Las Vegas Sept-07

Trip Report: Las Vegas, Sept-07

I have heard that the Las Vegas Strip has been designed and built with one purpose in mind. That purpose is to suck as much money as it can out of your pockets in as short a time frame as possible. I decided to put that theory to a test during a recent trip to the city. But first some background (the educational content of this report) on the "Entertainment Capital of The World".

Las Vegas is located in the center of Vegas Valley, a desert region of about 600 square miles, which is surrounded by the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Spring Mountains. The seasons are hot, windy, and dry, with desert conditions and maximum temperatures of around 120 degrees F during the summer. The mountains around Las Vegas reach elevations of over 10,000 feet, acting as barriers to moisture from the Pacific Ocean. Rainfall is minimal and there are about 216 clear days during the year.

The city was incorporated in 1911. In 1931 there was the legalization of casino gambling in Nevada. The gaming and entertainment industries boomed in Las Vegas after World War II. A street lined with large, glittering casino hotels came to be known as the "Strip"; downtown, in Casino Center, lavish palaces featured the country's top entertainers. By the 1950s Las Vegas had become synonymous with the unique form of recreation it had created.
I arrived in Las Vegas in early September and the summer heat was already fading. The daily high was always between 100 and 105 degrees. But, as the locals say, it is a dry heat. I spent the first afternoon wandering up and down the strip, getting a feel for the place. I could feel the money being pulled out of my pocket with every step.

The first vampires are the tour salespeople. They lure you in with some easy questions like "where are you from?" and with an offer of $10 show tickets, reduced tour prices and hundreds of dollars worth of meal coupons. All you have to do is sit through a three hour time share sales pitch. No thanks.

The sidewalks are also lined with guys handing out business cards for young women who were just sitting by the phone waiting for my call. Apparently there are a lot of young women in Vegas that love to talk to middle aged business men (like Scooter). They really should get friends their own age or take up sports. The guys would flick their cards to attract your attention as you walk by. That gets real annoying really fast. Their T-shirts (and the signs on mobile billboards) announce "Girls delivered direct to you in 20 minutes". That’s faster than you can get a pizza delivered.

Every hotel and casino, as well as most restaurants, have decided that the threshold for the price of a bottle of domestic beer is $6. That wasn’t going to work for my frugal nature so I went looking for more reasonable options and found one right up the strip from the hotel. The Salsa Cantina offers good Mexican food at reasonable prices and a bottle of cold Pacifico is $3. Or a bucket of 6 bottles for $15. I highly recommend the place based on food quality, service and value. Stop by and tell them I sent you.

We took in a view of the Strip and the surrounding area from the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel. The top observation deck is at 460’ above street level compared to 1020’ of the Eiffel Tower in Paris but you still get a great view of the surrounding area. A trip for two to the top was $18 but we bought some bootleg discount coupons and saved $5.

Day 2 was devoted to a road trip to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. Scooter pulled into town the night before and rented a luxurious 2008 Aveo (dubbed The Red Roller Skate) for our tour. The car was so small that when we stopped for snacks we had to rearrange seating just to get the bag of Doritos inside. Winnebago’s towing bigger cars than ours passed us on the highway. The 4-cylinder 1.6 liter engine provided neck-snapping acceleration (if you neck was made of cooked spaghetti) and could take some of the hills without slowing down too much. The bright side was that the car was extremely red and was the most comfortable small car I have been in. Even after ten hours of both driving and riding the car my back didn’t hurt and my legs weren’t cramped. The other bright side was that Scooter paid for the car rental. We pulled out of Vegas in the early morning and headed east to the Hoover Dam.

Construction on the Hoover Dam—originally the Boulder Dam—on the Colorado River was begun in 1931, bringing to the area thousands of men seeking employment. And girls delivered direct to them in under 20 minutes. The seventy-story-high dam, which is regarded as one of the wonders of the modern world, still supplies affordable power to parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada. It is still pretty impressive despite its age and I especially liked the Art Deco styling. Another neat thing about the dam is that you can walk over it, lean right over the edge and look down the face of the dam to the power house and Colorado River below. After a brief visit it was back into the Red Roller Skate and off to the Grand Canyon.

I told some guy that I met in the Salsa Cantina that I had visited the Grand Canyon. He told me how he thought that it was amazing how a meteorite’s impact could cause such a hole in the earth. His theory would have been better, but still not correct, if aliens had been involved somehow but we all know (or do we?) that the Grand Canyon was carved out over 6 million years by the Colorado River.

The terrain changed as we climbed from wide dessert valleys with no vegetation to hills covered in scrub pines to rolling hills with pine and cedar forests. The area around Hoover Dam is extremely rugged and barren with marl outcroppings and hoodoos. Las Vegas is at 2180 feet above sea level and we climbed to 7000 feet at the South Rim of the Canyon.

We visited the South rim of the canyon. The views are incredible. What more can I say? Even the photos I took don’t fully express the scenery. Descriptive words fail me so I’ll throw out a bunch of facts. The South Rim is 7000 feet above sea level and 4600 feet above the Colorado River that runs through the Canyon. The Canyon is 10 miles across at the South Rim viewing posts. The Canyon is aptly named.

The other activity that Vegas is known for (besides gambling and girls delivered direct to you in under 20 minutes) are the lavish shows. We had great debates over what types of show to see. The problem isn’t that there isn’t a selection, the problem is that there is too much of a selection. My choices included Wayne Newton (a Strip staple since the Glory Days of Vegas) and the Mini Celebrity Impersonator Show. They had a mini-Elvis, a mini-Madonna and a mini-Britney Spears. The mini-Britney didn’t really look much like Britney except she was blonde and had a one-piece pink plastic jumpsuit. But, as we all know, Wisconsin is the cheese state, not Nevada, so my choices got shot down and we took in a show typical of Broadway instead. It was good but there wasn’t a midget in the whole cast.

One great sight in Vegas that is actually free (no hidden costs, no time-share seminar, no entrance fee…) is the Dancing Fountains at the Bellagio Hotel. The $40 million Bellagio fountain show is equipped with 1,200 nozzles and 4,500 lights, making it the most expensive and ambitious water feature in Vegas. The range of movement across the lake is varied; some of the movement is continuous, responding to the smooth passages of music, while other water jets are rapidly pulsing, reaching heights as high as 240 feet. We especially enjoyed the fountains that played to Elvis’ Viva Las Vegas.

And the final portion of this Trip Report, two top / bottom lists based on the recent experience.

Top Eight List (or Eight Things About Vegas That I Like)
8. Constant sunshine
7. Casino lights
6. The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower
5. Mexican restaurant with $3 bottles of Pacifico
4. Drinking in the streets

3. The Hoover Dam
2. The Grand Canyon
1. The Bellagio Dancing Fountains doing Elvis’ "Viva Las Vegas"

Bottom Ten List (or Things About Vegas That I Can Do Without)
10. Not enough to do on the Strip if you don’t gamble
9. Not enough fun things to make up a more positive Top Ten List
8. Guys handing out Call Girl fliers
7. The slot machine bells
6. The heat
5. Too-old women trying to look too-young through the use of mini-skirts and make up.
4. Time share sales reps
3. $15 inner tube rentals at the "free" hotel pool
2. $6 for a bottle of domestic beer
1. Mimes and other street performers

Cumberland to Shepardstown, Sept-07

Trip Report 1-Sept-07

This is a departure from the regular trip reports which, at a minimum, are for at least one overnight stay, usually in a foreign country. We had planned an overnight trip and we ended up in rural Maryland which is as foreign from Metro DC as you can get so I guess the trip qualifies for a report.

The plan was to drop one vehicle off in Shepardstown and drive the other truck with the bikes in it to Cumberland, Maryland. We would then ride the C & O Canal tow path from Cumberland to Shepardstown, a total of about 120 miles, with an overnight stop in Hancock which is about halfway. We would then throw the bikes into the truck parked in Shepardstown, drive back to Cumberland for the other truck and head home. In and out real fast, nobody gets hurt. You know what they say about the best laid plans.

There were three of us riding; Doctor Window Boy (DWB), Scooter and myself. The weather was perfect for the ride with sunshine, blue skies and reasonable humidity for this time of year.









We got off to a late start as DWB can’t quite get his act together in the morning. You remember him from the failed trip to the Bahamas? He was the guy who couldn’t make the 6AM flight. He even has a job where he doesn’t start work until 10AM. By the time we got on the trail we were about an hour behind but it didn’t seem important at the time. We made good progress the first 17 miles, doing a good 12 miles an hour which is pretty good for us on a dirt trail. We saw deer, wild turkeys and a great blue heron. And turtles. Lots of turtles sunning themselves on logs floating in the canal.



Picture 1: The trail and canal a few miles out of Cumberland



Then Scooter’s bike started falling apart. There is a hex screw that holds the pedal crank onto the crank shaft. That screw had worked itself loose and the pedal crank was all wobbly. So we dismounted and got out the tool kit (thoughtfully prepared by DWB) and found that we had a tool for every screw and nut on a bike except this one screw. Scooter tightened it up using a pair of pliers and we were on our way. For a mile. Then it came loose again and we had to stop. This is how it went for the next 43 miles with us stopping every mile (more frequently as the day wore on) to tighten the screw.



Picture 2: A familar sight. Scooter tightening the crank screw











Here’s how fast our progress down the trail was. There was a family out walking the trail. Grandpa, a couple of little boys and a teenaged girl (whose face showed how much she was enjoying walking along the dirt trail with her family). This walking family passed us. Twice. That’s how fast we were going between riding and fixing.

I rode ahead to the town of Paw Paw, West Virginia, to see if I could buy a hex key that would fit the screw. The business district of Paw Paw consists of a gas station and a Dollar Store. Neither of which sells the kind of tool I was looking for. I asked one of the locals if there was a bike shop in town and he said no. When I asked about a tool store or automotive supply store his face lit up and I thought I had hit pay dirt. He told me that they were going to build a tool store right across the street. I wasn’t going to wait for that so I headed back to the trail to wait for DWB and Scooter.








Picture 3: The Paw Paw Tunnel, 3280 feet long

While I was waiting a herd of teenagers on bikes went down the trail heading towards DWB and Scooter. One of the kids was on the wrong side of the trail with his head down, heading right for DWB. His friends were yelling at him, DWB was yelling at him but he just kept going. DWB thought he was just screwing with him, playing chicken, but the kid looked up at the last second, saw DWB and swerved. The kid missed DWB but swerved around him and nailed Scooter. Down they went. Scooter ended up with cuts and contusions on his arm where the kid’s brake handle got him. Scooter wasn’t having a good day.

At one point we had stopped to fix Scooter’s bike and DWB saw buzzards circling. He thought they were coming for Scooter but I was sure they were after Scooter’s bike. DWB was convinced that bad things happen in threes and was waiting for a bear attack next.

By now the afternoon was wearing on and I was getting concerned about being on the trail after dark. DWB rode ahead of us to the town of Little Orleans to see about tools or maybe overnight accommodations. Little Orleans is even smaller than Paw Paw and has a bar. That is it. We tossed around a few options but decided to forge forward to Hancock.

And forge forward we did, getting up to 10 miles per hour for less than a mile at a time, stopping so that Scooter could fix his bike. It started getting dark. There is a substantial tree canopy of the trail and the moon wouldn’t do us any good. DWB rode ahead of us to secure accommodations in Hancock and left Scooter and myself to cover the last 10 miles alone. The last hour or so on the trail was dark. We could see fires off in the woods where people were camping. We heard a woman in a farmhouse yelling at us and then she sent her dogs after us. I guess people lurking on the trail at night make her nervous.

A couple of times that screw managed to work itself right out of the hole and fall onto the trail. The last time it did this it was dark out and we couldn’t find it. Walking was too slow so Scooter took the pedal off of his bike and rode it like a scooter (hence the nick name) for the last 3 miles, pushing along with his left foot.

DWB rejoined us on the trail just as we pulled in to Hancock, 60 miles and 10 hours from our starting point. He had more good news. Both of the hotels were booked solid. We hadn’t made reservations because the Super 8 is never booked up (per DWB). If we had made it to Hancock in the afternoon we probably could have gotten a room. But now it was 10PM and everything was booked. We tossed around a few ideas. Scooter suggested we crawl under a pile of leaves (for insulation) in the woods. I thought that would just make it harder to find our bodies. So we gave up on the second half of the ride and called Bunny for a lift home.

We had a while to wait in Hancock so we went to Sheetz gas station for dinner and then out for a few beer. The beer was cheap ($1.25 per glass) but the bar was interesting. There were animal heads all over the walls. Heads from animals not from around here like zebras, wildebeest and gnus. The only local looking animal was a big plastic wild turkey on top of the cigarette machine. When is the last time you saw a cigarette machine? And it was a well used machine and everyone in the bar was smoking except us. Everyone looked kind of the same in an in-bred kind of way and the women were all bigger than the men. There was even a village idiot at the bar. Not just a slack jawed yokel but a real blithering idiot.

After a few beer it was time to go. Bunny was good enough to come and get us and not give DWB too hard a time (at least while we were there). We met her at the pick up point and she drove us home, arriving after 1 AM.

We still have to finish the Hancock to Shepardstown section of the trail and then it’s off to other rides. DWB has found us a trail that goes from Cumberland to Pittsburg, about 120 miles. We have already picked out a town about halfway along where Bunny can pick us up.