The Second Half

Public transportation in Flagstaff has become incredibly efficient, while still remaining cheap. If I could just find a job locally, it would be great to ride the bus to work for $8/month. No car/insurance costs means more $$ in my pocket, and I’m reducing my carbon footprint in spite of ‘carbon footprint’ becoming cliché at this point. Of course finding a good job in Flagstaff is like looking for buried treasure with a map you got from a friend of a friend’s Uncle Sal from Poughkipsee, NJ. Good luck.

I have a trip with my Uncle Steve coming up – 36 hours in Las Vegas in early May. Shows, heavy gaming, boozing and strip clubs you ask? Nope. Our favorite activity is riding the city bus from one end of the strip to the other. This is where you get to see the real side of Vegas. Degenerate gamblers saying “If that goddamn pitcher hadn’t thrown a soup can to Ramirez I’d be lookin’ at 3 large right now”. Working class Anglos, African-Americans, Hispanics in uniform on their way to and from service industry jobs. Badly impaired alcoholics panhandling or simply passed out in a seat. It clearly shows me the side of Vegas that everyone who lives there talks about. I haven’t met one person from that town that has said they like it there. It’s always about the cash, and “I’ll be outta here in 3 years at the most”.

Our second favorite activity is playing Air Hockey. Uncle Steve sucks, so I give him a pretty solid prison pounding game after game. Again, I don’t have to worry about him reading this since he couldn’t find a computer in a MAC store, let alone use one.

Third up is a trip to the local outdoor Go Kart track. You pay around $125 to drive a kart that will go 80mph for a half hour. I dig adrenaline rushes, and this is one that I look forward to from the minute I leave the track to the minute I step onto the track again. Thumbshifters, incredible G-forces, blistering acceleration, and you can’t get hurt unless you have no regard for safety.

Finally, we round the weekend out with $2 and $5 blackjack making an occasional stroll through the High Roller section to see what it’s like to lose the equivalent of a bike, a house payment, your wardrobe (your wardrobe, not mine), or a deposit on a 40’ boat in one hand. The most I could lose on one hand is a bus ticket.

Of course, as my buddy Marko says "You gotta bet big to win big".