Escape from Vegas - Day 7 (Saturday)

We woke up early this morning, put on our suits, and went down to the Hotel Coffee shop at around 8:00am. We purchased mongo-vente coffees (or whatever the "big" ones are called), two danish, and a couple of fruit cups. With this meal, we made our way to the pool. It was baking outside already, but the water near the big waterfall (where we were sitting) was FREEZING. We enjoyed our breakfast (but had to duck the birds who were dive-bombing us for our cheese danishes), then laid out on lounge chairs in the sun for a while. We swam and sunned and read and lazed about until 11:00 or so. Then it was time to head up to the room, clean up, pack, and vacate.

At the front desk, I expected trouble because I needed to charge our last evening to my personal credit card, while the other evenings needed to go on my corporate card. Actually, this turned out to be pretty simple, however: they double charged me for everything for some reason. So that took some time to work out.

Then we walked out front to the taxi stand. We got another nice SUV-style cab, and we were on our way to the airport. It took longer than I expected to weave through the traffic to get to LAS, but we arrived with plenty of time to spare. There were a TON of people waiting to get through security, but we lucked out as they were all waiting to go to a different terminal than us. We managed to get through security reasonably quickly, and found our gate.

We tried to find a place for a warm lunch, but even the "diner" in the airport serves cold food. Finally we settled on a pub which served locally brewed beer. The sandwiches were expensive, cold, and wrapped in cellophane. The beer was good, but I discovered later, each one was $8.00! No, this wasn't a topless place. In fact, after waiting for quite a while, I finally had to walk up to the bar to get my beer and sandwiches. The waitress had apparently been sent home.

We chatted with a couple in the bar who had discovered (once they arrived at the airport) that their United Airlines flight had been canceled, without notice, and they would not be able to get home until Sunday at the earliest. This was unacceptable, as they had small children at home that would be without supervision if they were unable to get back to Michigan. UA didn't seem to think this was their problem, so the couple were both furiously making cell phone calls to try and procure other travel arrangements.

Have the airlines always hated their customers so much, or is this a recent phenomenon? How do they get away with the crap that they do? Would any other business survive if they pulled this sort of nonsense? "Oh - sorry, I know you just paid $25,000, but we're all out of cars. You can have one maybe next month. And we already demolished your trade-in, so until then, just walk everywhere. What's the big deal?"

Lorie was flying standby, so there was some concern that we wouldn't get seated on the same flight, much less together. But, the agent was able to reseat me and we actually sat together (albeit in the very back of the plane). It was so hot that day, they asked us to keep the air vents wide open and all the shades down until the plane had become airborne. Tom told me later that he was kicked off of his plane (he volunteered, actually) because it was so hot on the runway that they couldn't become airborne with a full load of passengers.

We had a nice flight (ignoring the engine noise). The pilot was good about pointing out landmarks on the flight in, including the Grand Canyon and the Tellurides.

Soon we were back home, the temperature was more moderate, the air was considerably moister, and water was available for less than $4.00/bottle. We enjoyed getting away for a few days together, and while Las Vegas is not about to displace Maui as our most desirable vacation destination, we do hope to be able to revisit some day soon. Lorie laments the fact that she did not get to see the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. We didn't get a chance to visit Fremont Street, we didn't see any shows, and we missed several "must see" attractions, including the Bellagio garden and the moving statues at Caesar's Palace.

Thanks for reading (both of you!)