Uphill it will be.

She kept saying she was on vacation.  "You play different when you are on vacation." She smiled, she laughed, she lit up the whole table.  She went all in with a pair plus a flush draw against my nut straight and she got there on the river.

I'm in love with you Vegas.  Full report coming and going soon.

Saying Goodbye.

The weather was perfect on my walk home and I feel a little bit lighter.  It hasn't sunk in yet, but there is no mistaking that this really is the end of this chapter.  Tomorrow I will load up everything I own, luckily it all fits in my luggage, and I will ride away from this place for the last time.  Its 64 degrees, it’s quiet, there are a gazillion stars in the sky, and my last day of work is over.

I would have never come to Oklahoma on purpose, and if you would have told me two and half years ago that this is where I would be, and would have been for the past two years, I would have laughed at you.  There were no plans I might have dreamed up that would have put me here, and I am the kind of person that dreams up plans.  But, as history can now indicate beyond dispute, this is where I called home since May 18^th, 2011.  I've made friends, I was lucky enough to have a job where I could help people, and I was a good employee.  I've left a lot of places, but this time is different because I leave knowing things are good and it’s just time to move on.  To say it is good I mean the experience was, I wouldn't just randomly move on if things at the job were good were like that.  I mean you have a goal and you accomplish it so when it is time to leave you have no regrets, or hard feelings about what you had just done.  You just don't slip out when no one is looking hoping not to have make eye contact or explain yourself.

Saying goodbye is always a let down.  I used to really get caught up with it though, never could get used to it.  Seems like everything should just stop and it could all last a little longer.  At this point with the way I've lived it is all too normal.  People and places come and go and I just try to remember the things worth remembering.   

I've met a lot of people here that I will remember and some I'm sure I will see again.  I can sleep OK, got a big trip tomorrow.

One of my favorite songs/performances that I've come across lately, unreally beautiful

Why go to Las Vegas?

I went to Las Vegas twice when I was in my early twenties.  Both times it was one of the last stops on month long cross-country trips, which mostly consisted of camping in national forests and parks.  I wouldn't have personally put this on my wish list of places to stop, it was one of the other two guys I was travelling with's idea, and I really didn't know what to expect since I had never been in a casino before.  I really don't remember that much about the first trip, like I don't even remember the strip.  I do remember being downtown and staying at the El Cortez, playing slot machines for the first time, and carrying around the buckets full of quarters.  None of these things were very impressive to me, and other than the lights and scenes like Vegas Vic and Vicky, the casinos were more of a novelty than a place I wanted to spend time in.

What I did like about Vegas was how completely different it was than everywhere else we had been on that trip.  People seemingly flocked to the middle of the desert with the sole intention of cutting loose, and per observation appeared to doing a competent job of it to say the least.  I remember walking down Freemont Street, the Freemont St. experience wasn't there yet, and watching normal looking people walking down the street with cocktail glasses in their hands at 12:30 in the afternoon.  You have to keep in mind that this was in 1994, before the internet was a household thing, and being from the eastern US the only way you could really get an idea of what Las Vegas was like was to visit it yourself.  I made a mental note to self that any place where you could drink outside without looking over your soldier was a place of interest, and decided that if I was ever travelling nearby I would stop in Vegas.

Two years later I was out west driving around again, this time with my girlfriend and brother, and Vegas was our second to last stop.  This trip was way different because somehow along the way we caught wind of a new hotel and casino opening up and booked a room cheap that I am pretty sure was never slept in before.  We stayed at the brand new Stratosphere and this was the Vegas I was led to believe existed from watching movies and TV.  The price was in the neighborhood of $29, and for 3 people who had spent 99% of the nights in the past month sleeping in a tent just off the road somewhere in the middle of nowhere this was baller.  Shit was shiny.  Shit was new.  Shit was telling us we had arrived at a place that treated us like we deserved to be treated.

That being said I don't remember much about the casino in the Stratosphere other than my brother, who was not yet 21, trying to sneak over and spin the slot machine for me a couple of times, instantly getting approached by security, and promptly being told to leave the casino floor at once.  A little while after that being the only Vegas veteran of the group I made an executive decision to walk downtown from the Stratosphere even though we obviously had a car.  It looked completely harmless in the Atlas and walking seemed to be the hippest of all options.  I mean we were not these people we were surrounded by.  We were not squares who busted our humps at a 9-5 only to make our way to Vegas and give our hard earned money back to these new shiny corporate owned casinos.  We did not need this new casino they were building that looked like New York City, we go to the real New York City.  We were not our parents, we get out there and walk around.

I should point out that when I say we, I really mean me and no one else thought this was a good idea.  But I had seen the lights downtown, and I was sure that taking a walk there in late August was a must do type of thing.  Needless to say once we arrived my girlfriend was no longer talking to me and my brother was pissed because he wasn't even allowed in these casinos.  It had been hot (we had been in Yellowstone the week before and saw it snow in august there), and there were some sketchy interactions with people on the street along the way.  I was not the most popular person in town, but there was a saving grace of sorts.  They had built a video screen that blocked out the sky over Freemont Street, and even the grumpiest of travelers would have to admit that that was pretty cool.

Luckily at some point in the trip I hit a jackpot on a slot machine and was able to take my non-square, non-consumer girlfriend to the Gucci store and buy her some sunglasses that she looked like a movie star in.  Looking back this is something unique to Vegas, I was an artist and a traveler who didn't shop in a mall let alone in a Gucci store.  I hated corporate america but somehow didn't mind these grandiose corporate eyesore casinos.  It was so over the top it was just in a league of its own.  A microcosm of everything that was ugly about america but somehow it worked.  I remember looking out at the view from the Stratosphere tower, and while it may have been influenced by my regular routine of smoking joints from the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to sleep, I remember thinking while looking out that Las Vegas was a place I would come back to again someday.  Almost 17 years later I am packing up my stuff and headed in that direction.

(I nicked these two pictures from this page which has some cool old pics/history from Vegas)