Travelogue Chapter 10: Barstow, California, USA

Dear Readers,

My nipples are pert (but everything else has receeded). Somehow in the Californian heat of Barstow, there exists a motel pool with a temperature just shy of freezing. Enough Said.

The weather has been pretty sweet since Flagstaff. From there We went to Boulder City, Nevada, and then to Las Vegas for two sleepless nights. Boulder City was my first experience of the desert heat. I think it was weirdest there (or maybe I've just become accustomed). The air felt like you were breathing in the rejected air from a vacuum cleaner or like you were walking around in a reasonably inocuous but none-the-less ever-present fart-cloud.

Perhaps, for a city like Vegas, one should start with something like: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," but alas it's already been done. Vegas is a wonderland to the happy and a suicidal nightmare to the sad - and either way extraordinarily expensive. The 'free' booze of the Casinos and the universally available cheap food for which Vegas is for many most fondly remermbered had dried up by our arrival. Maybe we're out of season, maybe that's just not how it's done anymore. That said, I had the most amazing Buffet in the Bellagio - the only thing that could possibly spoil such an excuisite meal would be one's own gluttany - and I pushed it as close to the edge of
exploding all over the room as I could. I also had the pleasure of the company of five delighful young women at the buffet who were impressively as much martyrs to self-gorging as I was: a bunch of fellow fourth-year-trinitarians who were J1-ing this summer. It was great to meet them Vegas was (at times) a lot of fun.

I'd like to dwell a little on the ills of Vegas, but I really can't decide what the most confounding aspects of this extraordianry living circus are. I'll talk about it in greater detail in person I think, but to draw a quick analogy - imagine feeling like that caterpillar that has to keep secreting goo so that the swarm (or whatever) of ants won't consume it: that's Vegas if you just add lights and people constantly offering flyers for strippers and hookers - throw in a few zombies for good measure too. We left having had no more than four or five hours sleep for the nights we spent there - and are probably not quite recovered.

I feel like I should have more to say, perhaps if Vegas wasnt' so Vegas I would have. Now when I think about it, the novelty I can remember quite clearly is getting static shock from just about everything I touched.

Hmmm.

James.

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