Freedom! Glorious freedom!

[Giggle Goose]

Nah, I'm with my parents. I just spent about twenty minutes trying to locate some lodge in Glacier Park they "saw on TV."

Hahaha! Gotta love the 'rents!!! It was so fun when the boy and I went to the Grand Canyon in April and played geeky tourist. Just revel in it for a while...as long as you don't become an SC or EW. But somehow I HIGHLY doubt that!!

[tropicsgoddess]

Horray for vacay!!! Have fun, Irv!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Oooh, here's a special kind of tourist stoopid:

Be a couple kids, age isn't really important...
Be shuttled around Glacier National Park in your parents' pickup truck with a cap on the bed...
and be hanging halfway out the open side windows of the truck cap...
while driving along a twisty, turny, mountain road with no barrier between the road and a sheer drop-off down the mountain.

I can only assume Darwin was out taking a whiz when this was going on.

[blas]

Irv knows better than to be an idiot tourist, we get so many of them in Wisconsin that most of us go out of our way to not stick out or be stupid while vacationing.

That reminds me....if I see one more hybrid vehicle stopped in the middle of the road to pick berries, I think I just might have to stop by the nearest farm and let some bulls out of their cage.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Stoopid! Glorious stoopid!

They all come out on Sundays I guess. Today I saw:

• People getting up close and personal with a grunting, snorting, probably vaguely pissed-off buffalo. As in close enough to reach out and pet the damn thing and ought to go buy a lottery ticket if all that happens is they get tossed into the nearest tree.
• A nearly mile-long traffic jam due to people stopping to gawk at a nearly-invisible elk because it was behind a bunch of trees.
• Some kid wandering off the trail onto the ground in a geyser basin and commenting that they could feel the underground heat through their shoes.
• People honking their horns at a couple bison (with calves) slowly making their way up the road with a ranger escort.
• Somebody standing in a vehicle moving about 40 mph, shooting video through the sunroof.

And a couple other things that'll get their own threads.

[blas]

I'm going to add that to my list, too. If I see one more tourist astounded by the sight of a fucking buffalo....why yes, they are big. Yes, they DO smell awful. No, you cannot pet them.....oh, you want to try? Be my guest.....just let me get my camera real quick....no I won't call 911 when that angry beast sends you airborn and he and his buddies use your lifeless body to play buffalo lacrosse.....

Oh, and just a tip....that grunt is not a happy noise.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Tonight I'm at the Montego Bay hotel and casino in West Wendover, Nevada. Or maybe Utah. There's a line on the street dividing Utah and Nevada and I'm not quite sure which side our room sits on...

We got a sweet room. Down comforter on the bed and you just sink right into the mattress. The decor is wood and a lot of purple. I'm not real crazy about the casino though. It seems to be a bunch of mirrors, dark marble and neon lights in all colors imaginable, thrown together in such a way as to create a vaguely-tropical ambiance. And the average age of the people gambling seems to be deceased. You could play "Connect The Liver Spots" on some of these people and wind up with some highly-detailed, intricate works of art. There's also a smattering of locals, many of whom look rather skeezy.

I already threw away my 20 bucks in a penny slot machine and don't intend to gamble any more. I just had a buffet dinner and I'm content just to stay in the hotel room and watch the big flat-screen TV within.

About the only suck I saw today was somebody in a car with California plates bobbing and weaving through traffic on a two-lane highway, passing other vehicles two or three at a time, sometimes in rather blind areas. I've seen a couple dandy accidents on this trip. One day I saw a vehicle on the interstate that must've rolled several times, and this morning I saw a motorcycle lying in pieces along the side of the interstate, and I assume the rider was in pieces as well.

This is my last night on the road. Tomorrow the big airplane takes me back home and back to work. Mehh, not really. I'm tiring of living out of a suitcase, the money is beginning to run out (although I've saved a chunk for the Fossil store in the Salt Lake City airport), and I'm looking forward to sleeping well again. I haven't been sleeping the greatest while on vacation.

And the failboat known as the Milwaukee Brewers have my curiosity up, to see just how bad their pitching can get.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

well this kinda sucks...

I should be in the air by now. This post should seem to indicate I'm not.

There was a problem with the flaps (I'm thinking on the wings) that will take longer to fix than it will to find a new plane for everybody to fly on. Nobody knows how long this will take.

Tomorrow is going to suck donkey balls. Very hard. I better not be working early Friday (or even tomorrow, which could happen if management or myself made a screw-up on my vacation dates), but with my luck I bet I will be.

Still, it beats being slam-dunked to a fiery death in some field in Nebraska or something.

I've been on 4 or 5 flying vacations and wound up in a lengthy delay on two of them now. Next time maybe I should take Amtrak.

EDIT: the plane is coming in from St. Louis and hasn't left the ground yet. Have to change gates.

[McGoddess09]

Welcome back to the Midwest, darling!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yeah, back in the Midwest. Yay?

I should correct, or at least clarify part of my last post which was hurriedly made: The plane from St. Louis was not far from Salt Lake when we were called to change gates. I thought the announcement they made meant it hadn't left St. Louis yet.

In the end we were only put off our schedule by about 20 minutes even though the delay was about an hour. They got the luggage transferred to the other plane and got the plane cleaned up really fast. Plus flying back east the pilot went a little faster then he ordinarily would and we had the jet stream pushing us along. My hat's off to Delta.

Trudged in to the swamp to check my schedule and found I'm not back to work until Saturday and it's a short shift. So I get to relax a bit more.

Also it looks like I picked a hell of a great time to go on vacation. Sales this week have been off the charts. Sunday's sales were $15,000 above what we were forecast and we've been up $5-10K every other day in the week. I can only imagine how the trucks have been the past two weeks wince the stock crew's been shorthanded. I'm sure I will hear all about it in the next few days.

I just finished transferring all my vacation photos to my computer and used one of a waterfall framed by trees as my desktop background. It looks amazing.

[blas]

I'm sure when you get back you'll walk into an epic mess like Ree did when she got back, and it will be considered all your fault

[NightWatch]

Glad you had a good time. Wendover is about 90 minutes from where I live, and I must say, ALLLL of the casinos look the same inside and are very difficult to navigate. I imagine the intent being to confuse and distract the drunks into spending more money. I have to been to Vegas too, I much prefer the casinos there. They aren't a complete sensory overload.... and there's more alcohol to be had.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Well, not all the casinos look the same. The Rainbow, the Peppermill and the Montego Bay do. About the only differences between them might be one puts the blue neon light on the right side of the red one, while at another place the blue neon goes to the left of the red one.

The Nugget is far more understated in its decor.

None of them are anything to right home about. We just stopped by so dad could relax and do a little gambling after chauffeuring us about the national parks.

Another great thing about Vegas is there are things to do besides gamble. There's all the great shops and the shows. Although I did notice some good names at their theater--Ron White, Lewis Black, Rick Springfield, Blondie.