The Rest of the first day


I‘ve been asked, on numerous occasions if I mind driving on the wrong side of the road. My answer, these days, usually runs around a line about head-on collisions. I really have no preference as to which side I drive on as long as everyone else is thinking the same way. I have driven on the right often enough that it feels as natural as driving on the left, but I do enjoy the first few miles on the 'wrong' side because it‘s different from my 'norm'. It makes me think a bit. And the trip from Thrifty, on Warm Springs, to our motel made me think.
I‘d sort of glanced at the 'drawn on' map before heading out of the gate and my memory told me that there were a couple of turns between 'de lights' at Las Vegas Boulevard and the junction with Flamingo Road, which was the 'easy' way to Koval Lane. My memory was wrong.
There might have been only a couple of turns on the map but that didn‘t tell the whole story.
I took Tropicana and got lost.
In truth I wasn‘t lost, I had simply mislaid my position for a few minutes and the real sad truth is that Koval runs from Flamingo all the way down to Tropicana, but I remained blithely unaware of that until it was too late.
Agitation from the passenger seat caused me to stop and study the map. And I mean study.
Like I said, I‘m not lost, I know exactly where I am. I just don‘t happen to know the name of the road, but then I saw it, written up large on a sign, and I pinpointed our position to my, and the passenger seat‘s, great relief.
All we had to do was take Tropicana down as far as Eastern and then right on Eastern to Warm Springs and then right onto Warm Springs, past the Thrifty lot. From there it‘s easy.
Ya go to da lights and ya make a right and... Yes, thankyou. But that‘s exactly what we did, onto LVB and hit the Strip.
Call me stupid if you want, but I simply hadn‘t registered that Las Vegas Boulevard was the Strip. It never occurred to me that I was heading into the middle of fantasy land. Quite suddenly, it seemed to me, we were surrounded by a new world, a world of incredible architecture, of sights that almost defied description. Of lots of cars and lots of people.
One end of the Boulevard was pretty ordinary and the other end was 'Oh Jeez'.
To drive and not look at the sights was impossible.
This was, after all, what we‘d come halfway (thirdway, perhaps) around the world to see.
Even in daylight these first glimpses, stolen while trying to avoid hitting all the other cars, were mind blowing. I won‘t lie to you and say I have any real recollection of which strange and wonderful places we passed on that Thursday.
A glance at a map tells me that we passed the Luxor and we very likely did, but it was all a bit much for this country boy.
My memory may have gone for a walk but Wendy‘s was still with us and she claimed to remember the clerk at the car rental saying that our turning was opposite Ceasars.
All I could say was 'Wow', but when Wendy shouted that "we should turn here", I did, and the Strip was gone.
We were on Flamingo and then there was Koval and then there was our Motel and then there was the car park and then there was reception.
Perhaps, at this point, I should return to the desk in the Thrifty offices for a moment, if you don‘t mind. Imagine our surprise and relief when the lady took a sheet of paper from a box of papers and it had our name on it. In spite of our fears it seemed as though this internet booking thing worked. But would it work twice - in one day?
The short answer was yes.
The Super 8 on Koval Lane had our name on file as well. Five minutes later we were in our room and very shortly after that we were on our bed.
It squeaked.
I have a small but growing collection of photographs entitled "Scenes from a motel window." These are not exciting pictures, quite the reverse, they are almost, to a picture, stupifyingly awful.
But I like them.
The origin of the series was the view from our hotel room in Peabody, 1999.
This elegant, and jolly nice, hotel boasted glorious views overlooking the rear car park complete with dumpsters and inevitably people putting out the trash.
My series grew from that.
The sequel, if you will, to that, is our joint collection of the worlds noisiest motels.
We seem to collect noisy motels no matter how hard we try not to. We‘ve been kept awake by a truck stop out back, by being right next to the stairs (uncarpeted of course)and by all the normal stuff like loud televisions, but here, on Koval Lane, we had found a gem.
A noisy bed.
When we entered the room for the first time, it seemed obvious that we were blessed with a quiet part of the motel, at least for a couple of hours. Since our body clocks were saying well past midnight - at just after five in the afternoon - we wanted a couple of hours sleep to get us through the rigours of the evening ahead. We happily fell on the bed.
It squeaked.
Something below my left ear squealed in pain every time I moved. If I stayed as still as death there was no squeak. If I so much as wiggled my toes. Squeak. If I stayed as still as death and Wendy wiggled her toes. Squeak. This was not on. I rolled off the bed to investigate.
The box spring was sat on a frame comprising four pieces of wood formed into a rectangle and the corner which was more or less under my left ear wasn‘t properly joined together. The slightest movement made the two pieces rub together and, well, they squeaked. Loudly.
Imagine, if you will, the sight of me with very few clothes on, laying on the floor, half under the bed manhandling the parts of the bed that squeaked, in an attempt to isolate and if possible to stop the squeak.
Imagine Wendy, on the bed, bouncing up and down at my command in order to make the squeak that I was trying to isolate and stop.
I tried packing the joint thing with bits of cardboard, tried forcing the two bits apart with the door wedge, but nothing worked, so in the end we slept on the floor. We threw the mattress off the box spring and slept on it, on the floor. We found it most comfortable and completely squeak free.

A couple of hours later we awoke refreshed and hungry, well hungry anyway, and pausing only to put clothes on, we set off for the fabled 'Downtown'. Humming the tune as we walked towards the Strip in search of a cab, we were slightly stunned by the sight that greeted us as we walked around Bally's.
The lights were awesome. It was like daylight only brighter, and considerably more colourful. The afternoon had been something but this was like walking in a dream.
My dreaming was cut short by Wendy, she had spotted a cab and was tugging my sleeve in that direction. All too soon we left the Street of Dreams behind and into comparative darkness.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it was the benefit of hindsight that we knew we‘d made a mistake. We should have stayed uptown that night. We should have taken advantage of actually being there in the centre of things. We should have stayed because when we came back later in the week to see it lit up, the magic wasn't there. It was all there on that first night and we should have stayed. But we didn‘t.

In fact we went down to Freemont Street for the best of reasons, it was a point of focus. It was where we would be staying later in the trip and 'that' trio were down there somewhere. Donna, Norma and Bobbie were staying in the Golden Nugget and we hoped to meet them again.
Another thing about going down there was that it didn‘t seem very far, in fact at one point I thought it was within walking distance. It is, but it‘s a very long walk. The cab ride cost fourteen dollars - plus tips - which will give you an idea of how far it is.
A different cabbie, on a different day, drove us along a route that seemed to me a lot more direct that the one we travelled on that first night. On that first night the guy took us out on the expressway, which seemed to me slightly odd since Las Vegas Boulevard - the Strip - continues north straight into the downtown area. I mentioned this to to the 'more direct' driver.
"Those guys just want to rip you off", he offered, "If you go out on the expressway, it‘s longer so you pay more, but it‘s quicker so the cab driver scores both ways. You guys being tourists (How the hell could he tell?) I figure to save you some money and take you the short route."
He charged us fourteen dollars.
He dropped us off at the Golden Nugget and we wandered in to our very first Las Vegas casino. I looked in disbelief at row upon row of slot machines. The noise was overpowering and I looked at Wendy and shook my head. The look that I got back told me that she was thinking the same as me.

Wow!

We walked through the casino and out of the front door and over to the Four Queens. We looked and we went out onto Freemont Street and looked some more, then we went back into the G.N. to see if any familiar faces were wandering around.
We‘d forgotten Donna‘s room number and I couldn‘t for the life of me remember her surname so we asked at the desk for Norma‘s room number. We rang the room and a very sorry sounding English accent informed us that the other two were down there somewhere and that we couldn‘t miss them. Bobbie had obviously not, at that stage, counted the slot machines. We didn‘t find either Norma or Donna. We did find a Burger King.
Forgive me for being a Philistine but at that stage of the game the sight of something familiar was all I needed. I am an awkward person when it comes to food and being on the point of collapsing with hunger is not the best time for me to try something new and exciting.
I had a Whopper.
It tasted superb.
We went back to our motel. And slept.
The following day saw the start of the adventure proper.

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