Filling in the gaps
Well I have the big task of filling in the gaps from the Vegas trip as well as outlining the 4 day long Christmas weekend. It will surely push the limits of my feeble memory capabilities. Let’s see how this goes.
The trip out on Sunday went pretty well. Our flights out were on Delta, flights back on American due to the colossal Travelocity F up we had while booking. Our first flight took us into Atlanta. I dressed rather stupidly, wearing simply an Eagles t-shirt and shorts. As soon as we got off the plane in Atlanta I paid the price. It was 40 something degrees there. The entire terminal felt cold. I tried to not complain much since I had no one to blame for my inappropriate attire but myself.
The flight from Atlanta to Vegas was loooong. It was made even longer by us having to sit on the runway for about an hour prior to takeoff. The delay was explained to us as basically the power system used to start the engines had failed and they had to do the airplane equivalent of “jumping it”. This was not very reassuring. The first vehicle they brought over to jump it didn’t work either so by the time they got another one almost 60 minutes had passed. Sitting there for an hour when the flight is scheduled for three and a half hours is not a good thing.
Ali had the window, I was in the middle and then there was a younger girl on the aisle. She looked very much like a girl I used to play volleyball with/against back in PA. It didn’t take long for her to comment on my wearing shorts. She asked jokingly if I hadn’t looked at the weather forecast? She was a chatty sort and talked to us off and on during the ride. We found out that she lived in Hawaii but was going to college on the east coast, (North Carolina I think). She showed us approximately where her house is on a Hawaii postcard. It looked to be overlooking the water, niiiiice.
This flight was so long that they actually played a movie. Ali was thrilled to see it was Hairspray. Hairspray is a musical, something I generally hate. All the singing makes me insane. Initially I didn’t bother to put on the headphones to watch it. After awhile I got bored enough that I put them on. For some reason John Travolta signed on to play the fat mother in the film. Just in case he had any credibility left with me, he made sure to squash it with this role. It was downright disturbing to watch. Why in the world would he agree to this? Who knows. I found moments of the film mildly entertaining, I found the rest borderline irritating. Of course Ali thought it was fantastic.
As we got closer to Vegas we flew right over the Grand Canyon, getting a fantastic view of it. Ali snapped a bunch of pictures from the window. It’s magnitude is just incredible. We looked forward to seeing it close up which you already know never happened as detailed below.
We landed in Vegas and again it was coooold, in the upper 40’s. I tried to address my frigid body a little by pulling my Reading Rugby coat out of the luggage to throw on. We hopped the bus to go to the rental car center. We rented with Enterprise. I was blown away by the customer service we received. After checking in at an upstairs counter they directed us below to the garage where the cars were. We were greeted by a friendly young woman that came out to meet us with a clipboard in her hand. She called us by name and even wished me happy birthday, sheesh. She was very friendly and talkative as she walked us over to the cars. She said that we had a choice of vehicles, one of them being a Prius. I said “Are you serious, we can take the Prius?” “Sure thing” she said. Wow. She took the time to explain the paperwork, didn’t exert any pressure to sign up for the bullshit “extra insurance”, answered any questions we had and that was that. She was so damn nice I felt like I should have tipped her. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate or not in that situation so I didn’t but felt bad about it. I NEVER had such a positive interaction with a rental car joint.
So we drive to the timeshare. It is a Hilton about a block off the strip on the north side of it. It was in a word, awesome. It was basically a first class hotel with rooms that included full kitchens as well as a washer and a dryer. Everything was clean and new looking. The bathroom had a huge jacuzzi tub that we put to use more than once and both of the tv’s in the room were flat screens. It was the nicest timeshare place we have every stayed at.
So we got into the room in time to catch most of the second half of the Eagles/Cowboys game. Nobody gave the Eagles a snowballs chance in hell to win the game, including me. I was thrilled to see the Eagles holding on to a narrow lead. I was pretty sure they would find a way to lose. They had excellent field position and multiple scoring opportunities that they missed out on time and time again. However the defense played a great game, making Tony Romo look like a boob all game long. They also managed to basically negate TO which I loved. What a great way to start our Vegas trip. That just about wraps up Sunday, let’s jump to Tuesday.
I briefly outlined our Tuesday but let me give a little detail on the Hoover Dam excursion as well as the Blue Man group show.
The Hoover Dam trip was very interesting to both of us. For some reason before the trip, I had it in my mind that the dam was built sometime during the 50’s. I soon found out that it actually was built two decades earlier in the early 30’s. It seems nearly impossible to build such a massive structure with the technology and machinery available at that time. The visual of the dam is pretty amazing. The steep, huge wall of concrete holding back a huge lake full of water is something I won’t soon forget. When we started going through the various exhibits about the dam it got more and more impressive.
At it’s base, the dam is over 600 feet wide. As it goes up it tapers to a width of only 45 feet at the top. It gets it’s strength from it’s weight. The electricity generated by the dam more than paid for it’s construction and more than pays for it’s upkeep costs. They are constructing a towering overpass to allow traffic that normally has to snake down to the dam and cross it to get to the other side to instead shoot directly over the ravine. The bridge itself looked like a massive undertaking.
When we were driving towards the dam we had to stop at a “Brake Inspection Station” The road down towards the dam is steep and is filled with back and forth sharp turns. I suppose a large truck with suspect brakes could really get into trouble trying to navigate it. With a car like ours we simply drove up to the guy and he immediately waved us through.
Like I mentioned before, the trip inside the dam was rather disappointing. Since 9/11 they eliminated almost the entire inside tour. All they show you are the generators used to crank out the power. They are indeed impressive but I would have loved to see more of the guts of how it all works. On the trip up in the cramped elevator we asked the guide how long the bridge is supposed to last. We were all surprised to hear 3000 years come out of his mouth. How in the world would they expect it to last that long and how exactly would they come up with such a number anyway?
We also walked through the old exhibit hall constructed in the 30’s. In there they had a small auditorium with old wooden fold down seats. The exhibit was simply a large 3d map of the area that had lights that lit up various sections of it as a narrator talked about the dam and how it impacts the entire region around it.
After seeing all there was to see we made the obligatory stop in the gift shop and then grabbed soft pretzels to eat after that. Yes, it was still quite cold.
Ok let’s talk about the Blue Man Group. On the way there we managed to get sort of lost. Ali told me the Venetian was one way. I assured her it was not that way, it was the opposite direction. Well of course, I was wrong. So after several u-turns we finally managed to get there. Hey, I admitted I was wrong.
The Venetian is extremely fancy and high end, just like so many of the casinos on the new strip. The trip there took a bit longer than expected so we didn’t take the time to explore much before the show, instead hurrying to get to the theater. We got our tickets that my sister had bought for us and headed in. I was surprised as we were directed to our seats and the usher kept getting closer and closer to the stage. We were like 7 or 8 rows back, dead center. Wow, awesome seats, Torrin really hooked us up.
One thing we immediately noticed was all the rows in front of us had plastic ponchos on them. Evidently we were in the first row behind the “splash zone”. Ali was thankful for that. The theater was quite cool. On either side of the stage were two big tubes of water that spun around creating a mini inverted water spout inside of them. Around the tubes were a series of bronze, human looking figures all connected together. Up high on either side of the stage were scrolling LED signs that didn’t flash anything of interest until right before the show started.
A few minutes before the show I decided that Ali and I would be quite thirsty after 2 hours of sitting. I scurried off to the refreshment stand and got two small bottles of water. After being relieved of $10 I returned. The excitement built as the show was getting ready to start. Right before it did a bunch of ushers started a weird ritual. They each had several rolls of crepe paper. They went row by row and unrolled it on the first person on the row. His job was to pass the paper down the row until everyone had it draped all over them. Some people got creative and tied it around their head. I let my pile sit on my lap and later got “crazy” and draped it around my neck. Yea it made no sense but neither did a lot of the show so it was a good primer.
So the show starts and the blue men appear. The open up with their famous drumming on lit up drums covered with colored water. The effect is indeed cool. For some weird reason, I expected to see the same three blue men that appeared on the Intel commercials years ago. I was sort of bummed out that none of that cast was performing. I guess I naively thought that the same 3 blue men did every show. Evidently there is a whole gaggle of blue men running around.
Blue men don’t talk, they do a lot of confused looking around and at each other. It’s funny, at first. They seemed to rely on that aspect of their show a bit too hard for my tastes. There was a really funny moment early on where they were in the middle of a skit and they abruptly stopped, grabbed a spotlight and shined it on a couple walking down the aisle while “YOU’RE LATE” boomed over the PA system. I am 99% sure the people were plants and they do this every show. It was funny as hell though.
So the show progressed. At one point one of the blue men walked right over us as he searched for another “victim” aka- plant for another segment. There were some very entertaining, loud, percussive parts that got the whole house rocking. There were also a lot of sort of dead moments that just weren’t all that funny and entertaining. About half way through the show I realized that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I expected to. Late in the show there was another strange and rather pointless exercise. In the back of the theater they had dozens of the crepe paper rolls mounted up high. The blue men ran to the back and start pulling the paper onto the audience. Again the idea is to keep feeding it, this time forward towards the stage. By the time the paper arrived towards the front it was basically a tidal wave. We were buried in the paper. Even if you didn’t pull it, the people in front of you were so either you had to duck or help pull as well. By the time it was done the front row had a mass of paper 6 feet high and as wide as the stage. Not a very “green” performance, although they do make a point before the show to point out that they used recycled paper for the performance. Ugh I would hate to have to clean that mess up.
So the grand finale comes, again more drumming in paint. They wrap things up, people clap and it’s done. After the show the blue men came out to take pictures with people. I tried to get Ali to pose with one but instead she told me to. I waited till the crowd died down and then snuck in to have her take a picture with the shortest blue man of the three. I tried to interact with him a bit. I put my hand on his shoulder and said “How ya doin” as he gave me the patented blue man confused stare. Then for some odd reason I decided to make a kissing motion with my mouth after he gave me another weird look. It was awkward.
After I took my picture a few others snuck in and got theirs taken. There was a small break when nobody was nearby. The blue man took the opportunity to blow out of there. He literally ran out of the area, thankful to get away from the crowd I guess.
As we walked out of the theater I asked Ali what she thought of the show. I figured she would have glowing reviews since she seemed much more into the audience participation segments than I was. I told her it was good but not mind blowing like I expected it to be. Surprisingly she agreed with me, good, not great. We were glad we got to see it but both agreed that the Cirque de Soleil show we saw last time we were in Vegas was more impressive.
Afterward we took the time to investigate the Ventian a bit. This is where they have the canals with gondolas. As the guy pushes people around he sings to them, loudly. It was interesting to observe them rowing and singing for awhile.
Ok this wraps up this entry, cripes it is long as a book and it only covered two days. I still have a couple more Vegas days as well as Xmas to cover, sheesh….