Leaving Las Vegas PT. 1

It is Friday July 31st. I am sitting in a Clarion Hotel room (on the site of Sherman's Columbia headquarters during the Civil War...be jealous history buffs. Very jealous.) in Columbia South Carolina. I've got no clue where the week has gone. All I know is that I have mental whiplash.

Let's begin at the beginning:

Sunday rolled around and I was finishing the final touches on my packing. Packing is about as much fun as getting a root canal and probably equally painful. I was supposed to have heard from my driver, but nothing came. I had a laundry list of things my mother wanted me to do and things she wanted me to take with me on my trip (in order to drop them off to her, of course.)

I had originally planned to leave on Tuesday after meeting a classmate for a little while to say, "Hello," and my mentor for a bit to say, "Goodbye!" We (my brother and I) were going to arrive in Blanco, TX for a while to stay with my father for a day or two. Then we were going to drive down to Houston for a day or two. I then had planned to head north through Dallas to say hello to a friend there, then on to Oklahoma to say hi to a friend in Norman. We'd planned to hit CoLa some time on Tuesday. I figured we'd be sleeping on the floor of the new apartment for a few days.

Well....

Monday rolled around and I called Movex, my moving company, to say I hadn't heard from my driver and thought they'd given him my disconnected number instead of my good number. They gave him my new number and about ten minutes later I hear from my driver: Richard. He will be at my house at 12:30 for loading purposes.

When he comes by he opens the truck and there before us is a space that is about 8 feet across and about four feet deep. It was definitely 15-20 feet tall, but a lot of good that does us. I looked at my porch. I looked at the space.

"This is never going to work." I muttered.

When I was a child my family used to make frequent visits to a museum in Cedar City (or maybe St. George) Utah, that commemorated the crossing the Plains of the Mormons during the great wagon train crossings. This museum had a little scale sized model of a wagon with about two dozen blocks in different sizes to represent barrels, foodstuffs, beds, dressers, and other things that pioneers might have wanted to take with them across the Plains. The goal of this exhibit was to see how carefully one could pack the items in the wagon. You had to decide which things to keep and which to leave...and sometimes, if you got really creative with the packing--everything fit.

That's what happened.

After an hour and a half of dragging, hauling, pushing, and tugging, Richard and my brothers had managed to fit nearly everything in the back of the truck and shut the doors.

Obstacle One: Score.

So now we start to talk about arrival dates. Movex had told us that they were going to be arriving somewhere between the 31st and the 9th...I shot for the middle of that with my plans.

Richard informs me that since I was the last one on I'd be the first one off of the truck. He wanted to drop me off in CoLa on Friday.

"Woah, woah, woah..." I said, "I wasn't planning on being there until Tuesday!"

"We can do Sunday at the VERY latest," he said, "Can I do Saturday?"

So, I did some quick thinking, realized that all things considered this was the best possible option, and agreed.

I immediately cancelled everything. Lunches, appointments, roadstops.

The only person who put up a fuss (as usual) was my mother--in Houston--who threw at me every single method of guilt in her tool box until I finally agreed to make the 12 hour detour and stop for the night in Houston.

Now we just had to make it to Columbia.

I told Michael to have everything ready by noon. This was 7 hours sooner than our original departure time. SecondSister came over and helped me eco-pack the car so that again nearly everything fit. I cleaned out the apartment, handed my key back to my adoptive family and after a few semi-tearful goodbyes, we were off. I didn't have time to cry, I didn't have time to think, I didn't even have time to process.

In fact, I was all the way to Louisiana before it hit me that this was real and I was actually moving.

I drove for 28 hours straight from Vegas to Houston (with a pit stop every 200 miles or so since Michael and I have the Zabonik bladder and constantly need to go). Michael and I had a lot of good talks about our lives, things we've done (or not done), family issues, and ourselves. He made me laugh, he made fun of my music, and he washed my windows. Not bad, since I'm only paying the price to feed him.

In Houston, we basically fell asleep in our food. We crashed on the couches at my parent's condo, got up the next morning early, grabbed som Kalachis (if you've never heard of it, Google it. They're delicious) and hit the road again.

My GPS, Alice, took us through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama before we made a harsh left. Up through the state of Alabama, then to Georgia, finally arriving in South Carolina at about 2:30 local time (AM).

Today has been a day of wandering and wasting time. The key to the apartment wouldn't be ready until six pm, so we drove my neighborhood and around the campus and then out to Lexington to talk to my contact there. It is raining, and has been most of the day. It is warm, but not terrible, and humid--but not awful. Maybe the weather will get worse. My contact in Lexington said this was a normal day, weather-wise.

If that is true, I've arrived in Heaven.

The truck comes tomorrow. I'm sure new adventures await there. Stay tuned!

Wax on...Wax off!

Vegas is a grand illusion. For whatever reason, the combination of tacky colors, neon lighting, and unrealistic body images has come together as the recipe for perfection and keeps this town stocked in tourists willing to pay good money for just about anything. This being the case, I could think of nothing more fitting on my final tour of the town than a visit to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum at the Venetian. At least here, they advertise that the people inside are fake.

Currently admission is somewhere around $25 for tourists; however, us locals get a nifty discount and only have to pay $10 for admission. Normally, locals admission is $18; but, since they're celebrating their ten-year anniversary, the museum has opened itself up for just over half of that price. It really is a good deal.

Mme. Tussaud's has two floors filled with an ever rotating circuit of celebrities. Sure, there are the staples: Whoopi Goldberg is always out front. Hugh Hefner and Jenna Jameson are always near the entrance (you can pose with Hef in complete bunny ear regalia). But other exhibits change or move and so if you haven't been to the museum in a while, now is the time to go.

He made that shot without even looking!

If you've never been to a wax museum (Mme Tussaud's is by far the best I've ever seen) then walking in can be a little awkward. Guests are encouraged to touch the statues, pose with them, act like total dorks around them, and overall just have fun. So long as the statue isn't on a platform that says "Please don't climb," anything goes.

Some of the exhibits are more interactive than others. Guests can don a wedding dress and marry George Clooney. They can pull out a putter and play golf with Tiger Woods. Stand on the stage of American Idol and let Simon Cowell give you the evil eye. Join the Blue Man Group. Ride Evel Kneivel's motorcycle.

Of course, that first statue is always the weirdest moment. Today, it was Indiana Jones (my personal hero). Now the question is--how much is too much? Do you just pose next to him, or do you yank out all the stops? Within a few minutes, you too will be choking, kissing, hugging, and mugging it out with the celebrity of your choice.

Some of the statues (Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, George W. Bush) look close, but wouldn't fool you. Others (Angelina Jolie, Barack Obama, Mayor Oscar Goodman) are so lifelike that if the picture is taken correctly, you could absolutely confuse your neighbors.

"Come on Ben, let me show you a thing or two. Trust me--I'm a local."

After gasping at Criss Angel's abs, singing with Sinatra, and landing on the moon, my friend and I landed in the gift shop (where every hilariously snarky novelty known to man is sold at an overinflated price). I bought a few kitchen magnets with snarky sayings (hey, I saved a bunch of money on admission--I figured it'd even out) and we were on our way--completely entertained on a skinny budget.

Madame Tussaud's gets two thumbs way, way up for being one of the few attractions in town that is absolutely honest about what it is--a museum full of imitations. Not to mention--its a lot of fun!

Since we're discussing things that aren't real--later tonight I took my SecondSister to Town Square, a shopping district on the south end of the Strip. There really isn't a good way to describe this place except to say that it is a cross between Disneyland and a zoo for humans. Everything is polished and perfect (kind of like "Main St. USA") with false shop fronts (that lead to real--and really expensive--boutiques), perfectly groomed trees with speaker boxes that play music, and a park in the center. The park has a water feature for the kids, but the water is the only real part about the place. The expanse of grass is fake, the shrubs that make up the kiddie maze are fake, and the overall atmosphere is just one tick off of weird. SecondSister and I come to this place for Yogurtland, the frozen yogurt place that sells yogurt and toppings by the ounce. It makes for a very cheap but interesting way to spend an evening.

Most nights we take our yogurt and head over to the park to people watch. There are couples dancing to the music under the plastic gazebo (which is made to look like marble), there are families with blankets on the fake grass and kids on that same grass playing football, there are people walking their dogs (huh?). Its surreal.

I turned to SecondSister and started to tell her that I thought the place reminded me of a zoo for yuppies. We began to make up Dr. Suess-like rhymes to describe the place:

"Come my little child to the people zoo

Where the grass is fake, and the people are too!

They come in couples and as singles,

They're here to show off and to mingle

Proving that they have got so much money

They can pay to make this place sunny!"

There was more too it--but I can't remember it all. In essence, this place is part of why I can't stand this town. It is absolutely fake--everything about it is fake--but people are enjoying it as if it is real. This is frustrating. It isn't real. It is a guilded cage people, a guilded cage!

And for me the glitz and glamour has entirely worn off.