Why I love Las Vegas

Our trip started with a decision to drive to Lansing in my car and park in long-term rather than invest other kind people in my scheme to save on air fare. We launched at 10:15 am for what Abby described as the "chillest" airport she'd encountered. Easy to park. No long lines. No feeling of rush. I knew I was traveling with the right person when she alerted me to visible boogers hanging out at the fringes of my nostrils. We can't have that on a trip. You need someone in your corner and not of the dried mucous variety.

I was not used to some of the newer routines to make air travel even more miserable. I was the grown up, experienced traveler on our team with a desire to show Abby the ropes but I was as green as a newbie and constantly being told by people in quasi-uniforms that yes, they really wanted me to do things in a way that was different from how I had done them before. It is not enough to empty the metal from your pockets. You have to empty everything from your pockets. I had to be instructed to empty the receipts from my shirt pocket and pose for a scan.

There is something soul-crushing about a journey that begins with a total lack of trust, humor or kindness. And yet the miracle of a metal tube full of people, hurtling through the upper sky at great speed and transporting us to a time that is three hours earlier than what our watches say to a place that looks like another world and is thirty degrees hotter still blows me away.

We had an outstanding view of the Grand Canyon to our left as we approached our destination (as alerted by our captain) but the coughing lady with a window seat next to me must have been reading a pretty engrossing book. Too busy to glance at one of the natural wonders of the world or notice that two, less jaded travelers were trying to see through the silhouette of her head.

Las Vegas is outstanding in its beautiful ugliness and vulgar establishment in a dessert surrounded by rocky vistas and powered by the force of the Colorado River as it pushes against the turbines in Hoover Dam. Everyone nice there is trying to sell you something. Powered sidewalks and natural pathways lead into the Casinos but not out. Smug boy-men in elevators recite Vegas one-liners learned from TV and movies like it was poetry; here to do the unspoken Vegas thing, whatever that is.

I love Las Vegas because I love leaving Las Vegas. Natural ancient beauty is even more heavenly contrasted against artificial hubris.

New spring, new focus

As evidenced by a whole month passing since my last entry, life has pretty much returned to a plateau. A lack of drama has replaced the steep ups and downs of the past year.  It's time for a vacation. Spring is my favorite season in Michigan but this year I will be adventuring in some other parts of the world with some of my favorite people.

Trip 1: Southwest United States.

Abby and I will be taking 8 days to perhaps explore some of the National Parks greatest hits.  That brief amount of time does not afford the whole road trip experience so we will begin with a flight to Las Vegas to put us in the vicinity. There we will rent a car and proceed on our "bohemian adventure". The rules of a bohemian adventure are simple:

1. Eat, when you are hungry.
2. Sleep, when you are tired.
3. When you want a milkshake, you get one.
4. The kid has final word on which tourist traps, roadside historical markers, or National Parks get visited or passed over.

Planning is forbidden.  We let the road and the weather suggest our next destination.  We do think we may find ourselves in Los Angeles around the time of Alice's birthday. But to say for sure would violate the rules.

The tradition of this kind of "trip with Dad" began when Alice was little (age 5 or 6?) and we ended up in Canada visiting my sister, Ginny, who was working as a geologist for the Canadian government in Manitouwadge, Ontario, a silver mining town in Canada.  It was a great surprise for her and a blast for us (despite the fact that we were detained at the border for suspicion of kidnapping). Somewhere I have some documentary video from this trip. We shot S-VHS as I recall.

About 5 years later, I did a bohemian adventure with Abby and we ended up in the Badlands.  This documentary was shot on mini DV videotape.  But our trip was cut short when Abby got homesick at the entrance gates to Mount Rushmore.  But rules is rules.  We turned around right there and went home and to this day I have never seen the stone Presidents. However, we did visit EVERY prairie dog village between Michigan and South Dakota.

It was Abby's idea to employ the BA rules for this trip.

Trip 2: Snorkeling in the Caribbean.

Mary has had a rough year too.  Maybe rougher than me. On top of all this cancer worry and operations, she has had to continue going to work each day to keep our household functioning. It hasn't been easy.

When we first talked about an island vacation, I'm quite sure Mary was envisioning rum cocktails with umbrellas delivered to her beach hammock by cabana boys.  Fortunately for me, she was willing to compromise and we finally agreed upon a location where the snorkeling was world class: The Dutch Antilles. We will be flying to Curaçao and then hopping over to Bonaire for the bulk of the week.  Mary got hooked on the notion that on Bonaire, there are more flamingos than people.  And I have experienced some of my greatest bliss floating through reefs with a mask and snorkel and Bonaire promises some of the best easy snorkeling anywhere.  We entertained the idea of learning SCUBA for the trip but it got too complicated and expensive.

So I imagine that for the near future, this blog will become a travel blog.  I'm not taking my video camera on either trip but my iPad takes great photos and short clips of video so I will not have to rely completely on the written word.