I wake Ed up.
Despite Ed's somewhat petite stature, waking him up at 645 a.m. is like waking up a premenstrual grizzly bear by poking it in the ass with a hot iron. Although it's difficult to be sure, given the speed at which Ed spewed outraged expletives upon being told he had to get up, using the 1-2-3 point framework [see BMFRTE Day 3] I am confident I scored over a million points this morning.
We quickly get ready, because we have to leave by 7 to have a prayer of getting to the airport on time for our 8:20 flight. We get all our stuff together and head up the stairs, Ed sullenly pointing out the whole time that he hates, in no particular order, me, everyone, me, the world, me, and life.
Me and mom
Given that it's approaching rush hour, and there's construction on the main highway leading to the airport, our plan is for my mom to drive us to the train station in Forest Park, where we will catch the train to the airport. A simple, reliable plan that should get us there with very little margin for error, given that we are already ten minutes late (7:10 a.m.), but nevertheless OK provided we hit no major disasters.
7:15 a.m.- Major Disaster #1:
My mom, who has been picking me up and dropping me off at this very train station more or less every time I've visited home in the last ten years, gets lost driving across the park, in broad daylight. At 1300 acres (versus 850 acres for Central Park in NYC), and laced with curving roads that go nowhere, Forest Park is not a trivial thing to get lost in. By the time we get unlost, and get to the train station, it's 7:40 a.m. We are now 25 min behind schedule, but there's still an outside chance we'll make it, provided we get a train quickly...
7:42 a.m.- Major Disaster #2:
This from Ed: "We're already running a bit behind, but we catch a train pretty quickly, so it all looks good... until we realize that we're on the wrong train. That's right, this is Gus's hometown, and we got on the wrong fucking train."
OK, I want to say a word in my defense. The Forest Park station was long ago planned to be the starting point of a new rail spur into the county. For the last 6 years or so, that new line has been under construction, and every time in those six years that I've used that station, it's been fine, because the new line wasn't finished and until it was, only one type of train ever came through the Forest Park station. So excuse me for not knowing that a couple of months ago, the new line was finally completed, and now two types of trains go through the station. But hey, you say, with only two options, you still only had a 50% chance of getting on the wrong train, right?
Wrong.
A little known statistical effect, which I call the Gus Factor, takes a simple 50-50 favorable/unfavorable binary outcome distribution and transforms the favorable outcome into a 3-sigma normal distribution event. Put another way, the odds of my getting on the wrong train were actually closer to 99.7%. I have no mathematical explanation for the Gus Factor, only a vague ontological one that involves a deity with a sense of humor that is both deeply ironic and fundamentally retributive in nature.
Anyway, by the time we identify we're on the wrong train, get off of it, run up the stairs and over the tracks to the other side, wait for a train back to the Forest Park station, and get back there, it is 7:57. Fortunately, a correct train shows up at 7:58. We arrive at the airport at 8:08 a.m., with only 12 min remaining until our flight is scheduled to take off. I am praying for it to be delayed. We run from the train through the East terminal to Southwest's self-check-in area, and I print our boarding passes. We run for security. There are only 6 min left until departure, and we need a miracle now. Instead, we get:
Major Disaster #3 (8:15 a.m.):
Ed, who is inexplicably carrying the entire contents of the Travel Size Lotions/Shampoos aisle from Bed, Bath and Beyond in his carry-on luggage, gets stopped in the security line and pulled aside for the intensive baggage inspection. I have already gotten through the line when I notice this, and Ed hands me his boarding pass and says to run to the gate, which is fortunately right across from security. So I hit the gate right as they are about to close the door. I explain that Ed is over there in security getting his bag inspected, and the Southwest agent takes both our boarding passes, puts me on the plane, and promises he'll get Ed on the plane before letting it take off. I'm a little worried that Ed doesn't have his boarding pass anymore, but i explained to the gate agent what he looks like, and it's all out of my hands now.
A few minutes later, Ed comes running on the plane. He gets the last seat, not too far away, and when the seatbelt light goes off in flight tells me his experience in security. This from Ed: "As they still go through my bag, they find a bottle of suntan lotion and confiscate it. Okay, great. But now they have to put my bag back through the x-ray. At that moment, for the first time in my life, they page me over the loudspeaker: 'Eduardo Perez, please report to your gate for immediate boarding." So I run out from the security area, leaving my bags behind, and yell at the guy that my bags are going through the machine. He says, into the loudspeaker, 'Eduardo, we need you on this plane right now!" I run back to security and practically crawl onto the conveyor belt to grab my bags and haul ass onto this plane. Incredibly, we make the flight- the last two people on the plane."
So we did make it, thanks to a friendly gate agent at Southwest who as near as I can tell violated about 8,000 security rules in our post-9/11 world.
The flight was good- we had the Comedy Flight Crew, which made the trip more enjoyable. And finally we got to Vegas, where we picked up our rental car, ran a couple quick errands, and then took Ed for his first meal at:
Ambrosia- the food of the gods
From there, we drove around the strip...
Downtown Las Vegas. It's 'Fabulous'. Either this sign is 50 years old or the LV Chamber of Commerce is staffed entirely by gay people.
... and Ed took a picture of every casino. Every last one of them. Right now my computer has 3 million pictures of casinos on it. But I notice he did take one other:
Because really- is there anything more quintessentially American than topless cheerleaders?From Vegas, we headed north, toward Zion National Park, which is a nice drive that goes through the Virgin River gorge.
AZ State motto: "We have a giant hole in the ground that's crawling with cars, old people, & cheap hotels. And when you get tired of Phoenix, you can visit the Grand Canyon!"
Clever, putting a skier on the sign. Only about .00000001% of Utah is actually ski-able. The other 99.99999999% of it is an empty fucking desert populated only by sagebrush and creepily happy Mormons.The Virgin River Gorge is beautiful and I recommend you do this drive at some point in your life. Since today is the day we technically will cover the most ground traveling, via one form or another, today's mix is:
8/23/07: Covering Ground
1) Like a Prayer - John Wesley Harding
2) Personal Jesus - Johnny Cash
3) The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum - Collide
4) Folsom Prison Blues - Keb' Mo
5) Across the Universe - Rufus Wainwright
6) Land of Confusion - Disturbed
7) When Doves Cry - Patti Smith
8) Boyz in the Hood - Dynamite Hack
9) Bitches Ain't Shit - Ben Folds
10) Sucker MC's - Lordz of Brooklyn
11) Gin & Juice - Phish
12) Hot in Heere - Jenny Owen Youngs
13) Baby Got Back - Jonathan Coulton
14) Paul Revere - Asylum Street Spankers
15) Get Your Freak On - KT Tunstall
16) Crazy - Shawn Colvin
17) Volare - Gypsy Kings
18) Wonderwall - The Mike Flowers Pop
19) Hallelujah - John Cale
We got to the park around 630, and booked a hotel just outside the park. This from Ed:
"Our plan was this: do the hike to Angel's Landing in Zion that evening, drive to Bryce Canyon the next day for more hiking, and then go to Canyonlands and Arches the day after that. However, that plan was quickly amended when, while checking in at the hotel, Rachel -so nice- told us about hiking The Narrows. Basically, it's a 16 mile, 12 hour hike along (and in) the Virgin River through its canyon and through the canyon's narrowest point. Immediately this sounds cool to us, so we head into Zion to get passes to do the hike the next day. You need passes because they only let 80 people per day do the hike.
We get the passes, and the ranger tells us all about the dangers of flash flooding, how we should take enough food for a couple days in case we get stuck in the canyon waiting out a flood, and how we can rent special waterproof shoes and socks because we will be walking through the river itself. We then call the place to reserve space on the shuttle bus -the 630 a.m. shuttle bus- that takes us to the start of the river and the hike. We also find out that we need to go to a special fitting for the shoes tonight at 730, so that means we won't be hiking to Angel's Landing tonight."
So we head off to the fitting. The "fitting" consists primarily of watching a 30 minute video presentation whose primary content is a thorough and detailed explanation of every way that people have died on this hike. It's awesome. Danger! Ha! Ed and I scoff at danger! But we do end up renting the special shoes, and special socks, and waterproof bags for food and the camera. On the way out, one of the people working there tries to hand us special walking sticks, about shoulder high, which she says are free. Now, laden down as we are with all this special safety stuff, Ed and I are feeling a lot less manly. I mean, you never see Indiana Jones watching safety videos or renting special shoes and socks. But at this point who gives a shit, and they're free, so we take them.
We drop the stuff off at the hotel, and decide to walk the mile into town to a place called Blondie's to get some dinner. More from Ed:
"The walk is cool because it's dusk, the road is dark, and the sun is setting behind these mountains that surround the town. There are also an assload of bats zipping around our heads; Gus assures me that the bats will use their sonar to echolocate us and thus not slam into our faces.
As he says this, a bat grazes his head."
You know, with millions of bats zipping around, it's statistically likely that one of them drives like Tom. And given what Jonathan calls my "little black karma cloud", almost a statistical certainty that this bat would eventually crash into me. Sigh.
"We both order elk burgers at Blondie's; we figure the elk is fresh since we just walked by an elk farm which is, literally, right next to the diner."
This is an Elk. A dark Elk. Photographed at night, against a dark background. Ansel Adams we are not.
For the record, Elk burgers are delish. I highly recommend them.
From Blondie's we head back to the hotel, pack up our gear, and go to bed. Tomorrow will be another day getting up "at the asscrack of dawn"...
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