48 Hours In Sin City

Last weekend Evan and I pulled out of Lander after work and headed south in the pickup, bound for Vegas. Around midnight we tried to get some shuteye in a Walmart parking lot, but I had chosen a spot right by the Big Rigs and their idling motors kept us up all night. We hit the interstate again in the predawn hours and made it to The Strip by noon.


When I told Jen that we were staying at Hooters ($37 a night!), she came back with, "You mean at Brian's [where her truck was stored]?" Love that. We weren't at Brian's, but we WERE within shooting distance of the Thomas & Mack Center-- home to the National Finals Rodeo.


After a dim sum dinner in the New York New York Casino, we caught a city bus to the rodeo. Oh, my dear God! The smells, the sights, the sounds, the skills, the hokey commentary...


It was incredible. We were in the nosebleed seats (very last row), but the event still seemed intimate AND we could stand up without bothering anyone. The night felt like it was on steroids-- all the events happening in a mere two hours. As Evan pointed out, it's pretty remarkable to watch a man earn forty grand in 3.6 seconds (especially when it takes us years!).


The next day another predawn start had us hiking into Red Rocks with all the cliffs aglow. Evan was kind enough to spend the day with me on Solar Slab, a 5.6 multipitch that was just my speed-- the perfect reintroduction to climbing for this gal.


We topped out at 11am a little low on blood sugar, so Evan dug into a Cliff Bar that had been moldering in his backpack for eons... only to contract food poisoning. Trudging along to a song in his head about puke, Evan made it back to Ruby Sue only to end up bullfrogging on the side of the highway. A passing driver shouted out the window, "Jesus loves you!"

Nice.

Plans for a visit to the Neon Boneyard, dinner off The Strip and Cirque Du Soleil were put on ice as Evan's body went into a full-scale revolt. Pretty impressive stuff. The convulsions reminded me of the broncos and bulls from the night before, but the gallons of water and stomach bile that were getting loosed in the Hooter's bathroom put them in a category all their own.

And then Evan got better and we came home. The End.