The Great Traveler

Finally back at our hostel at 3:30 in the morning, I was done with Las Vegas. Sin City is a tremendous place to catch some shows, play some poker, get free drinks, check out the hotels, and look at some pretty women. However, it gets old after a few days as the entire Las Vegas universe is a big giant black hole that dollars bills gravitate towards in large numbers and the superficiality and excessiveness of the city is unparalleled anywhere that I’ve ever seen. It was time to go someplace else.

Once again, we were faced with a decision of what to do with ourselves on this big giant planet. We could do Guatemala, but that means we’d have to leave Las Vegas right away, at 3:30 in the morning, after having partied all night here in Vegas. After about two minutes of examining how tired we were - we packed our bags as quickly as possible and hit the Mojave desert for our trip back to Orange County.

The drive back was one of the most difficult drives I’ve done. In what should be a 4 hour drive, I ended up pulling over on the side of the road 5 separate times to catch some shut eye and relieve myself of the extreme sleep deprivation I was going through, at least temporarily. Each time I pulled over, I got about 15-20 minutes of sleep and then decided to continue as long as I could until I needed another break. After all, we had a plane to catch. the 4 hour drive became a 7 hour test of endurance and perseverance.

We got to the Orange County airport in time for our flight, but late for international passenger standards and got an earful from the ticket lady. I told her about our epic journey from Las Vegas, to which she was less than impressed. “You should have left earlier,” she said, with no desire to truly understand our story.

We hopped on the plane nevertheless, and for the first time in 8 hours, we got to relax a little. We would change planes in Dallas, where our layover would be 3 hours, so it was smooth sailing from here.

As our plane arrived slightly late, we allowed the other passengers to depart before us so they could make their connecting flights. As we walked out of our airplane at a leisurely pace, we checked the status of our next flight from Dallas to Guatemala City. It wasn’t to leave until 5:50. Wait a minute - its already 5:40!! And we have to change terminals! We ran through the airport as fast as two people can when carrying luggage designed for 2 weeks worth of international traveling and made it to the gate just as it was about to close. The lady at the gate, once again unimpressed about our epic journey, said we should have arrived earlier and was not happy about our late appearance. I can only assume that 2007 was a fantastic year for the ticket agents and they were very unhappy to now be in 2008.