I wouldn't say I'm a particularly anxious traveler. Being married to S, I'm pretty used to travel by now. However, there are some aspects of travel that can cause me great anxiety. One is waking up early. This applies to my life in general, not just to travel. If I know I need to sleep, I often cannot sleep, and I get caught in the dreaded insomnia Catch-22 -- you're anxious because you can't sleep and you can't sleep because you're anxious. Another thing that can cause me consternation is if I'm traveling, especially by plane, for one specific event, and a long delay would really screw things up. Like, if I'm going to visit my family for a couple weeks, and my flight is supposed to arrive at 9:00 am, and it gets delayed until 9:00 pm -- the type of thing that does sometimes happen -- it's not a huge deal. But if I'm, say, going to see a 7:30 pm show in Vegas, and I'm supposed to arrive at 9:00 am, and my flight gets delayed until 9:00 pm, then that is a big deal.
All this is to say that I was pretty anxious when I set out at 5:00 am Thursday morning to meet my friend JY in Vegas to see Deep Sea Diver and Pearl Jam later that evening. It also matters that it wasn't just me and my flight that could muck things up. I also had to worry about everything going smoothly on JY's end, and we have bad connection juju. This is the same friend I was supposed to see in Maui, after all, before the entire township of Lahaina caught on fire. I think I still had some residual anxiety in me from that trip that I was projecting onto this Vegas trip.
But everything was normal for me at the airport, and I took off to Vegas on time. One thing I did was go into airplane mode on my phone and specifically not connect to the inflight Wi-Fi. I was already in the air, and if something went wrong with JY's flight, I didn't want to know about it until I landed. There isn't much I can do in a metal tube somewhere over Kansas, anyway, so if things go awry, I figured, I might as well save myself a few hours of consternation in blissful ignorance.
That turned out, unfortunately, to be a good move. Upon touching down at Harry Reid, I was hit with the following string of texts from JY.
Have you boarded?
I fucked up bad
My flight is out of Everett and I am at Sea Tac
Trying to get a different flight now
Not sure that will happen
[A half-hour goes by]
K rebooked going to be getting in later
Shit
I have a layover in Sacramento
Arrival is 5:30 :(
But I will be there :)
Sorry dude fucked this up but I will be there
What the actual fuck? The wrong airport?! It's 8:30 am Vegas time. My friend, who was supposed to arrive at 11:30 am, now isn't getting in until 5:30 pm. I was worried about killing three hours by myself. Now I gotta kill nine.
Going to the wrong airport seems like a colossal gaffe -- and it is -- but it's somewhat understandable in this case. I've never heard of anybody flying out of Everett. I don't even think I knew there was a commercial airport in Everett. In DC, there are three major airports in the area, so it is always top of the mind, when purchasing tickets, which airport you will be using. Every trip I take, I double-check the airport before I leave home because it's often different from the previous trip. In Seattle, this is not the case. (At least I didn't think it was!) I've flown into and out of the area dozens of times, and I've never even considered it a possibility that one could use any airport other than Sea-Tac. If you ask somebody in the Seattle area to pick you up at the airport, they won't even ask "Which one?" There is only one. But apparently not, and JY (and by consequence I) learned it the hard way.
It was an honest mistake, but that doesn't change the fact that it really sucked. I texted P -- the guy we know in Deep Sea Diver, who got us the tickets -- to see if he could hang out, but he was busy with band things. However, he did say he would separate my ticket from JY's at will call, so that, if worst came to worst, I could still get in to the show. That actually made me feel a lot better about things. It would really suck to fly all the way to Vegas and not even get to see JY. It would really, really, really suck to fly all the way to Vegas and not get to see JY nor the show. P also said he was trying to get us credentialed to go backstage after the show to hang out. Of course, my first thought that I had the tact not to ask was, Will Pearl Jam be there? (Spoiler: they weren't.)
So, I started wandering around Vegas, and I came to the conclusion that it's a shit city. I had only been there once before almost 20 years ago, and it's changed, and I've changed. It's gotten way more expensive, which is really saying something, because it was expensive before. But it's worse now, and it's worse in a worse way. The graft has ratcheted up to 11. For example, last time I went, I passed the time playing low-stakes poker and actually made about $100 dollars (over many hours), because I was slightly better than the other patzers who came to the table. But I didn't see any low-stakes poker this time, and my friend told me they don't exist anymore. It's all tournament-style no-limit, and I don't play poker enough to hang in that type of game. Also, most blackjack tables have changed their odds and their minimum bet, so that you can't even lose your money slowly anymore. Last time I went to Vegas, I could bring $50 in chips to the blackjack table, bet $5 a hand, and walk away an hour later with anywhere between, like, $30 and $60 in chips, depending on how lucky I had been. This time I didn't see a single open table for less than $25 a hand with a 6:5 blackjack payout. Some drunk redneck-looking guy in the elevator said to me, "Seems like every time you cough in this city, you get a $50 charge on your credit card." Spot on.
It's not just the gambling either -- food is outrageously expensive. I went to Johnny Rockets -- a fast food restaurant, mind you -- and got a mediocre chicken sandwich, fries, and a side salad, and my total was $42 (and I didn't even add chicken to my salad like I wanted to). Part of that is because I tipped, which I didn't have to do, but withholding a tip mainly hurts the low-level workers who are probably just trying to eke by. So, I pretty much always tip. It's not like it's the fault of the chick behind the counter with the "All Eyez On Me" tattoo on her chest that prices are so high. She's probably making minimum wage regardless.
The other thing about Vegas is that the massive drunkenness is so unappealing to me at this stage in my life. There seem to be only a few (if any) restrictions on open containers, so people just wander the streets and the casinos sipping Coors Light tallboys at all hours of the day. I probably appreciated this type of vacationing more when I was 25, but those days are long behind me. I mean, I did have a beer with breakfast, but it was just one, and I ate breakfast at like 2 pm DC time.
I sure loaded up on the caffeine though. I think I went to three different Starbucks throughout the day. I also went to the Museum of Illusions, which was kinda cool, but, unsurprisingly, ridiculously overpriced. Once I was able to check into the hotel, I just chilled in the room and watched Baby Reindeer.* JY finally made it to the hotel at around 6:30, and since the show didn't start until 7:30, I guess he technically made it on time.
*I finished the series on the flight home. I thought it was really good, but it's pretty dark, so I don't recommend it, unless you like that type of thing, which I usually do.
It was great to see JY. I hadn't seem him in almost two years. We pretty much went straight to the venue (it was in the hotel we were staying at), but that hour gave us a chance to catch up a little bit. The show was rad. We had floor tickets in "the pit," so we were right up front, standing maybe ten yards from the stage. Deep Sea Diver was terrific. I've seen them a couple times before, and they put on a great live show. Here are two songs they played that I really like.
And then Pearl Jam was amazing. They put on a show. Sometimes you see these established artists, and they rest on their reputation and mail-in their live performances (ahem, Bob Dylan), but Pearl Jam makes you feel like you're seeing something special and exclusive, even though it's probably the same basic show they've done hundreds of times and will do dozens of more. Actually, I heard an interview will Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament, and they said that they give it their all every performance, because they know there is somebody in the audience, who spent a lot of time and money to come see them and might not ever see them again, and they don't want that person to feel cheated. That person was me at this show. They didn't play my favorite Pearl Jam song, but they played so many other greats, it hardly matters.
After the show, we did get to go backstage and see P and hang out for a little while. So, that was cool. Then JY and I grabbed a couple slices of za and went back to the hotel to crash. JY was snoring, and I didn't want to wear earplugs because my ears were ringing from the show and earplugs made it worse (the show was super loud where we were, even though I put in earplugs for the loudest parts), so I cranked up the white noise on my phone and eventually dozed off.
We both woke up pretty early and got some coffee, and then he flew off to Berkeley to watch his son play baseball (he's a pitcher on UW*), and I got a breakfast burrito that was, hands down, the best thing non-show-related about my trip. I flew out a few hours later and was back home by 9:30 pm. The trip was awesome -- I'm really glad I went -- but as I've said before, the best part of any trip, no matter how great, is arriving back home.
*It was kinda funny. We were in the arena, watching the UW game on JY's phone, and right as his son came in to pitch -- like almost to the second -- Pearl Jam came onstage and started playing. So, JY spent the first few songs half-watching the show, half-watching his phone, giving me updates -- runner on third, two outs, popup, yes! He got out of it! Kid had a great outing: 3.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 SO.
A few pics and then that's the post.
Until next time...
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