It's Vegas, baby!

I know, I've only just been here! But this trip is much delayed, originally scheduled for 2020, something (can't quite remember what) got in the way.

Yes, it's the return of three idiots driving round in circles. Well obviously as we start and finish in Las Vegas, so thats a given, but mostly we do that each day as well! If anyone cares the u-turn record to be aimed at is a frankly magnificent 14, held by Rob somewhere in Aberdeenshire. The Florence Griffith-Joyner or Bob Beamon of records, possibly never to be broken. But you know we will be giving it a damn good try and there is always jut one occasion where everything goes right (or wrong in our case) and the record falls. Watch this space.

As I started writing this I was on a hydrogen fuelled, zero emission plane (😉) heading from Heathrow to Macaroon International Airport ( I think that might be an autocorrection, but I can't look up the correct name for Las Vegas Airport, and to be frank, Macaroon sounds better. It's something like that!). But Macaroon it now is, for our brief stop in Vegas to be negotiated without too much drama. We got here on time (early in fact) last night and had stroll along the Strip to try to stay up till a reasonable local time. Yep, its just as mad as I remember. Within minutes accosted by very scantily clad women temping us to ... we were wise enough not to ask - we just kept walking, found a bar, had a some chicken wings and managed to stay up til nearly 11. Actually a late night for us!

Vegas - love it or hate it? Or possibly both at the same time. Vulgar, brash, insanely hot most of the time, hugely overbuilt and slowly stripping the area of its water resources, a homage to mammon. Where corporate interests are designed to strip the public of their cash - but leaving them with the belief that they could win. And I guess some do. Empty at the moment, but it is 6.30 in the morning!

Almost unbelievably, despite the fact I basically hate the place, this is my fourth visit. The last time was also on motorbike, half way through our first America trip that started and ended in Los Angeles. We completed the obligatory ride down The Strip - in congestion that would make the M25 proud, stayed in a suitably downmarket slightly sleazy motel and ate hamburgers. That’s what I remember anyway. Before that Nareesa and I had parked up in a casino RV park some 20 years ago and wondered what on earth we were doing there. My very first visit was in 1978, in a student gap year, and on that occasion I hitchhiked through and slept two nights in the bus station - those were the days. I can remember little about it other than the wonder at the ludicrous architecture and the longing to actually have some money to gamble. I was absolutely skint and was at that point begging meals from strangers - but that is another story.

I do kind of love it, for its sheer audacity, and madness, but mostly I hate it, for its ability to sell an infinitesimally small likelihood of everlasting riches to enormous numbers of gullible people. I know it's got the shows, but it is the gambling that brings people here, again and again in many cases. That and the hen parties!

Right as usual I have managed to start a trip with a good old rant. And the trip hasn’t really started yet.

We are safely in our low to mid-range “center strip” casino/hotel (I promise you it is not The Bellagio) and looking forward to a day of exploring (wandering into and out of casinos, eating hamburgers…) before doubtless fading in the early evening given the 8 hour time change. Then on Monday we have to be up and out to pick up our spanking new BMWs and ride out into the hills. Which will be welcome, because it’s 43ºC in Vegas and I suspect we will spend most of today dodging from one air conditioned building to another. So not my ideal home then. But you do have to see it!

From Vegas we ride to the Grand Canyon, where I will pick up this story…

PS I've just discovered this is my 200th blog. Something to celebrate (or possibly mourn) I suppose 😉🤣

Cheers to that says Rob