16/03/04:
I’m awake early and decide to use the time constructively – write postcards,
post them, and see if I can find a travel agent. N and I have decided we should
fly back from Las Vegas to San Francisco, as opposed to travelling by bus. It
is for the same reason that we deigned not to drive straight from Yosemite to
Las Vegas: Death Valley stands in our way. There may be a way around it but it
would be a long an arduous passage and we don’t have the time. I find a travel
agent, make enquiries and return to our motel to talk it over with N. Flights
will cost us a little over $90 each, to be paid for on my credit card.
It
is about now that my hangover begins to kick in, and it’s a nasty one. The
others are in a similar state of befuddlement. To exacerbate matters, it’s
shaping up to be another very hot day. We return our room keys and climb aboard The
Beast, which is almost on fire, but then realise we’re missing something.
Where’s our liquor? What did we do with our stash? Flashbacks to the night
before, in our room where we carried on drinking until the early hours. A
picture forms in my mind, a revelation that we placed our cache in one of the
drawers for safekeeping. The owner of the motel has since gone to lunch so we
plead with one of the cleaners to let us back into our room so we can search
for what it is we’ve left behind. She acquiesces and after much frantic
searching we find what we’re looking for.
By
the time we reach the travel agent I’m feeling a bit sick. The lady who takes my
booking is very helpful, which makes me all the more aware of how awful I must
appear. If she can smell last night’s booze on me she does a good job of not
letting on. I clock the waste paper bin to my right, her left, and recoil at the thought of throwing up into it, which is a possibility. The whole procedure takes far too long and makes me dizzy, but
it’s a relief to know that our passage back to San Francisco has been
arranged. On the other hand, we’re now running late. There's no time for breakfast, even we could stomach it, so we decide to find a supermarket instead. The supermarket, once found, is a
wonderful place to be: spacious, calm and air-conditioned with a comprehensive
selection of potato chips, fruits and soft drinks to aid us on our road to
recovery.
Roof
down on The Beast, somebody puts on Harvest by Neil Young. We aren't sure yet where it is we are driving to, but N has warned us that he won't be able to manage more than 250 miles (San Francisco to Yosemite National Park was about 200 miles.) At the very least we would like to make it as far as Bakersfield,
although Santa Barbara would be preferable. If we’re really pushed for time then
there’s always Santa Maria, although that would leave us with a very long haul
to Vegas.
Refractions
of light flicker off the Pacific Ocean blue. After Neil Young, The Beatles and
The Beach Boys. The Cabrillo Highway winds its way along Big Sur’s coast,
keeping N focussed on his driving. After a few hours we stop somewhere for
lunch overlooking the sea and could happily spend the rest of the day there.
We
are making good time so we decide to press on as far as Santa Barbara. The last
50 or so miles, after Highway 1/the Cabrillo Highway peels off from its
coast-hugging tract, aren't much fun. At one point the road takes us
into a depression and a horrible mist descends upon us, freezing us to our
bones. We’ve had no reason to put the roof up and it’s too late to do anything
about it now. We reach our destination before it is dark, find a motel opposite
Pershing Park, and walk down to the waterfront in
time to watch the sun set.
Big Sur
Tomorrow
is going to be the hardest day’s driving yet – something like 350 miles, bypassing
Los Angeles and then on through the Mojave Desert towards Las Vegas – and we’ll
need an early start. We find an Irish bar somewhere around State Street, order some french-fries
and force down a beer. The place is dead so we try somewhere else (possibly the Wildcat on Ortega?) but it's not much better. A couple more beers later and the consensus is
that we’ll call it a day.
C
and I are talking our way down State Street and M and N are following behind
doing the same when suddenly we’re told to stop. N has noticed a lively bar
with potential. I am wary, as is C, but we defer to the wishes of our driver,
who’s in a gregarious mood. The place is heaving. It’s a ‘student night’, and
students in America – and especially Santa Barbara, it appears – can afford to
drink whenever they want. There is a yard out the back which is even busier. We
engage with the locals and people keep going to the bar and it gets quite messy
and we don’t leave until late. When we finally do, C suddenly recedes
into the night, M is seen chasing after two girls, N is stuffing his face with food he’s found from somewhere, and I’m doing
press-ups on the sidewalk. We agreed that we need to be up no later than eight in the
morning.
17/03/04:
My limited experience of American motels has led me to deduce that their
exterior mostly betrays the interior. From the outside they look how you might
expect, stuck in a pleasing 1970s time warp which fits in with the whole road
trip experience very nicely. But when you actually step inside these rooms the
décor can be surprisingly quaint. Everything is very tidy, floral patterns are ubiquitous and
there are plenty of little things, like doilies and brass door knobs, that give
it an oddly European feel.
Our
motel in Santa Barbara is no exception, and the breakfast area wouldn’t look out of
place in an English bed & breakfast. We know this because despite sleeping
until gone 09:00 in the morning, none of us are in any shape to do anything
until we’ve had something to eat, even if that’s only an apple. M is
particularly damaged. I knock on his and C’s door. No answer. I shout that they
need to wake up, that we have to get to Vegas and we’re already running late. M
comes to the door, opens it and then quickly closes it again. It is to be
expected. We didn’t even go straight to bed when we finally regrouped back at
the motel. Those of us who aren’t feeling so bad are probably still drunk, and N,
our driver, fits too easily into this category.
It’s a real effort to eat anything at breakfast, although they’ve not laid on a
very inspiring spread. So we will stop at the garage to stock up on water and
potato chips. We shall also keep the roof up for a while because we need to be able to control the temperature and stave off loud
noise. It is 10:30 by the time we’re ready to go – more than two hours later
than scheduled – although that’s quite a good recovery considering our
condition.
Leaving Santa Barbara
We pass
through LA to the sounds of The Byrds (Younger
than Yesterday), HOLLYWOOD visible on the hillside. The thermometer is
showing 30°C and it's not even noon. Fortunately The Beast's air conditioning
takes it in its stride. The traffic is heavy but flows steadily, and we make
our way through the milieu of Los Angeles in reasonable time. After that the
road adopts a long but shallow rake all the way to the edge of the desert. The
soil glares a bright white but visually softens once we’ve reached the summit
of Glen Helen Regional Park.
The
Mojave Desert doesn't seem as quintessentially desert-like when you drive
through it, but my photographs show otherwise – perhaps the traffic detracts
from the sense of wilderness. Just over halfway and there’s about 150 miles of
driving still to do. We stop at Lenwood on the fringes of Barstow and to Denny’s
for lunch. These irregular eating habits are playing havoc with my
digestive system, but I feel a whole lot better after my ample portions.
The
Tony Blair-appreciating Marine in Monterrey had warned us that we should book accommodation for Las Vegas in advance, but we’re only just getting around to it. C’s phoning
numbers from a local newspaper, without much success. He makes nearly ten calls
before he finally find a downtown motel – the Bridger Inn – with room for all of us, corroborating the ineluctable
appeal the Marine assured Vegas has for the American looking to cut loose for
a few days, regardless of the time of year or day of the week.
Taking
into account the hour we took for lunch, the journey to Las Vegas’s periphery takes
us a full seven hours. Downtown Las Vegas is located north of The Strip, so
it’s almost 19:00 by the time we’ve found our motel. The process of booking-in
seems to take forever. The woman who works reception is in no great hurry –
you’d think she was stoned or something – and there’s a large party to check in
ahead of us. She studiously pores over everybody’s passport, cracking jokes if
she spots an opportunity. The atrium’s piled high with luggage and there’s
nowhere to sit. M is seething. N has almost lost his mind; he’s standing out on
the pavement in a driving-induced stupor, bashing an empty plastic bottle
against the side of his head.
Meanwhile,
the return of our vehicle is now overdue and I’m given the unenviable task of
phoning ahead to tell them that we will be there as soon as our receptionist
decides she’s done with her comedy routine. The woman at the car-hire place is
laying it on thick, explaining that she’ll need to charge an extra day’s rental
if we’re late, which we almost certainly will be. I’m not so worried about that,
but I am concerned that in establishing how much that extra cost should be our
rental scam will be blown apart. I fancy, though, that she’s not quite grasping
the nature of our predicament: 'No, we’re already in Vegas – we’re just tied
up at the motel. We shouldn’t be more than about half an hour.' She finally
understands me: 'Oh, you’re here in Vegas NOW? Why didn’t you say, honey?'
An
hour passes and we almost have to manhandle N back into the car. He tells us his
concentration is shot to pieces and the only way he can make it to the airport,
where the car needs to be deposited, is by relying on us completely for
directions. This seems fair, and to start with it goes very well. However, at the
first major intersection this system shows signs of breaking down. It takes
ages for him to commit to making a right turn, hounded from every angle by
aggressive drivers sounding a concerto of horns. On the approach to Highway 15,
the passengers collectively indicate to its driver the need to turn left. N
immediately turns the car left. An explosion of panic reels him back in before
the possibility of meeting another vehicle head-on becomes a reality.
We continue to provide instructions for the rest of the journey, making sure
not to give him too much forward notice in case he ends up driving over the
edge of a fly-over or into a brick wall.
We
reach the airport without further incident – now about an hour and a half later
than agreed – only to find that the aviation authorities have devised some sort
of navigational test. Signs directing us to our terminus, when slavishly
adhered to, lead us out of the airport and back toward the freeway. We turn
around and try again. The same thing happens, only this time C succeeds in
identifying where we’re going wrong. On our third pass we find the correct
turning and thus the point of depository. Then finally some luck: the keys are
returned without further ado, and no money is asked for. The severely depleted
fuel tank isn’t even checked. Except now we’ve got to wait half an hour for a
bus to get us back to the motel. We'll grab a cab.
We enter
the MGM Grand looking for food and drink, find a bar and order a round of
beers. No sooner have we sat down and the stage above the bar
erupts into a vulgar explosion of music and dance. The lead singer starts warbling
and prancing all around us, and if you're quick you can catch our dumbfounded
faces, relayed as they are onto the big screen above the stage, as the
cameraman follows this jester’s every move. Actual lions are trussed up in a
faux-jungle landscape just across the concourse. We drink our beers quickly,
find a food hall of sorts, eat pizza, and then get the hell out of there.
The
more time you spend wandering around Las Vegas the more apparent its seediness
becomes. It’s not the kitsch aspects that strike you – they’re blatantly
apparent from the moment you arrive – but its grimy underbelly. Flyers for
strip joints lay scattered all about you. Groups of drunken kids make a racket. Many of the smaller
casinos that open up onto the street offer bottled beer for a dollar, or free
vodka slush puppies – anything to get you through the door.
We
each buy a large can of beer from a supermarket and wander down the main drag,
drinking them openly. You couldn’t get away with that in San Francisco. We pass the most
audacious fountain display you will ever see (Lake Bellagio). We stand
there and watch this aquatic revue go through its routine at least three times.
This is Vegas all over. There is nothing inherently impressive about what you
are seeing aside from its scale, but it is enough, and we stand there transfixed. After walking for another mile or so, we give in and dive into a
random casino. M gets stuck into a game of roulette while I pick up the free
drinks. When M decides to attend to the calling of nature I deputise for him
and, without knowing what I’m doing, win him 20 dollars.
Next
up is Gilley’s, which promises naked mud wrestling. By the time we’ve entered, this dubious spectacle is over, but we stay anyway because the beer is cheap. We’re
exhausted so don’t take full advantage of this, but as with the night before we
make some effort to keep things going back at our motel.
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