Vacation Particles

Death Drive

I find, as I age, that I'm less and less capable of staying up past the grandfatherly hour of 11pm (or even up to it at times). This is probably due, in no small part, to the fact that I've been getting less sleep since Aaron was born. You'd think that, having a baby, this would be expected. You'd be right, but wrong in assuming that he was the cause of it. In fact, I can find no particular reason why I've been missing sleep of late and it's somewhat alarming. Of course, he was at fault the night before we left for Vegas, so that made driving to Amarillo (our first stop) tricky. However, there were far less occurrences throughout the trip of the dreaded asleep with eyes open condition that I've experienced in the past. Far less. That, however, didn't make the couple that did happen any more comforting.

More alarming, however, was when my car unexpectedly overheated at Cuervo, NM. I hadn't noticed the temperature gauge spiking, so I was surprised as I pulled into the gas station for a refill to see the water and coolant my car so desperately needed gushing onto the pavement. The day before our return trip ('cause I put everything off to the last minute) I replaced the thermostat with the help of her cousin. That is to say, I watched as he did the real work.

I did burn my thumb, though.

Vegas, baby! VEGAS!

Suffice to say, Vegas has earned every last bit of it's reputation. Andria and I lost a combined total of $9 (unless you count the $10 she was up on the slots at one point) and that even includes her $5 bingo game (her grandmother's choice). I got to play Empire Strikes Back on the slots at the Stratosphere, which was cool, though not being able to go up to the top of the tower because we were 3 minutes late to the ticket counter (we'd passed it before, but the shrouded kiosks blocked our view of it as we rushed to the elevator at the end of an extremely long walkway) because nobody at the elevator up knew where we'd get tickets.

Morons.

Andria's family was great, as usual. We had a few minor comfort issues (apparently, most houses are not built to sleep an entire familial group with ease), but that was hardly a bother. It was nice eating at Jack-in-the-Box, too. We need one of those around here. They have a bacon variant on almost all their items.

Including their shakes!

Ok, not really the shakes.

The two things that did bother me were that, first, my brother-in-law's girlfriend stated that she would in no way take $1 million dollars from Donald Trump, were he to offer it, merely because she didn't like him, and second that he referred to the Bush divorce while speaking of his personal feelings about George W. Honestly, I can let the second slide. I mean, when you watch almost no news, sometimes it's hard to remember where you saw what headline and something from The Globe might sneak in. It's really the first that blew my mind. If Osama bin Laden himself offered me $1 million, no strings attached, I'd be running to the bank. Mind you, I'd turn it down in a heartbeat if even someone generally considered to be a saint offered it with the stipulation that I do something I would feel to be wrong.

Well, maybe two heartbeats...I got bills, man...

The Devil be my Guide

I love technology. I do. Anything that can remove some of the tedium from life and free up some time to do something preferable is a good thing in my book. Unfortunately, anything new can cause problems. If the technology is new, it often has glitches. If the user is new, well, I'm sure we've all seen the effects of inexperience before, even when the user is quicker on the uptake than the standard.

That said, our trip was guided less by a printed map from Yahoo! along with ye olde Rand-McNally, and more by my father's Palm with a GPS....er...doohickey (totally technical). Most of the time, it was great. However, when Andria and I decided at the last minute to take a side trip up to Las Vegas, NM, things got a little weird. Our little detour looked innocent enough, at first. I mean, you could see the road on the map, which seemed like a good sign, so I wasn't too worried when it turned out to be a windy two lane road with no shoulder. Indeed, I wasn't even bothered when we entered a small town either called Villanueva or El Cerrito (Yahoo maps has it listed as both in the "hybrid" view). I even tried to stay optimistic when we turned onto a dirt road, though as the rocks grew larger and the hills and valleys steeper I found that to be a bit more difficult. Then, we hit a gate. The road went through private property and had been locked off.

Huh?

After a moment or two of consideration, we headed back until we saw a guy in a truck coming from a side road. He seemed rather eager to help, probably because we were the first people he'd seen all day, and gave us new directions. It turns out the road DID at one time go off in our previous direction, but then they closed that road off in favor of a newer version of the same road. So, we headed off in the direction he pointed and the road continued with it's rocks the size of a jet ski. This was no longer new to us, so we weren't concerned until we saw "The Hill". I'd been warned about the hill by the friendly rancher, but he said it was nothing we couldn't handle, so long as we took it slow. He failed to mention that it was a gravelly mess, at a 45 degree angle and that the road was no wider than our car as it wound down the side of a mountain with a 100+ foot drop where the shoulder would be.

So, yeah, that sucked.

Then, it turns out that if we'd just set the preferences to "real road" or "don't kill me, please" we might've taken an actual highway. Silly technology...