Road Trip Day 14 - 2007-08-02

Check out a map of my journey today here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=Flagstaff,+AZ&daddr=S+Entrance+Rd+%4036.037910,+-112.121990+to:Las+Vegas,+NV&mrcr=1&mra=pi&sll=35.605395,-111.914405&sspn=1.382242,2.581787&ie=UTF8&ll=35.66644,-113.395535&spn=5.523595,10.327148&z=7&om=1

Check out pictures from today here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10306971@N03/sets/72157601200193297/

This morning I left my hotel at 9:00 to head to the Grand Canyon. I hit a bit of construction-related delays that set me back about 30 minutes, but other than that the drive was fine. The Canyon was amazing, of course, so I took a bunch of pictures. Enjoy! (Because I'm sure you've never seen pictures of it before.)

After that, I headed out on my way to Vegas. I stopped at a nice diner called the Ranch House Cafe. It was a nice little diner out in the middle of nowhere in Ash Fork, AZ. I had a BBQ Beef sandwich, which was quite tasty.

I continued on my way and almost ran out of gas again. This GPS clearly doesn't have all the gas stations that exist, because it keeps telling me there isn't a gas station for 50 miles when there is one 5 miles ahead of me. That causes a great amount of undue distress.

Approaching Las Vegas, I went over the Hoover Dam. They are constructing a new bridge that is going to be pretty cool. I saw the supports that they have placed so far, and it is very impressive. (See pictures).

When I arrived where I was staying, New York New York, I was a bit confused. The appeared to have a taxi pickup area and a valet area, but no check-in area. I asked the valet where I should go to check in, and he told me the valet was complimentary. I didn't really want to valet anyways, because it would just motivate me to never access my car while I was there since I'd need to tip the guy who brought it to me and I was afraid I'd forget something in my car. I ended up letting him take it anyways, since it looked like that was what everybody else was doing and I didn't want to cause any trouble. Sure enough, I forgot my belt in my car so I'm going beltless! I'm not going to tip some fellow just to bring my car up here so I can get a belt out of my trunk.

After getting settled in my room, I went downstairs and signed up for the Player's Club to accumulate some comps while I play. I read somewhere that I could get $40 off my room if I played 5 or more hours of poker per day. Nice! So I grabbed a sandwich and sat down at a $2/$4 limit Hold' em table at around 7:00.

The table conditions varied pretty widely, but there was usually at least 2-3 people where were making tons of mistakes. I was up about $30 bucks at several points during the evening but managed to lose most of it near the end. My total profits: $1! Nice. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow.

2 comments:

spletcher said...

Brian:
I ain't two smart 'bout them there kars, but thinks thar's a lit'l glass windau nex ta that thar speedo theng widt an E and an F on it, thut mit have sumthun ta do with taht thur gas tank und whut's still in it! U might chec it out!!

Unknown said...

Alright, I've kept my mouth shut long enough, but this post just drove me over the edge!

(1) These gas situations are ridiculous! What kind of person runs out of gas? I think you need to keep me around for situations like this.

(2) New York New York? You definitely should have paid for a room at Paris Las Vegas. A faux Eiffel Tower, what could be better?

(3) Your engineering-related photographcs from today's adventures are much appreciated!

Hope your poker fortunes improve!