Traveling Thoughts

My experience with slot machines before Vegas was unsatisfying. I can remember when I turned 21, deciding that I was going to one of our many local casinos, and that I was walking in with $20 and I’d walk out when it was gone. I sat down at the penny slots, I couldn’t figure out why people were excited about the penny slots, they were boring. So I moved onto the nickel slots, they were just as boring, I just didn’t get it. So after 15 minutes, bored out of my mind, I walked out of the casino with a little more than $7 dollars. As I was walking out, I took it upon myself to decide that that kind of boredom was something I didn’t ever want to experience again, and that casinos weren’t for me.

Enter Vegas 5 years later.

After peeps were ordering drinks and paying outrageous amounts of money for them, Colleen suggested we go sit down at the slots and start playing because then the little waitress ladies would come to us and ask us what we wanted to drink and we’d get it for free. We went and sat down at the slots.

Ang, Cass, Alli (standing), Jenn, Ted, Courtney, and Colleen!!!

Now, I hadn’t ventured to slots since my first experience when I was 21, so this was new to me because all the people around me were excited, or drunk, or both, but they were way into it so I put in a $20 and began playing. I walked out with like $15.87 cents on a paper thing, and then I proceeded to loose it. And that was from the second $20 that I dropped into the machine.

Alli, next to me, she’s way cool :) She’s also a photo fiend, so I have to thank her for like 90% of the photos I’ve used on this Vegas trip.

I told her, when she came up to take this picture, “I hate being in pictures” her response, gotta love her “oh well, you’re in this picture” it made me laugh.

I wasn’t going to blog about this, but I’ve decided that I’m going to.

When I got on the airplane to go from Albuquerque to Phoenix, I was scared. I put my suitcase in the overhead bin, my backpack under the seat in front of me, buckled my seatbelt, and panicked. I was sitting on a plane, buckled in, grasping the armrests to the point where my knuckles were white, sweat beading on my forehead, freaking out.

The last 5 times I had been on a plane, it had been a little Cessna, packed to the brim with skydivers. With the exception of my first skydiving trip, I’ve had a parachute strapped to my own back. The last 4 times I had flown, I had a parachute, that plane could be going down and I’d have been able to make my escape, pull my parachute, and land safely on the ground.

This time, not so much, if this plane went down, I was most likely going to die, and what made me think of that then, I don’t know, because I had never been scared to fly, even when I had packed my own parachute and was wearing it, I wasn’t afraid to fly. But I was afraid, very afraid this time. It was an uncomfortable feeling and I was stuck on the plane for something like 3 hours. I was scared.

It took about an hour for me to calm myself down enough that I was able to let go of the armrest. I still felt as though I needed a parachute strapped to me, that would’ve given me the security I thought I needed, but I was going to be ok. By the time I got to Vegas, I was excited to be off the plane.

When I was leaving Vegas, I was so exhausted, I don’t think I had it in me to freak out…

We’ll see what my trip in December to Cali does for me, will I freak, will I become one of those people that has to be drugged in order to fly? Only time will tell.

When I arrived in Vegas yesterday I had a plan, I wanted to go see where I was going to be riding in next year’s Tour de Cure. But I quickly got distracted. There were signs for Hoover Dam. But even there, I got distracted. I didn’t stay on highway 93 for long though. I took a detour (because I got distracted) to Lake Mead. And it was absolutely beautiful out there. I had to make a stop and get out of my car and go check out the water. I was really bummed that I hadn’t packed shorts. The water was warm. The weather was warm. It was just warm. So, I pulled up my pant legs and waded into the water. And then we had a Courtney First.

I had a good time. I eventually got down to Hoover Dam but there were people everywhere and traffic wasn’t moving so I didn’t stop (that and I kindof had to get back to Vegas to attend Blog World Expo). So I kept driving because I just knew that the road was going to loop back on itself and that I was going to get back to Vegas. (Yes, I know, I’m not all that smart sometimes) I ended up in Arizona, if only briefly, I was in Arizona. That is my pre-Blog World Adventure. It was cool.