Las Vegas is a pretty fascinating town. It’s stuck in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from anything bigger than a blink, for the sole purpose of legal gambling and getting focccked up, an entire industry based around debauchery. It oozes about as much class and good taste as pus from a festering wound. But goddamn, it’s a fun weekend!

At least I think it was from the various flashes I can remember from the night. Luckily for me however, we had our tee-totalling chaperone Dave Gilmour on hand to remember for us, and load the entire nights pictures and videos onto his computer before I had even contemplated waking up the next morning. Fortunately there is not a great deal of incriminating evidence that I saw anyhow.

Getting there was a mission however. Our boss had fun torturing us with thumbscrews until about 3 pm when we finally got to leave the bright lights of Bakersfield behind us. About half way on the trip though, we had to deal with a pretty horrific accident. An SUV about 2 cars ahead of us blew a tyre and rolled about 15 times before finally stopping in a crushed up heap on the other side of the freeway. Fortunately both the people in the car were still alive, although seriously messed up. There were a few other people who pulled over to help, but generally Americans lived up to their reputation as a nation of retarded fatties by grinding traffic to a halt just to have a look out the window. Some people even hopped out to take snapshots of it to add to the family photo album.

So after finding our apartment in the middle of Las Vegas, we had a few strong drinks and then hit the town. I was a leeetle bit drunk by that stage.

I can’t remember much about what this guy was about, but he tried telling us he was playing ‘Rock ‘n’ roll ain’t noise pollution’ on the harmonica. Apparently it was noise pollution, so Alejo did not give him a giant 100 dollar bill.

Alejo is a very amusing character. He’s an argentinian dude who I have to spend 2 months with in New Jersey. He’s pretty much a ladies man after about half a beer. He darts around like a little fox terrier, humping the legs of giant Amazon women, but I think his Latino charm must need some fine tuning. He would have hit on about 200 woman that night, one a guy a with long hair he ‘mistook’ for a lady, and ended up coming home with zero.

I think I was just content to prod this fat guy in the back though. I don’t remember too much of the night really, I spent all my money on drinks, threw my last 20 on a roulette table, won a bunch of money (I don’t really know how much) then lost my wallet about 10 minutes later. Fortunately in a more sober state, I had made a tactical decision to leave all but the cash I was going to blow and my ID in my room.

The next morning we kind of bumbled around the city looking for stuff to do that wasn’t really gambling or drinking, but such a thing simply doesn’t exist in Las Vegas – even petrol stations have mini-casinos for those who can’t wait the 10 minute trip into town. I also thought five bucks was pretty expensive to take a dump as well, especially if it comes out as fireballs like picture suggests.

I found a pretty awesome guitar shop, I almost came out with a 1920 gibson worth 1100 bucks, but my hungover brain was working overtime to tell me that was probably not a wise move. Just as well it did though, as I don’t think I’d want to be caught buying anything in the same store as this monstrosity (I imagine Chuganaut already has it on layby).

Then we drove home, more of the same really.

Anyway that was Las Vegas. Next week, Oregon!