It's The Little Things

In the days after I posted this first blog, I realized I was leaving out some of the small, but crucial details of our first few minutes in Las Vegas.

Our adventure really began much before we even stepped foot in Nevada.

We got to the airport in Detroit and checked in our bags. We were about to go through the security check point when the man tells us that we can't go through with beverages. I had a Fiji water and Booty had a Mountain Dew. Our choices were to drink them or throw them away. I was not about to throw away a perfectly good, full, unopened bottle of $1.50 water. And she was not about to waste a perfectly good Mountain Dew. So we stepped out of line and took 5-10 minutes to chug our drinks. We got back in line and the first thing the security guy said to us when he saw us again was, jokingly "Bathrooms are closed!" Clearly he had experience with people downing their drinks before going through the check point.

The first half of our flight to Las Vegas included a plane change in Minneapolis. I know this seems kind of dumb to go north when we are trying to get south, but the tickets were cheap. Anyway, we got to sit next to each other on the flight to Minneapolis, but on the way to Vegas, we were seated about 7 or 8 rows apart; 5 numerically speaking, but if you include the bathroom, we were a long way away from each other. We were both pretty upset. This was our first major endeavor together and we didn't even get to experience it together. Luckily, we both ended up sitting next to some very nice people. Which was a good thing for me since the turbulence on landing made me utilize that special little paper bag that they give you.

Anyhoo, we get off the plane in Las Vegas, successfully navigate our way to baggage claim and then on to the shuttle for the car rental place. We stepped off the shuttle at the rental car place and we both just kind of looked at each other, smiled and started laughing. I looked at her and said "We are adults now. We are in Vegas...by ourselves!!"

So we pick up our rental car and head out to Sue's house. We weren't in the rental car for more than 10 minutes when we almost get into an accident! I think we were going about 45 or 50 when suddenly everyone in front of us hits their brakes. Booty hits the brakes...and nothing! The car keeps going! We are careening down the highway towards the back end of this other car and we are just sliding on the pavement. Luckily she swerved at the last minute and we avoided anything major, but it still freaked us out. How much would that have sucked to have been in Las Vegas only a matter of minutes to get into a major accident..with a RENTAL car! P.S. Cobalts are a piece of crap. We referred to it as the go-kart all week.

We had gotten directions from Sue and from the lady at the car rental place because the car rental lady told us that Sue's directions were kind of the long way around and "this" way would be much faster. Well, that was all well and good except for one thing. We were looking for this road called Amigo. We find it according to the car rental ladies directions, but can't find Sue's house. We call Sue; she has no idea where we are. We call Mike-Mike. (It's our personal version of Tom-Tom. A friend of ours has GPS on his cell phone.) So we have Sue on one cell phone talking to Booty. I am on my cell phone conferring with Mike-Mike. We finally figure out how to get to Sue's house. We have spent an hour or more driving around in circles looking for her house. When we get there, we find out what the problem was. We were on the right "Amigo", but there was construction so the street didn't go through, we had to come around and get to Sue's house from the other side. If the street hadn't been full of rubble, we could have easily gotten to Sue's house and saved ourselves a LOT of time!

All in all though, even our first few hours in Vegas were full of excitement. And we still had the rest of the week to go!


BTW..I am so glad this post was still here! I started writing on the 14th of June, but I hit some button which shut the internet down and I thought I had lost everything!