talking about changing the tax code to either the flat or fair tax model. One model imposes a simple flat income tax that is the same for everyone, no infinitely complex tax code and loop hole system.  The other model replaces the current income tax system with a nationwide tax on consumption.  I think either system is better than what is currently in place.  Every election cycle candidates say they like this plan and it never, ever gains any traction once they enter office.  It is one of those things that will simply never change because big business doesn’t want it to.

So this morning after breakfast we were walking up to the room.  Out of my peripheral vision I saw a person walk in the front doors and the clerk  say something like “hi, how can I help you”.  Then within 10 seconds we heard what was an obvious altercation.  Cindy got a better look than I did, she said the clerk was pushing and kicking the guy out the door.  I heard the clerk say “get the FUCK out of my hotel and don’t come back!”  I didn’t get a good look at the other guy but Cindy said he looked like he may have been a vagrant/hitchhiker type as he had a large backpack strapped on.  I wondered what happened in those couple seconds that made the clerk go from 0-60.  How exciting.

I was first to drive today, getting us into Louisiana.  As I mentioned yesterday, on this trip I have been approached by a number of people looking for help and I have repeatedly done so.  Well to my amazement, it happened AGAIN today.

Cindy was inside using the restroom and grabbing water while I was pumping gas.  An average looking guy in a baseball hat and sunglasses came walking over my way.  He asks me if there was anyway I could give him a gallon of gas.  I was caught a little off guard.  I asked him if he had a container or something to put the gas in.  He said his car was parked over there and it was running on fumes but he had enough to drive it over to the pump.  After seeing Cindy was still inside I told him to bring it over.

After I finished dumping 5 gallons into the Prius I dumped another 5 or 6 gallons into his non-descript brown Chevy Malibu.  As I pumped I talked to the guy a bit, asking him if he was trying to get home or to work.  He said “no man, I don’t know where I am going next”  He said he can’t believe he is an position where he has to ask someone for gas.  He said I looked familiar, I told him I am sure he never met me before as I am from Florida. I told the guy I was on a roadtrip and I have seen a lot of people in need during my travels.    I finished up pumping the gas and wished the guy good luck with whatever came next for him.  He thanked me, shook my hand and then asked me if I happened to have any cigarettes.  I told him I didn’t smoke.

He drove away before Cindy was done inside.  When Cindy came out I told her I had another charity situation pop up.  She at first assumed I gave someone else money.  When I told her I instead pumped 5 or 6 gallons of gas into his car she thought that was a better use of compassion.  It is an odd thing how I must throw off an invisible nice guy aura.

We are going to try extending our drive today as far as possible so we have a relatively short shot into Naples tomorrow.  Both Cindy and I are going a little car crazy at this point, after spending 100+ hours in the car, getting on each others nerves from time to time.  Yesterday I found myself randomly poking Cindy for no good reason, just to be irritating.  We both are just looking forward to getting our asses home and back to normalcy.

After the dam yesterday our day consisted of a lot of miles driving through mostly beautiful western landscapes.  We didn’t pull over to grab dinner until shortly before 8PM at some cafe that was part of gas station/convenience store deal.  For the second time on the trip we showed up for dinner a few minutes before the posted closing time which in this case was 8PM.  Once again the staff was happy to help us.

They actually had pretty authentic Mexican food including sopapillas for desert which were simple but surprisingly good.  One of the guys that worked there had his family there including his two little kids whom were cute.  We didn’t expect to have such a nice interaction for dinner last night.  This is a scenario that has played out repeatedly during the trip, random positive experiences.

We didn’t pull into the hotel in Albuquerque until almost 9:30 which sort of sucks.  I did the nighttime driving which isn’t much fun.  The room accommodations were nothing spectacular but at least we got soap, shampoo, and two washcloths, something the Stratosphere housekeeping staff was unable to provide us for some reason. We set an alarm for 6AM this morning and were back on the road by about 7.

We found a nearby Dunkin Donuts.  As we got out of the car I saw a short young guy that was in bad shape, his eyes were bloodshot, he was sort of staggering, shivering, and had various stains on his shirt.  I am like a magnet for these sort of people and he came my way asking me if I could help him out with some change or food. I said “You look cold bud”  ” He said he was as  I immediately reached into my wallet and gave him most of my small bills which was maybe 15 bucks.

The guy was very surprised at my offering and thanked me.  I could hear Cindy making “what are you doing” type of noises as I handed the guy the money.  She doesn’t believe in giving people like that money as she assumes the first thing the will do is go buy their next fix with it which this guy very well could have done.  But maybe, just maybe, he actually used it to go grab some coffee and something to eat.  Perhaps as he sat there enjoying the food that was made possible from the generosity of a stranger he thought about why he is in a situation where he has to ask others for support and maybe, there is a remote chance it is at that moment he decides to make a change.  At least that is the narrative I prefer to believe.

This is the third time on the road trip I have handed out cash to strangers.  Of course there was the flat tire guy at the parking garage in Vegas.  I handed a big pocketful of change to a guy in the Fremont area that asked for it and now today with the Dunkin Donuts kid.  Each and every time Cindy chastised me for giving money to these people and each time I didn’t really care.  If being overly sympathetic in these situations is a problem in other people’s eyes it’s one that won’t keep me up at night.

We are now hurdling at 75MPH towards Dallas, home of the hated Cowboys.  I have my Phillies baseball hat on backwards today, ready to take on all challengers.

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. 🙂

During the homestretch into Vegas as I was driving I found myself needing to pass a few slower vehicles on the two lane road we were traveling with a 70 MPH speed limit.  The road was very straight and very wide open with a line of sight that extended for miles.  As I swung out to pass I had the urge to try something I was unsuccessful at doing at the salt flats, get the Prius up to 100mph.  It took a little while but with constant pedal pressure the car actually hit 102 which may be a new land speed record for the hybrid.

As we pulled into Vegas the thermometer in the car touched 100 degrees outside, quite the contrast to the low 60’s we started the day with.  It was about 5:15 local time, we lost another hour during the days drive and were now on Pacific time.

As we pulled into the drive in front of the Stratosphere I saw 4 rows of vehicles, each with a sign that said VALET above them.  At first I thought these dozens of cars were all waiting to be parked.  I then realized that almost all of them were empty and waiting to be driven into the parking garage.  I did not want to use valet, I never want to use valet, but it looked like there was no other option.  I stopped the car and started to pull out some bags as one of the valets walked up.

Cindy didn’t want to valet either and thought there had to be an option to self park.  Well the valet started tagging our vehicle when Cindy asked him about self parking.  He said we could self park if we wanted to as he pointed to around the corner.  At the far end of the lobby ceiling there was a small SELF PARK sign that pointed around the corner.  I thought it was bullshit that there was no such sign when you enter the area as I threw the bags back in the car, annoyed. We followed the signs up into the garage and found a place to park on the fourth level.

As we were unloading the car some man that had been on his phone came walking up to us.  He seemed distressed. He told me his truck had a flat, which he pointed to down the row of parked cars.  I did see a red Ford truck that looked like it was leaning to one side like it had a flat tire.  He said he has been calling around to a bunch of places to come out to fix it and only one place would come out on a Sunday but they only would take cash.  He said he was twelve dollars and some change short of what they charged and they only would take cash.  He said he would let me hold his watch or his wedding ring as collateral to assure me he was on the level.

Cindy said nothing during this encounter as she later told me she didn’t buy the story.  I thought the guy seemed legitimately in need so I pulled 13 bucks out of my wallet and gave it to him.  He said he could try to pay me back if I had a room number.  I told him we didn’t check in yet and to not worry about it.  He was very grateful and got back on his phone, presumably to call back the garage as he walked back towards the truck.  As we were getting ready to walk down he thanked me again from across the garage.

So as we walked Cindy voiced her opinion to me that she thought the guy just worked me and he will probably work the same story on the next nice looking person he sees.  I hoped she was wrong but even if she was right my conscience was clear.  If I truly helped a man in need I feel good about it, if I just got shook down for 13 bucks, oh well, life goes on.

The check in line was long but moved quickly.  As we entered the main casino area it was my turn to sidestep another much more expensive shakedown.  A nice woman called Cindy over and said they had a free gift for hotel guests.  Cindy, being naturally friendly engaged the woman who started asking her questions like if we were on our honeymoon.

The woman walked us over to a counter and turned us over to another woman that would “show us the gifts”.  I looked at the signage on the counter and immediately realized they were trying to sell us a timeshare.  I stopped the woman very early and told her we weren’t married and that we had no interest in a time share.  I told her I had one in the past and had no interest in another.  The woman realized she was wasting her time and told us to have a nice day.

We made our way through the casino, found our elevator and went up to the 6th floor.  Our room was very nice and modern although the view out the window of the wall surrounding some cooling units was less then spectacular.   We found it odd that housekeeping neglected to leave any soap or shampoo in the bathroom.  Cindy tracked down a housekeeper and grabbed some soap.

After eating a simple dinner at a spot inside the Strat mall, we decided to go walk down the strip.  The Stratosphere is located at the very north end of the modern strip.  It quickly became apparent we would have a very long walk in front of us.  I did not make a great choice in footwear to do this with just a pair of flip flops on my feet.

I was disoriented as we walked, very little looked familiar.  I was last in Vegas about 7 years ago for my 40th birthday.  Things looked much different than I remembered.  There were huge construction walls covering blocks of real estate where something was ripped down in order to put something bigger, brighter, and more high end.  There were some casinos that I never saw before like the Cosmopoliton.  For the first 30 minutes of our walk it almost felt like I never had been in Vegas before, things looked so different.

Eventually we got to more familiar sights.  We went into Senor Frogs and grabbed a beer while we watched the end of the Cowboys-Giants game.  (nice choke Giants)  We wind up talking a decent amount to one of the bartenders that was a beefy guy.  It turns out he used to play college football and later Arena 2 ball.  He was a running back.  His time as a football player has left him with two wrecked knees.  He said he is looking to get a double knee replacement soon even though he was only 37 years old, ouch.

We then got smart and hopped on the Deuce bus, buying two 24 hour passes for 8 bucks each.  It will allow us to hop on and off as we chose to save us a ton of walking in the hot, dry desert air.  The bus was very full with hot, stale air.  We rode it down a couple stops which got us into the heart of the strip.

We stopped by a group of street performers that were getting ready to perform.  Cindy wanted to see the performance.  I was fine to hang and watch.  It was 4 young guys that were street dancers along with a guy doing an incredible job of using Home Depot style buckets as drums.  The did some impressive moves before they started pulling people out of the audience to help with their big final stunt which involved one of them doing a running front flip over them.  In total they pulled out 5 people and of course two of them were Cindy and I.  At first they made it appear the kid was going to jump us while we were standing upright.  In the end it was just me and one other guy bent over that were the hurdles to be cleared.  Cindy was recording most of the experience, it will be some great footage when we get it online.

We then wanted to grab something sweet before heading back.  I pulled Cindy into a place called Hexx that was a high end candy store and ice cream place.  We got a small cup of decadent chocolate ice cream to share.  We enjoyed it at an incredible spot, a small ledge in front of the store looking out over the sidewalk.  We loved sitting there and watching the crowd funnel by.  There is nowhere better to people watch than the Vegas strip.  Man, it was just crazy.  We sat there for a long time, long after the ice cream was gone, just taking it all in, it was great.

Before getting back on the bus we briefly dipped into Planet Hollywood so Cindy could try her luck at slots.  We were very conservative only doing penny slots.  Cindy went to several machines, cashing out each as soon as she got slightly ahead.  At the end of the brief gambling session she was 24 cents ahead, a small win but a win none the less.

We hopped back on a bus and road back to the hotel.  I was surprised when we got back in the room and realized it was nearly midnight, or 3AM EST.  No wonder I felt like my eyes were burning into my skull.  I am sure today will have enough activity to fill a week of normal blogging.

Last night we arrived at our hotel just outside of Salt Lake City, a Quality Inn.  It’s pool was under construction but we didn’t really care since we had no intentions of using it.  We wound up having a great dinner at a chain called Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill.  It was sort of awesome because they had a TON of seafood based Mexican selections.  Cindy had a sea bass dish she loved and I had some mahi mahi tacos that were equally good.  Cindy and I both wished this chain was in our area, we would frequent it routinely.

After dinner I was on a mission to find a USB mini cable, the type used for a GoPro.  I forgot to bring my wire.  There was a Best Buy so I figured I could easily pick one up there.  Well after 15 minutes of searching and finding nothing but micro connectors I asked an employee, I had to simply be missing them.  Nope, he checked inventory and they did not have a single USB mini style cable, that is unbelievable.  We popped into the Barnes and Noble next door on the off chance the Nook used a USB mini style cable and again came up empty.  I was pissed at myself when we were almost back to our hotel and realized I could have also scored a SD to micro SD adapter to accomplish the same goal, dumb ass.

The hotel seemed nice enough but there were a number of small details that wound up giving us an overall negative impression of the place.  The first came to light last night when we were showering.  Cindy spotted some mold/mildew on the ceiling and on some of the grout in the shower.  Yea that’s gross but I did not feel motivated enough about it to want to repack and unpack in another room. Then this morning I was annoyed that we ran out of tissues, something that should always be checked by the cleaning crew.

The biggest annoyances came at the breakfast bar that they seemed to deem as very valuable since a coupon was required to get access to it.  They also had a large sign posted on the door that said you absolutely were not allowed to take any food out of breakfast room. Well the breakfast was the worst we had on the trip.  The scrambled eggs were swimming in water, the juice dispenser spit out more water than juice, there were no knives, the dispenser for the cereal was broken, and the yogurt was squirted out of dispenser normally reserved for ketchup or mustard. The experience made Quality Inn drop down quite a few notches in our potential future hotel accomodation list.

We again set an alarm today so we got out on the road early en route to the Bonneville Salt Flats.  We were glad to once again have a Dunkin Donuts nearby, a luxury we were missing the last few days.  I could tell Cindy was not all that excited about this stop on the trip but I had wanted to see it for quite awhile after having to skip it on prior road trips.

The drive out there was roughly 90 minutes and allowed us to briefly see the Great Salt Lake, something I never caught a glimpse of before.  As we appoached the salt flat area it almost looked like winter with foggy skies and nothing but flat whiteness on either side of the road. I did not really know what to expect when we got there.  I assumed there would be some sort of visitor center since it was a state park.  Instead it was a road with a small sign by the left of it where the road ended and the drivable part of the flats began.  No rules, no regulations, just a huge white expanse ahead of us.

I had told Cindy repeatedly that I planned to do some high speed driving with the Prius on the flats.  She told me repeatedly she didn’t think it was a good idea.  I did not agree.  The surface of the flats is quite rough with the hardened sand.  The texture reminded me of a thin layer of snow after it has melted, refroze and been driven on a few times.  It was very crunchy under your feet.  I got down on my knees and put my toungue on the ground to verify it’s salt content.  I confirmed we were indeed standing on millions of tons of salt.

So I did a preliminary drive on the salt at speed, getting up to around 50 mph.  The car felt a little odd driving across the resistance the crusty salt offers.  It also creates a LOT of road noise.  I then told Cindy to do a high speed drive by while I shot video.  Her idea of high speed and mine were totally different, she went by at maybe 50 mph a couple times.  I said it was my turn.

I had joked with Cindy I wanted to push the Prius to 100 mph, an idea she absolutely did not agree with.  I made several passes by her as she ran the camera.  The fastest I went was 75 mph, it just felt like going a lot faster could have been hazardous.  After our high speed runs the tires and wheel wells were absolutely packed with wet salt, a side effect I did not expect.  I knew we would have to get the salt out of there asap as nothing wrecks paint/metal faster than salt.

Cindy did another short tabata workout on the flats which again offered up a very unique back drop for a video.  I also made a triumphant return to the sky with my Phantom, after reassembling the camera frame.  I utilized the one battery pack I knew was good.  Despite it’s very rough life the last few days, the copter still flew well as I zoomed back and forth over the salt flats with the GoPro recording.  Cindy broadcast the flight on Periscope at the same time and had a surprisingly large audience.

I also had a brief exercise video shot as I dropped and knocked out 50 push up reps for the hell of it.  In total we may have only spent an hour at the flats but I thought it was great fun.  During one of my high speed runs I noticed there was an abandoned orange cone in the middle of nowhere.  I told Cindy that would be the ultimate unique Salt Flats souvenir that could serve double duty as part of my Green Machine Timing equipment stockpile.  At first she was very opposed to the idea, saying we didn’t have room and she didn’t want a big salty cone amongst our luggage.  Eventually I convinced her of the awesomeness of this idea.  She put the cone inside of a couple empty bags.  It will now be our companion for the rest of the trip.

So the first priority was to find a place to wash off all that salt.  I could not believe that the gas station at the exit for the salt flats did not have a car wash, they would make a freaking fortune with one.  The clerk said the closest wash was a few miles away in town.  Even though we didn’t have the car wash at the gas station Cindy utilized one of the windshield washer tools to try to scrape as much of the salt off as she could.  She worked hard but there was still a TON of salt in the wheel wells.

So we found the car wash in town.  There were two people in front of us.  I asked Cindy to run in and pay for the wash so I wouldn’t lose my spot in line.  She returned with a ticket for the express wash service.  The two cars in front of me took forever, I bet each cycle was at least 7 or 8 minutes long.  I was happy to see the wash had a real high strength rocker panel blaster as part of the service.  So after about 20 minutes of waiting we pulled into the wash and I immediately realized the express wash doesn’t include extras like the high pressure rocker panel blaster the car so badly needed.  I immediately got really frustrated since I had been waiting so long for a wash that I knew was not going to be all that effective.  I gave Cindy a hard time about getting the express wash, a harder time than I should have in retrospect.  The sign for the different wash levels indicated the express wash included an under carriage wash but that was just a low pressure deal.  I knew we were going to have to make another stop at some point to try to fully address the pounds of salt sticking to the car.

So after we stopped for lunch there was another gas station with a car wash. While we gassed up Cindy again did another extensive salt removal with the windshield cleaner wand.  Some other people pumping gas asked us if it was snow.  When we pulled out there were four substantial piles of salt.  I paid for my second car wash of the day, paying full boat for the best wash they had.  It did a nice job but there was still salt in areas of the wheel well that were up above the tires.  Thankfully we then spotted a water hose near the vacuum station.  I was able to use it to dissolve the rest of the salt that was stuck.  The flats were great but getting all that salt off was a major pain in the ass.

We are now less than 200 miles from Vegas, closing in on two days of fun that should not involve any time in a vehicle, a luxury we both could use by this point.