Company Trip to Vegas – Final Day
Several times during my short slumber in the Hard Rock Hotel, someone opened my door, came in, said something to me, and left. Next time, I’ll remember to hang the “do not disturb” sign on the door. I woke up at noon, after about six hours of sleep and wandered around, hunting for Malou, a co-worker with whom I was going to go pawnshopping.
Found malou and we headed to downtown Las Vegas, a $20 cab ride from the Strip. We wandered around the covered and misted downtown Promenade (Fremont Street, if recollection serves), visited a few pawnshops and had a reasonably good time. I came very close to buying the nearly brand-new Armstrong oboe that one of them was selling for ninety bucks, but I refrained because I doubted I get much of a chance to play it and I have enough horns already that I rarely play. And I came pretty close to buying a digital camera at another until Malou warned me about that particular camera (I know precisely squat about digital cameras). I also saw a twelve-string Conn guitar for $150 and a Fender bass for a hundred bucks flat. If I was a string player or had time to learn the bass (which I wish I played), I’d have bought them. I did, however, get a couple of souvenir T-shirts and mail a postcard to my good friend, Beth, in Milwaukee.
We went back to the Hard Rock, where I found another group of coworkers taking the later flights out of Las Vegas, hanging for a time at The Pink Taco, a very interestingly-named restaurant at the Hard Rock. Finally, we all headed for the airport. I jumped into the United check-in quickly, hoping to get myself on standby for the earlier flight (7:41, I think). I absolutely had to be on the ground at SFO before midnight, because the last of the Caltrains was leaving the Millbrae station at 12:20. If I missed that, it would be a long walk home to Mountain View (fuck paying eighty bucks for a cab ride from the airport).
The 10:22 flight became the 10:50 flight, which became the 11:35 flight, which became the 11:50 flight. The 7:41 flight became 8:15 became 8:40 became 9:00. Another flight came in for the standby passengers (one from Denver had four excuses in one announcement—medical emergency, lightning in denver, lost their runway rotation, and chaos aboard the aircraft, undoubtedly from pissed off people beating the hell out of everyone in United uniform). I was the fifth-to-last person called from the standby list. It took me exactly three seconds to drop my ticket on the reservationist. I was going home.
We landed in San Francisco at 11:40. Luckily for me, another of my coworkers, Mike, offered to drive me home to Mountain View, despite it being 20 miles out of the way to his place. I was grateful. What a trip. Good thing I don’t do Vegas very often. Next time, I’ll make a concerted effort to avoid flying United.