Sheer Trudgery

Last night, I decided to tour Las Vegas with two of the women from work, Angie and Kristen. Kristen is young and has never seen Vegas.  Angie is a Vegas veteran; she's been here and done just about everything.

So we were going to take the tram that runs from the Mandalay Bay (where we're staying) through the Luxor and Excalibur.  But we got lost and we walked the whole way through the Luxor and Excalibur instead.  It was fun to see the hotels, which got older and a bit more shabby as we went along, but had that old Vegas feel.  In the Excalibur the waitresses are dressed up as Jesters.  I was thinking wenches or witches would be more appropriate (for that King Arthur feeling) but, what the heck.  Oh, also, the smell of old cigarette smoke started to get stronger in the Excalibur Casino. 

Then we walked across the street to the MGM.  Here, we planned to pick up the monorail.  We followed the signs a-a-a-a-all the way through the Casino.  MGM is even older and its Casino is even more cigarette smoke-soaked than the others, but very cool.  MGM has a live lion on display in a walk-through, walk-under display.  It was asleep but we enjoyed walking under the big cat and checking it out.

And we kept walking and walking, and trudged some more.  I was starting to think the monorail station was a myth, some legend that Las Vegas tale-tellers spin for foot-weary visitors.  But finally -- there it was!  The freaking monorail station.

The monorail is a great way to see Vegas. And along the way, we enjoyed White Trash Dinner Theater, as this family of women fresh from an episode of Jerry Springer bickered and blustered through most of the monorail ride, right in front of us.  Mom had a hairy mole on her face large enough to be featured on a topographical map of Las Vegas.  Daughter #1 kept getting nagging phone calls from her baby's daddy, and Daughter #2, wearing jeans she bought 25 pounds ago and a "Don't You Wish You Were As Hot as Me" T-Shirt -- rather optimistic, but let's move on -- kept threatening her mom about splitting up the three Musketeers and going back on her own.  "Oh, you don't want to know how I'll get home!  Oh, I'll get home.  But you don't want to know how!"

How the heck was she going to get home?  Steal a car?  Hijack a camel?  Join al Qaeda?  Marry Kevin Federline?  I guess we didn't want to know.

We finally made it to Bally's then walked-walked-walked to the Bellagio to watch their "dancing fountains," which is VERY cool. Fountains, lights and fog are synchronized to classical music.  I recognized the music as something from the movie Rollerball, but beyond that I can't name that tune.

Too footsore to retrace our steps, we hobbled back to Ballys and grabbed a cab back to Mandalay Bay. Then I abandoned the women ("It's too late for me … save yourselves!") and I dragged myself to bed. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable evening, though my spasming feet ("Trudge on us all night, eh? We'll show you, fat man!") kept me from nodding off to sleep too early.

Today we start all over again, with the Weiss Breakfast at 7:30 Local Time.

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