Abed and I started our drive back to San Diego after our adventure in Santa Fe. We'd been on the I-40 a few hours, and were halfway through Arizona. It was then we decided to go to Vegas since it was "slightly" out of the way. I knew we could get there by midnight. I bought a couple of bottles of Mountain Dew and I was good to go. This would be Abed's first time going to Vegas.
The first thing we did when we got there was drive up and down the strip. This was late on a weeknight, so it wasn't too busy, traffic-wise. We also drove through Downtown Las Vegas. I asked Abed what he thought. He said, "It's all really disturbing." We had to go find a hotel. We drove to the Motel 6 on Tropicana Blvd. I thought there wouldn't be very many people that late at night, but I was wrong. There were probably about 30 people in line. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to get a room. After about 30 minutes, I finally got to the front of the line. Yes, they still had plenty of rooms. I came back out, drove to our room and we crashed.
We woke up the next morning. This was the first time I'd been to Vegas since they'd opened the Luxor and I wanted to see the inside. I figured we'd eat at the breakfast buffet there. We parked the car in the rear parking lot and walked inside. I was pretty impressed by the design and decor. We went to their buffet, which was set up like a miniature version of New York City. Then I went out to the floor to play some Blackjack. But the minimum bet was $5. I only played a few hands before I realized I wasn't going to win big there. On our way out to the car, someone had left a brand new t-shirt in a crevice in the wall between the casino and the parking lot. It was for an Easter Seals 5K run. It happened to be my size. I told Abed: "This will impress the ladies. It makes me look like I'm an athlete AND I'm charitable!" I wore that shirt for ten years, but never picked up any women while wearing it.
We then drove to Caesar's Palace. I was losing there, too. We decided to drive back to San Diego. However, I wanted to stop and do a little more gambling at Whiskey Pete's in Primm, right before the California border. I played Blackjack while Abed sat at an empty table. I heard the pit boss asking my dealer who the guy was over there. "I don't know. Maybe he's applying for a job." I let them know he was my friend and he was just waiting for me to play a few hands. I actually came out about $30 ahead and left.
It was about noon and I had completely forgotten about the warnings from Knod's uncle about driving in the middle of the day. About an hour later, it got EXTREMELY HOT! My car had no air conditioning. If I stuck my arm out the window for too long, I would have gotten windburn. On top of this, all the drinking water had heated up, too. If we got thirsty, we had no choice, we had to drink the water. I had to quickly take a gulp and immediately grimace my face to get that hot stuff down.
One of the good things about not having air conditioning is that we didn't suffer the fate of other drivers on the road. Along the shoulder, there were scattered cars parked off to the side because their engines had overheated from using air conditioning. We just kept on driving. We drove past the giant thermometer in Baker and it was it was 115 degrees. And, in order to keep my arms from getting sunburned, I was wearing my jacket, so I was REALLY hot.
We stopped in Barstow to get some gas. I was going to fill up, but I noticed how high the price was after I started putting gas in the tank: $2.75 a gallon! That was ridiculous. I stopped filling up after I reached $5. I figured that would be enough to get us to a location with cheaper gas. But we did get some cold water while we were there.
We finally got into higher altitudes and cooler wind temperatures. It was a relief and the rest of the drive to San Diego was literally a breeze.
Along the way, we were listening to the radio. We heard what we assumed to be some woman singing Vietnamese folk music. Abed commented, "If I had lots of money, I could find out who's singing that and have her brought over here so I could date her!"
I'd gone through so much on this trip: Seeing Mom get married, missing Chez and getting angry, incurring the wrath of a Mexican music producer and blowing my dough in Vegas. It was an excursion for the history books.
And I had to go back to work the very next day. Nothing worth writing about there.
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