Travelogue: Las Vegas, Day 1

Holy crap, I hate to travel.

Back when I first got this gig it was 75% travel. I was on the road all the time. It didn’t take long for it to get old. Now, I really hate it.

I chose Uber to get to DFW airport, since it would be cheaper than parking, and shave an hour dealing with shuttle busses. The Uber driver was way cool. We had a funny chat about women on the way out. A brother in arms, so to speak. I didn’t need to check in, but decided I didn’t want to carry my duffel all over creation. So I checked it. Turned out to be a dumb move.

This was the first time I’ve flexed TSA PreCheck. It started off poorly. The line closest to my gate was miniscule, and the only TSA precheck was a dozen gates away. I started to the regular gate, then doubled back. Fuggit. I’m early. Let’s flex. Turns out, it was worth the walk.

I grabbed a tea at Starbucks, and waddled to my gate. I thought I should eat, but figured I could snack on the plane. (Another dumb move. There was nothing on the plane.) I got to the laptop table, plugged in my phone to charge and entertained myself by people watching.

Ever see those old photos of air travel back in the day? Now, it’s a freak show. Pajama pants on a dude? You don’t have to dress casual, but FFS put on some clothes and shoes. And what’s up with the women with nose piercings? Most are hideous, but some would be cute but for the junk on their nose. One of them looked like Sally from nightmare before Christmas only not as cute.

There was some issue taking off. The pilot switched to local power and got an alarm. So we had to wait a bit. Turns out, a seat caddy-corner to me wouldn’t lock upright either. After a spell, a greybeard, looking like Phil, only with more meat on his bones, ambled up with a helper, told the people in the row to get out. Pulled the seat apart, locked it in place, and left.

Soon, we were on our way. From what I recollect, we didn’t land all that much later. Maybe a 15 minute difference from the posted time. So we landed at 2:18. It was 2:45 before I got off the plane. It was 3:30 before I got my bag. While waiting for it, I was having a serious emotional conversation with myself about changing careers. That’s about when I realized that my meds were in the stupid bag, and if it didn’t show, I was well and truly fucked.

It was 4:15 by the time I got to the hotel.

They were very gracious at check in. The woman asked if I’d like to leave my card open for a tab, in case I wanted to order anything with my room number. Seemed legit. Until she told me it’ll be a $900 hold. Yeah. No. As is they put a $150 hold on it. My suite is nice. But there’s no coffee maker. There’s a tray of goodies, and the fridge is filled with all manner of stuff. All with pressure switches. Move it, you bought it.

I spent most of the evening wandering around, trying to get the lay of the land. I needed water and some other stuff for the room. Turns out, there’s a Walgreens nearby. I found a craft burger bar, and had a burger and salad. My burger was good, cooked as I ordered it. But it came with a sad wilty lettuce leaf, and a woeful tomato. The cheese appeared to be Velveeta. Didn’t care. I was starved. It cost double what I’d spend for a better burger in Plano.

The bright spot here is that I got an email from the dogsitter with a line “They remembered me!” as she settled in for the night. It had two images of happy dogs attached. That warmed my heart, since the last time I traveled I boarded them, and have an image of two sad dogs in a “suite” that looked like a cell.

I’m on my work laptop at the moment. Which means, I can’t access any other cloud service, like Dropbox or iCloud. So no happy dog picks. I emailed them to myself, and it stripped them out.

I’ll figure it out for the next installment.

I need to waddle to the convention center to meet the team and setup my classroom.