day 18 -- vegas on a tuesday morning

really vegas has no appeal to me. I know I'm supposed to marvel at the excess, the fabulous garish lights, the supposedly vivid reflection of . but reveling in the consciously artificial strikes me as more than a little forced...what's really human about vegas is not the cultural studies-ready casino fantasy landscape, aging pop stars on the marquee, even the miracle of a booming city in the desert. the real vegas is gambling addiction and unrealistic expectation. I know that sounds over-dramatic...people go to vegas to gamble and eat cheap food and go to fake paris. but head to all the casinos off the strip where the hard-core gamblers go for better luck -- texas station in far north vegas, the 'fremont experience' downtown, the slot machines in the grocery store. talk to the young woman who's stuck in vegas pushing the cocktail waitress angle after her boyfriend the 'professional poker player' has crapped out and headed home. the ironic/hipster detachment is fun, ripe for knowingly snide comments, but ignoring the rest is tough.

but I was there...the original plan was to head through death valley on a loop to the bay, I figured I should ride across hoover dam and see the strip at least once, it was a on schedule for an oil change on the bike...and, most importantly, I had an accommodation offer from a high school teammate who lives in palatial digs with a pool on the mountainous southern edge of metro LV. I knew this can-do kid first from the just-turned-15 summer of 1988 and parents driving us to hersheypark to earn $3.35/hour for running crappy carnival games on the 'midway' while wearing yellow shirts with blue collars and short blue shorts, memorizing the nametag-color administrative hierarchy (red-green-blue-brown-gold), and watching rob fogelman get unceremoniously canned for stealing the proceeds. the can-do kid comes from a can-do family (I think I flew once in a plane his dad had built from scratch -- okay, just kidding), which explains why 1) he started his own business right after college, which is impressive to me, whose most entrepreneurial moves involve opening online checking accounts that promise free $100 and cashing in my discover cash back rewards; 2) he bicycled across the country -- solo -- around the same time, therefore making this whole trip look a little less remarkable; 3) he excavated and built his own pool complex in his backyard; 4) he still has a job in the rapidly shrinking housing-construction industry; and 5) he once attempted to 'debrade' severely gravel-burned hands by himself in the shower. and so on...fitness serious and still has the junior charles atlas physique he had in high school, whitewater rafts around the world, runs up a mountain every day. you get the picture. he settled in vegas after rocketing up the company ladder on the strength of specializing in efficiency (energy and production), bought the big house at the peak of the real estate boom and is gamely hanging on through the downturn. anyway, he's not really a vegas guy in that he's way too sensible and frugal to wrap his head around the whole gamble-and-excess game...and he's seen the city chew and spit a few too many eager souls.

so he knows the strip, but he's taken advantage of the outdoor mountain west more than embraced the air conditioning and taxi culture. so the highlight of the stay (ahead of an oil change in the middle of nowhere and a bus ride downtown, lounging by the pool, and of course the random mania of catching up on 20 intervening years) was a speedy hike up black mountain behind his neighborhood. this was slightly intimidating given the can-do kid's generally aggressive approach to motion, so naturally I strapped on the no-padding vibrams for the rocky ascent and rockier descent. in the event the atmospherics were sublime...dark rain clouds threatened to the south all day without any actual rain (the virga effect, I learned from c-dk), and you can imagine the dramatic lighting when the sun neared the horizon. (better with pics, but I figured a dangling camera on a rock scramble wasn't the best idea.) the hike is a steady walk through basalt-strewn desert dotted with joshua trees and a ball-of-string-like red cactus followed by a short clamber up the top of the ridge. from that vantage: the dusty city in one direction and endless empty desert in the other, purple skies to the south, yellow setting sun west...and a sudden rattle from a pile of rocks a couple of feet from where I was balancing on rocks. we'd seen a baby rattler on the way up, and here was a not-quite-grown version helpfully announcing his presence before I stepped on him. alas, no camera. anyway, have I mentioned how sublime the light was? even better on the way down balding grass a livid yellow, deep purple backdrop, rocks glowing black. all this is federally managed land, and the can-do kid provided an interesting perspective on negotiations on expanding vegas, mediation compromises, and the like. some notes...las vegas is actually far more water-efficient than its near-neighbor in the desert (los angeles), notably because most of its residents understand they live in a desert, unlike angelenos. but native las vegans (there are a handful) are more likely to want an exotically green front yard than are immigrants. so its share in depleting the colorado is far less than its garish footprint...and on that score the electricity that lights up the strip doesn't come from the dam just down the road. hoover was built -- and its allocations contracted -- long before vegas was more than an outpost, so this desert town is powered by a coal-fired generating station of all things.

back to the land of planned exurbs in the desert. I worked at removing the layer of dead insects from the chrome and then some grill and wine and whiskey and predictable musing on 20 years past. the can-do kid's roommate and sidekick appeared...both youngsters from youngstown attracted to the bright lights and alternately philosophical and indifferent about their prospects in this harsh city. the official roommate had apparently rescued the younger one when the latter's planned stay with aunt and uncle fell through. easy to shower unsolicited concern on these bold choices, but these women at least looked to have some control over where they were headed, unlike the chain-smoking shadows I found parked in front of slots in 'the fremont experience' at 10am on a tuesday morning.