Well, my day started off very auspiciously, if that word means BAD. Waking up after only 3 hours of sleep, I started to pack up what was left, so my roommates did not have to deal with it. Having reviewed my ticket and travel time, I decided I would start moving towards the airport. I took public transportation (which compared to Brasilian public transportation is horrid), and barely managed to make my way to the airport.
I had already made my first mistake of the day (I went to the wrong bus stop, so I had to walk a mile with all my luggage to get to the right one), and on arriving at the airport found out that I had made another. My flight from LAX to Las Vegas was not at 4. It had been at 12 (which was long past). I had been looking at the wrong part of my travel information. Thankfully the nice lady at the desk booked me another ticket for a plane leaving in 20 minutes. Dashing (and by dashing, I mean waiting in endless lines. YAY Bureaucracy) through the multiple layers of security, each of them which did less then the one before them, I made my flight, and found myself sitting next to a delightfully sarcastic young lady. We made fun of the TV’s, the Christmas music videos, other peoples luggage (someone had a suitcase wrapped in duct tape which she promptly proclaimed to be “Ghetto Bling”.), the safety announcement (pull on your seatbelt to tighten, etc. etc., if we crash at 400 miles per hour, please exit the plane in an orderly fashion, etc. etc.). She started hitting on me, so when she found out that I had a several hour lay over in Vegas like her, she invited me to go to a bar and drink with her for a while. She apparently thought I was in my mid-twenties. After telling her that I was 18, she got tired and dozed off, leaving me with a boring business man sitting next to me. He did not have the appropriate levels of sarcasm for me to talk to him.
After disembarking in Vegas, I was immediately struck by a)how many slots there were EVERYWHERE, and b)how many people were playing them. They are not fun and you have no chance of winning with them. Yay, lets give them more money. I saw an O2 bar, where apparently they serve oxygen??? Of course, that meant I had to try it. My little air stand had air that was flavored like a Pina Colada, Sex on the Beach, Eucalyptus, and something which I can no longer remember. As I was sitting there, I struck up a conversation with the nice girl who was the ???Bartender???. We swapped a few details like age, and where we are from, and then she immediately started telling me about the crazies that live in Vegas. According to her, everyone is either a drug addict or a prostitute. Then she told me of the time she went out for groceries and bum offered to carry them back to her car in exchange for money. After sympathizing with her over the sheer insanity of the world, I suggested that California (her place of origin) might be pretty crazy as well. She told me that I just did not understand. The people from Vegas are REALLY out there. I then proceeded to explain that I had just dropped out of College in order to hitchhike around the country, and my end point would probably be the US Army. Her eyes went wide and she stopped talking to me. Oh well. I can hardly blame her considering what she considered to be dangerously crazy. (As a side note, the Oxygen bar was fun, but I did not notice an increase in sexual prowess, and the security guard tackled me about 300 yards into my attempt at a four minute mile. Kind of a gyp.) Now, I am waiting for my next flight, which is in 3 hours. As a minor, I am not allowed to loiter near the slot machines, and since they are everywhere, it limits me to about 20 square feet in which to wait. (I do not think I have emphasized how many there are. I think it is literally impossible to be out of sight of a slot machine anywhere in the airport. Even the bathrooms. I went into the handicap stall and there were four plus a video poker machine.)
--Andy
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