Early Flight

Today was my travel day back to Milwaukee. The bad thing is that in order to get a good fare and get back to Milwaukee in the afternoon, I had to go to Las Vegas first with a two hour layover. My flight left at 5:10 AM, which meant getting to the airport by 4:10, and which also meant that I had to get my rental car back and then wait for the shuttle to take me to the airport, so in order to make sure I got there, I wanted to be to the rental care drop off by 3:45, which meant getting up by 2:45 so I could be checked out and on the road by 3:30. And since I didn’t get settled into the hotel until 9:00 because of the traffic and getting something to eat, I ended up with about 4 hours of sleep. So it was definitely a long day.

I was lucky that the airport wasn’t too busy at that time of the morning so getting thru TSA was a breeze. I did however get hassled for some food that I had stashed in one of my carry-ons. There were also LOTS of people sleeping at the gates. It didn’t dawn on me but with the huge dust storm, the airport was closed and thousands of passengers had to make alternate arrangements due to flights being cancelled.

Once we boarded though, things were very smooth and I got to watch the sun come up over Las Vegas, or rather the mountains around Las Vegas. I am not sure I want to do that (take a flight where I don’t get to sleep the night before) ever again.

Vegas was quite a spectacle. I remember a skit on an old SNL with Charlton Heston where he was playing the president of UNLV, and he said, “if you have time to study, you have time to gamble”. The airport obviously takes that expression to heart. If you have time to wait, you have time to gamble. It was like being in a casino with all the slot machines and video poker machines. Gambling isn’t really my thing, so I didn’t do any, but there were plenty of people sitting at the machines at 7:00 in the morning. And they had 24 hour buffets going as well. I walked past one place that had barbecue going. It smelled good, but I just couldn’t see eating it for breakfast.