Las Vegas to London

Now, here's the dilemma: Ontario International Airport lies a mere 50 miles from my house. It's easy to find, just off Interstate 10, about an hour and a half to the southwest. Barring morning or afternoon traffic, the airport is within easy reach.
It is also more expensive to fly out of. A simple connecting flight to Houston costs over one hundred dollars. McCarran International Airport is 200 miles away from me, a stone's throw from the Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. It takes about three and a half hours just to get there, and that's if there's no traffic. However (neglecting the price of the gas you need to reach it), McCarran is cheap. A flight from Vegas to Minneapolis costs just eighty-five bucks.
I can go with expensive accessibility (Ontario) or remote thriftiness (McCarran). In deciding how I was going to get to England, I was confronted with the same choice. To fly from Ontario would be several hundred dollars more than to fly from Vegas. Being dangerously close to broke already, even before striking out on this trip, and always being one to err on the side of cheapness, I erred on the side of cheapness. I bought a ticket from Las Vegas, Nevada, to London (Heathrow), England, by way of George Bush International in Houston, Texas.
Now I just had to get to Vegas. Parents? Nah, it didn't have to be like that. They had enough stuff to worry about without me sucking up one of their weekdays with my own selfish plans. Bus? Ha-ha, yeah, right. All sorts of variables came into view there. Would my luggage survive? Where were the starting and ending bus terminals? How much would a ticket cost? Would I actually survive a long-distance bus trip without melting, or having my pocket picked, or contracting some disgusting skin infection? Airplane? And I thought you were trying to save money, Postman. Train? The train between Victorville and Las Vegas isn't due to arrive—or even exist—for another five years at least.
Well, that left me with one option, an option I'd been taking advantage of since my college days: bum a ride off a friend. Proving that Facebook is actually good for something, I set up a group. I called it Help Postman get to England (and back). Then I invited all my friends who'd be in a position to, well, help. And lo and behold, I roped in a pigeon found a volunteer. Alice, an old school chum, currently living and working in Diamond Bar, said she'd be happy to give me a lift. Then I had an even brighter idea. I said, "Hey, Alice, instead of getting up ridiculously early on Friday morning [my flight left at 11:14, and we'd probably have to be at the airport around 8:30 or so, which meant that we'd have to leave Apple Valley no later than 5:00, so who knew how early we'd have to get up], why don't we road trip up to Vegas on Thursday evening and stay up all night? Rock the town? Party hearty?"
Alice endorsed the idea, so she made arrangements to leave work, drive to the desert, pick me up, and continue on to Sin City. There remained only to see whether I could stay up all night in Vegas and somehow manage to navigate my way through four airports the next day to reach England. If I hadn't managed to catch some sleep on the plane, I would've been awake for 48 hours straight. Even for a nocturnal pizza-eating die-hard midnight Halo tournament champion like me, that would be a considerable challenge.
The day arrived. I was all packed. Mom and Dad drove me down to the parking lot of Barnes & Noble (the designated rendezvous point). We waited. Alice arrived, only a bit late (she'd had trouble getting away from work). I introduced her to the folks, hugged my mother, shook hands with my father, threw all my junk into the backseat of Alice's plush black sedan, and away we went.
The black night hours between Victorville and Las Vegas flew by. Good conversation sure does wonders for relativity. We found a spot on the third level of a parking garage midway down the Strip. The heat was nothing short of demoniac. Though the sun had been down for hours, a hellish warmth still clung to the stucco and concrete. It was far worse inside the parking garage than out—having so many flat surfaces in close proximity turned it into a titanic oven. It was easily in the mid-90s at 10:30 p.m.
Matters improved once we'd taken the elevator down and emerged into the (air-conditioned) gambling floor of Harrah's (or was it Bally's?). We got some tall drinks and took to wandering around. That is what we did most of the rest of the night, in fact: drank and wandered, drank and wandered. We hit every major casino during the eight hours of darkness we spent in Vegas. We window-shopped in Caesar's Palace; took in Treasure Island's pirate ship, still and quiet in the breezy night; giggled at the inane karaoke we heard drifting along the strip (seriously, who sings along to Rammstein?!). I have Alice to thank for the $90 I won that night; it was she who suggested, while we were in the Bellagio, that we play casino war. Fifty-fifty odds are the best in Vegas. We each walked away from the table a sight richer. My net gains that night were about $50, minus the twenty it had cost me to get in on the war game, and another twenty lost at blackjack in Whiskey Pete's.
Dawn came quickly. The first we knew of it was when we stepped out of Harrah's (or Bally's) and the eastern sky had gone purple. We were pretty well exhausted by now, but not quite done yet. It was time for a leisurely breakfast at Denny's, and then the airport. We revived slightly over some cold orange juice and warm buttery pancakes. We said cordial goodbyes at the Continental Terminal at McCarran, and then I was on my own again.
(Thanks, Alice. You're a lifesaver. And mighty good company on an all-nighter.)
My ingenious plan was to get all checked in, stop at the Wells Fargo on Level Two, and then go through security with a few hundred British pounds. No dice! The bank didn't open until 10:00, barely an hour before my flight. It was 8:30 when I walked through the airport doors. But I stuck to my guns. I sat outside the damn glass doors, pulled my hat over my eyes, and dozed until they opened up. And when they finally did open, I ducked inside, was second in line at the counter, and... ...discovered they didn't have any British pounds on-site.
Peachy.
They told me I had to go to the foreign-exchange stall on Level One. It was little more than a cart set up by the baggage claim. But at least the elderly Asian woman inside it had some poundage. I made a hasty purchase and dashed back upstairs and through security. I made it to my gate in good time, and before I knew it, I was bound for Houston.
So far, so good. International customs in Houston wasn't as bad as I'd feared. A few passport checks and the usual scan and I was on my way. They didn't even pull my bag apart as the smiling, well-dressed Japanese girls at Narita had done. It was a breeze. Even the eight-hour flight to England was bearable. Continental has risen a few notches in my estimation. The meals are actually meal-sized (and not desiccated, or at least not having the appearance of desiccation). Entertainment is top-flight: I had nearly 150 movies to choose from, and even video games and TV shows. I occupied myself with Starfighter and watching the bits of various movies I hadn't seen. I actually managed some restful sleep on the flight, too, for the few hours it got dark.
The only problem was that, for some reason, somebody in the control tower decided that our cargo configuration wasn't right, and that our plane had to return to the terminal and be checked. There was an hour's delay as we sat on the tarmac, taxied slowly back to the gate, and had the attendants crack open the hatches and have a look inside the belly of the plane. Everything turned out to be shipshape after all, and the Airbus thundered into the sky soon thereafter. On the ground in London (now June 11), I passed through British customs, again with no trouble. Due to the delay, however, I would have to skip most everything I wanted to see in London before heading to Newcastle that evening. It was already 11:00 by the time I stepped off the Tube at the Embankment, near Charing Cross Station.


I had no time for the Eye, the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, anything. I pretty much got a glimpse of Trafalgar Square and that was it.


So I figured I'd head for the British Museum. I had a few hours, and it wasn't a great distance away. It was what I wanted to see most in London, the British Museum. My boss, Spud, had told me such effervescent tales of the interior. Jewels and skeletons and taxidermied animals and stone tools and sarcophagi and who knew what-all else...everything that would make a self-respecting eight-year-old boy go bananas.
But no such luck. I couldn't get into the British Museum. They don't let you in if you have big bags. I had big bags. They had a cloakroom where you could check stuff in, but bags over a certain size...well, they just wouldn't fit.
Bummer, dude. There I stood, in the vast courtyard of the British Museum, having traveled 3,000 miles to get there, the glowing reports still running through my head, the palatial entrance still seeming to gleam under the sullen sky, crowds of happy foreigners chattering all around me, playing hacky-sack on the lawn or flopping casually wherever there was an empty bit of concrete. And I stood there, backpack slung over my shoulder, laptop case in my hand, barred from entry.

Massive suckage.
Oh well. I probably didn't have time to do the place justice. As it was, I just barely surmounted the 15-minute walk from the museum to the Underground station to get a ride to Gloucester Place. 'Twas there that my Londoner friend Andrea and I would catch the shuttle to Stansted Airport outside of town. We met without any trouble and had a relaxing pint at the Allsop Arms (a pub by the bus stop) before climbing aboard the jaunty orange-and-white EasyBus and departing for a singular rarity in England: a domestic flight. To Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumbria, Northeast England. Geordie-land. Home of Brian Johnson (AC/DC's lead singer), a thriving manufacturing industry, Georgian architecture, fast-food meat pies, beaches, England's coolest accent, and more pretty girls in short skirts than you could shake a stick at.
But that's another story.

six-day weekend

Working where I do can be a bit weird sometimes. The schedule is and must necessarily be flexible, of course. I just didn't expect it to flex quite so much.

Due to the Fourth of July, we had a short week last week (Tuesday through Thursday) and now, it seems, I have a six-day weekend on my hands. Friday to Thursday. Almost a full week. And here I am, sitting smack dab in the middle of it, wondering what I'm going to accomplish during that time.

So I thought, Heck, why don't I blog? Gives me a chance to listen to that Eric Clapton song I've been searching for on YouTube for, like, forever.

At some unforeseeable point in the foreseeable future, I will get around to filling you in on those two weeks in the U.K. and Ireland. First post's already in the pipeline. But for now, I'll tell you about some other stuff that's been going on.

Thursday night was rather interesting. I wound up at a friend's house for the evening. Or perhaps I should say, for the sake of strict accuracy, that I would up in my friend's swimming pool. I had a marvelous time. The sun was warm and the water perfect. I swam about and talked with my friend's pretty sister-in-law about everything from marine biology to zombies to the hotel business to the weather in Maryland.

Friday was (ahem) a pretty good night too. It too involved swimming pools. One of my best female friends, V, had a birthday last week, so on Friday we all went out with her to celebrate. She's a fan of the comedy show How I Met Your Mother, so, since we'd be playing laser-tag, she decided we should all "suit up." Everyone got dressed up in their Sunday best and then we put on the electric vests and ran around a room filled with black lights and shot each other for a few hours. Playing laser tag in a suit and tie is something everyone ought to try at least once in their lives. Makes a guy feel like a Secret Service agent from the year 2134.

After this, we went out for pizza at Oggi's, a local micro-brewery that just happens to do pizza on the side. (Or perhaps it's the other way around, maybe they're a small-time pizza joint that does beer as a sideline.) Delicious stuff: the combination of the Heavyweight (meat lover's) Pizza and Oggi's own Sunset Amber Ale is tough to beat.

Then it was over to V's house for some night swimming. (There were no American-flag bikinis in evidence, though.) Nobody had informed me about this little part of the adventure, so I was forced to run into Target and buy some swim trunks. (My house was 10 miles out of town; I'd never have made it out and back in time to get the pair I already owned.) The errand made me extremely worried. I'm afraid that, in a few years, it will be impossible to find any men's swim trunks that don't hang below the knees or some other absurd length. I had a horrendous time trying to locate some men's swimming products that were not excessively baggy, coated with inane patterns, or board shorts. I eventually settled on a simple black pair of trunks, purchased them, and beat feet back for Oggi's, still wearing my suit and tie. That must've been a sight.

We had to clean V's pool before we could use it, but this being the desert, where things like algae and frogspawn are practically nonexistent, all we really had to do was give the thing a once-over with the scrubber and skim some leaves and pine needles off the top. I went the extra mile and dived down to the bottom for some loose leaves and bark that the vacuum couldn't suck up. Then the party spent a few happy hours disporting in the pool, making fun of Paul (who couldn't hardly see without his glasses, and had to swim by echolocation), congratulating V's little sister K on her recent marriage, and talking of this and that. Then it was over to V's hot tub (very, very, very, very hot tub) to poach ourselves into a contented frame of mind. I came off the night a few bucks poorer, but a pair of swim trunks richer. At least this new pair isn't flesh-toned like my old one...

Saturday was spent in assisting my buddy John with buying up the remaining materiel necessary for the huge party he and I would be throwing on the evening of the Fourth. We hit Stater Brothers and Vons and between the two of them picked up about thirty bottles (and one mini-keg) of beer, a bottle of rum, a grande bottle of bourbon, some mojito mix, and some sweet 'n' sour, plus some napkins, plates and plastic silverware. (Can I just start calling it "plasticware"? "Plastic silverware" is, at the very least, a material oxymoron.)

Then I went back home, having blown a good portion of whatever savings I had left over after England, and went over to Lucerne Valley with the parents to watch their fireworks show. Yes, Lucerne Valley has their fireworks on July 3rd, for some reason. I didn't care. The more fireworks shows I get to watch, the better. And I hadn't seen one in two years, mind you. I was in Korea for the last two Independence Day holidays.

The show was excellent—much more than I was expecting. It went on for 20 minutes, used a plethora of different kinds of fireworks, and was accompanied by live music from a local swing group, Phat Cat Swinger, replete with suspenders, fedoras and zoot suits. I sat and marveled at pyrotechnic technology (and the unceasing wonder of a country, people, and democracy as great as the United States of America, now 234 years old) as the band played on, the cool breeze blew, and the sizable crowd of Lucerners hollered and cheered.

Sunday was great. I lazed around the house until about 3:00 (watching the excellent musical 1776 with William Daniels), then went over to John's house and helped him set up the pool table and the barbecue. The bar was all ready: a flat board placed on top of two bookshelves in the garage, with two buckets of ice behind, one filled with beer, the other with hard liquor and mixers. A blender on the workbench rounded out the manifest. Guests began to arrive, five o'clock rolled around, and the evening mellowed out. We refreshed ourselves with Fat Tire and Tostitos, taking occasional breaks to toss the Nerf football around, play a pick-up game of basketball, or shoot pool. The stereo kept us entertained with a steady stream of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Foghat, Van Morrison, Foreigner, and AC/DC. The hamburgers and hot dogs were grilled to perfection and consumed with gusto. John's girlfriend Rebecca had baked a red velvet cake, which went down mighty fine with some Shock Top Belgian ale.

The day died and the fireworks lit up the valley below. We could see the bombs bursting like tiny flowers blooming in the sky above town, and hear the bangs and booms as distant thunder. Occasionally, from some unseen point in the neighborhood, smaller firecrackers would pop and explode illegally, to the whoops and yells of drunken suburban merrymakers. All of us were fairly well along by this point, and the inane commentary and bad jokes were plentiful. The night concluded around a card table in the middle of John's driveway, drinks in hand, blankets about our shoulders, and quite a lot of giggles and chuckles. Our eyelids began to droop about 12:30, and after helping John clean up the considerable mess we'd made, the party broke up.

And now here I am at home, on the floor of my (newly re-carpeted) room. For the remaining three days of my weekend, I'm planning on reorganizing my dresser (so my clothes will actually fit into it); pounding the pavement for a bartending job, resuming the long hard search; and, let's hope, blogging about England. It's about 97 degrees outside, and my chamber lies on the sunnier side of the house, so things are kind of warm in here. I woke up, ordered a pair of pants off the Internet, washed the glass doors where the dogs have wiped their noses peeking in from the back porch, and took a four-hour nap. I'm bleary, creaky, grubby, and probably quite fetid. I should really take a shower and brush my teeth, but hey...it's the weekend.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.