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Vegas and Back Again
Mar. 20th, 2004 11:31 pmWelp, I made it home. Of course, the trip itself was somewhat fraught with wierdness, but I think it would have been stranger if it hadn't been...
Michelle's Laws of Travelling.
1) No matter how well you schedule yourself, things will get off course somewhere.
This is borne out by my plans for the drive both out and back. The plan: 9 hours a day, spend the night in ABQ with friends I haven't seen since I left the city. Reality: Leave late the first day, drive 3-5 hours, spend the night in a hotel room, then drive 13-15 hours the next day in one go. There's a lot of neat stuff to see, but it's far better seen in a more leisurely trip.
See, on the first day, I was finishing a draft that took me 4 hours longer than I thought/hoped it would. Then, I ended up with a flat tire. Then I had to put gas in the car, then I had to re-tighten the lug nuts as the car was most unhappy once I started driving it (thanks to my dad for fixing it for me). Then he wanted to switch the donut from the front to the back. Then I had to go get it fixed, which resulted in my driving 45 miles at 45 miles per hour and arriving 5 minutes after my tire place of choice closed. I then went to Wal-Mart and waited an hour to be told I needed a new tire. Joyous.
So I get it put on, then drive into OKC to stop by a game store and pick up something I couldn't get locally through any means I'd found. This took me something like 75 miles out of my way, but I didn't mind too much. It did mean that I was running even further behind, though. By the time I reached the OK/TX border, I was fogbound and passing people on the interstate, even though I was only going about 45 MPH myself. I decided there was no way I was making it to ABQ like that, so I pulled over, and that was that.
On the way back, I didn't get out of Vegas until 3 PST, which meant it was 5 Central time. It couldn't be helped, though... there were meetings I simply couldn't have had sooner, and they were important. They were worth sticking around for. It meant, though, that by the time I hit Winslow, Arizona, I was mentally screaming at myself not to just get lost in the patterns the pretty lines were making on the road and to remember that they meant something. At which point, I pulled over, mentally hearing the Eagles song, "Take It Easy" in my head, and got a hotel room, in which I fell over and slept like the dead soon after. I considered standing on a street corner there just for the hell of it, but upon viewing the street corners decided that staying in my car was the better part of valor, and settled for the McDonald's drive-through in the morning.
2) Desert is really fucking boring to drive through after your fourth hour of it.
Arizona has some areas that are simply fascinating, and coming out through ABQ is always refreshing, to come through the pass and cross the valley over the Rio Grande. You come through the Sandias and before you know it, boom, you're basically on Central Avenue. Flagstaff is great, because it's all desert and scrub and then you're going up, up, up, and there are cedar trees among the rocks, and then it's pine, and then you're in Flagstaff, in a forest where everything is cool and green and really lovely. Las Vegas is very odd, especially when you come in at night. I came in over Hoover Dam (something which is undoutedly scarier during the day, when you can actually see that there's nothing past the guardrail) but was really cool at night. Anyway, you come in through the Dam, and then through Boulder City, and as you come over a ridge, you see the entire city laid out below in lights, this huge grid that basically fills everything before you... it's just frickin' huge. Pretty and scary, all at the same time, with parts (the strip) that look like something that spilled out of a giant child's toybox.
Still, though. I spent 4 years living in ABQ. The volcanos were cool, and seeing the lava floes on the ground, where they stopped and still haven't entirely been grown over with grass or covered with soil... I find them fascinating. The cliffs in Arizona are also amazing, and tall mountain peaks, with a dusting of snow still on the tops... well, that's always beautiful.
But that same old reddish-pink/taupe/buff dirt with the same grey-green-yellow scrub for two or three states is just... ick. If I never have to drive down I-40 through the desert again, it'll be too soon. I've lost my love for the desert, if I ever had any, and would much rather just have somewhere green.
Oh, and the panhandle of Texas still smells decidedly of cow. The less pleasant aspects of cow at that. Not that I know of many pleasant smelling aspects of cow, but still....
3) Water is your friend.
I'd forgotten what it was like to live in a desert state. I'd forgotten what it was like to drive in a desert state for hours, too. I think I easily tripled my water intake while driving, after arriving nearly dehydrated on the first day, and kept drinking the entire time I was there. My caffiene intake dropped to nearly nothing, just enough to give me a little energy and stave off the withdrawl symptoms. Now to try to keep up the trend now that I'm home again.... won't be easy. Oklahoma feels like breathing in a sauna now, all the time. The body simply doesn't feel as thirsty here in a place with humidity, and it's easier to let myself drink other things and assume it's all good enough.
I think that's enough travelogue for now. I'll post more about the show itself later. Suffice it to say that I'm really amazingly glad I went. I came away with a huge amount of progress and networking made, and I'm exceptionally excited about the possibilities I'm seeing, few of which I was expecting before I went. That's the great thing about shows like this: you really never know what will come of them, but it's always something that was worth the price of admission. But more about that later....
Michelle's Laws of Travelling.
1) No matter how well you schedule yourself, things will get off course somewhere.
This is borne out by my plans for the drive both out and back. The plan: 9 hours a day, spend the night in ABQ with friends I haven't seen since I left the city. Reality: Leave late the first day, drive 3-5 hours, spend the night in a hotel room, then drive 13-15 hours the next day in one go. There's a lot of neat stuff to see, but it's far better seen in a more leisurely trip.
See, on the first day, I was finishing a draft that took me 4 hours longer than I thought/hoped it would. Then, I ended up with a flat tire. Then I had to put gas in the car, then I had to re-tighten the lug nuts as the car was most unhappy once I started driving it (thanks to my dad for fixing it for me). Then he wanted to switch the donut from the front to the back. Then I had to go get it fixed, which resulted in my driving 45 miles at 45 miles per hour and arriving 5 minutes after my tire place of choice closed. I then went to Wal-Mart and waited an hour to be told I needed a new tire. Joyous.
So I get it put on, then drive into OKC to stop by a game store and pick up something I couldn't get locally through any means I'd found. This took me something like 75 miles out of my way, but I didn't mind too much. It did mean that I was running even further behind, though. By the time I reached the OK/TX border, I was fogbound and passing people on the interstate, even though I was only going about 45 MPH myself. I decided there was no way I was making it to ABQ like that, so I pulled over, and that was that.
On the way back, I didn't get out of Vegas until 3 PST, which meant it was 5 Central time. It couldn't be helped, though... there were meetings I simply couldn't have had sooner, and they were important. They were worth sticking around for. It meant, though, that by the time I hit Winslow, Arizona, I was mentally screaming at myself not to just get lost in the patterns the pretty lines were making on the road and to remember that they meant something. At which point, I pulled over, mentally hearing the Eagles song, "Take It Easy" in my head, and got a hotel room, in which I fell over and slept like the dead soon after. I considered standing on a street corner there just for the hell of it, but upon viewing the street corners decided that staying in my car was the better part of valor, and settled for the McDonald's drive-through in the morning.
2) Desert is really fucking boring to drive through after your fourth hour of it.
Arizona has some areas that are simply fascinating, and coming out through ABQ is always refreshing, to come through the pass and cross the valley over the Rio Grande. You come through the Sandias and before you know it, boom, you're basically on Central Avenue. Flagstaff is great, because it's all desert and scrub and then you're going up, up, up, and there are cedar trees among the rocks, and then it's pine, and then you're in Flagstaff, in a forest where everything is cool and green and really lovely. Las Vegas is very odd, especially when you come in at night. I came in over Hoover Dam (something which is undoutedly scarier during the day, when you can actually see that there's nothing past the guardrail) but was really cool at night. Anyway, you come in through the Dam, and then through Boulder City, and as you come over a ridge, you see the entire city laid out below in lights, this huge grid that basically fills everything before you... it's just frickin' huge. Pretty and scary, all at the same time, with parts (the strip) that look like something that spilled out of a giant child's toybox.
Still, though. I spent 4 years living in ABQ. The volcanos were cool, and seeing the lava floes on the ground, where they stopped and still haven't entirely been grown over with grass or covered with soil... I find them fascinating. The cliffs in Arizona are also amazing, and tall mountain peaks, with a dusting of snow still on the tops... well, that's always beautiful.
But that same old reddish-pink/taupe/buff dirt with the same grey-green-yellow scrub for two or three states is just... ick. If I never have to drive down I-40 through the desert again, it'll be too soon. I've lost my love for the desert, if I ever had any, and would much rather just have somewhere green.
Oh, and the panhandle of Texas still smells decidedly of cow. The less pleasant aspects of cow at that. Not that I know of many pleasant smelling aspects of cow, but still....
3) Water is your friend.
I'd forgotten what it was like to live in a desert state. I'd forgotten what it was like to drive in a desert state for hours, too. I think I easily tripled my water intake while driving, after arriving nearly dehydrated on the first day, and kept drinking the entire time I was there. My caffiene intake dropped to nearly nothing, just enough to give me a little energy and stave off the withdrawl symptoms. Now to try to keep up the trend now that I'm home again.... won't be easy. Oklahoma feels like breathing in a sauna now, all the time. The body simply doesn't feel as thirsty here in a place with humidity, and it's easier to let myself drink other things and assume it's all good enough.
I think that's enough travelogue for now. I'll post more about the show itself later. Suffice it to say that I'm really amazingly glad I went. I came away with a huge amount of progress and networking made, and I'm exceptionally excited about the possibilities I'm seeing, few of which I was expecting before I went. That's the great thing about shows like this: you really never know what will come of them, but it's always something that was worth the price of admission. But more about that later....
