Days Eighty Nine thru Ninety Five....


Where was me, then......??


Right.


Reno.


Nice, spacious, mellow Amtrak ride into Reno. Train pulled up into the newly undergrounded station around 1:30pm Sunday afternoon. (The train tracks actually now run underneath the city. In the past [up until 2006], they were at street grade level and they actually ran dead through the heart of the Virginia Street tourist area. There was nothing more fun than hearing a freight train blare its whistle at 3AM directly underneath your hotel room).


Weird....this is thee closest I've been to Oregon in months.....yet, my skooter remains in hospital 1000 miles to the East.


Walk the two blocks from Amtrak to Fitzie's (Fitzgerald's......I'll almost always stay at Fitzie's or The Sands Regency when in Reno), grabbed my room and took a nap. My mum wasn't slated to swing into town until 11:00pm Monday....soooo.....


Woke up, went to the casino downstairs, played slots, drank pints and crawled into bed at 3AM. Thass one thing I really enjoy about Nevada as opposed to, say, Colorado, Niagara Falls Ontario, Washington State, or several other places – They DO NOT cut off the pints at 2AM (or sooner, in a lot of places....AND, in some of the places mentioned above, they close the whole fucking casino at 2:00AM!!!!!)....thus, you DO NOT feel rushed when playing......makes for a significantly more relaxed gambling and drink experience.....


Monday, woke up, found that I had zero ca$h and only a bunch of credit and debit cards.....so no brekker at The Nugget casino and diner (GREAT food....it IS where I eat when in Reno) 'cause they do ca$h only. Went to a Credit Union, deposited some cheques, fetched my rental car at Reno-Tahoe International, and went and had lunch instead at a Thai restaurant. Pad Thai.....good stuff....


Mum flew in at 11PM, was ecstatic to be back in Reno, and we went back to Fitzie's.


Hung in Reno for two days where I never once had seen a clock.......serious time warp. A city consisting basically of gambling and alcohol......a perfect marriage in the divorce centre of America. All track of time and space is lost here.....


Broke out of that on Wednesday, when we went up to Lake Tahoe. I really was captivated by the Geographic beauty of the area and thought about returning sometime shortly to go camping there. Couldn't stand the weird, shi-shi, pretentious attitude of the casinos in Stateline, Nevada, on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe. Shit, one casino, Harvey's, had a Goddamm jewelry store inside it. Montbleu Casino was obnoxious in the way that it's thee place to go and to be seen. Trendy dance music blaring throughout the entire casino.....it's the place I woulda really gotten into about 15 years ago somewhere on The Bowery or in Toronto or in Los Angeles or on Rue Sainte-Catherine in Montreal.......but now, that entire type of atmosphere just bugs the living shite outta me....


My mum, however, was enchanted by both, the Geographic beauty as well as the casino scene in Lake Tahoe. Thus, she made the determination to extend both of our flights and stay in Tahoe and Reno an extra few days until Saturday.

I was not terribly into this idea, as I had very little spare time left to act as a cushion should anything happen dring the Denver - Rockaway Beach final leg of this adventure......plus, I was getting to the point where if I had seen one more dice table or slot machine, I was gonna throw up.....but I wasn't totally averse to the idea either, as I had bought this flight as my mum's birthday gift....and she was having an amazing time, soooo........



Whilst in Tahoe, I saw The Dark Knight. Now, generally, I do not run out and go see hyper-hyped-up films that are awarded sainthood by the major media outlets. However, there IS only so much drinking and gambling that one can do before it begins to seem like work, soooo......

.....it was worth it.

Normally, I am very skeptical about overblown movies and their glorious reviews an' shit.....but man, does Heath Ledger give the acting performance of a lifetime! Christ......watching his character was just chilling.

The screenplay wasn't very well written, and it tried too hard to press upon the audience the shades of gray in morality and right. But shit, if I really wanted to see that, I coulda rented Blade Runner and bought a six pack and stayed at home (and seen a film with a lot better screenplay). I also felt that Christian Bale really should do something about that bad over-acting problem of his and his attempt to put on a fake voice that sounds like he'd just got done smoking 25 packs of unfiltered Camels in the last two hours......but overall.....yeah.....it's easily worth the dropping of nine buxx on Heath Ledger's performance alone. It almost makes me want to go out and rent Brokeback Mountain, since I've never seen it before....




Also did a job interview in bed via telephone Friday Morning around 9AM. These folks apparently were in a severe rush to interview, and, when I had explained to them that there was dead zero chance that I could physically be present for said interview, they were very kind to interview me by phone, sooo........

.....all job interviews should be done in bed by telephone. It removes the nervous tension associated with job interviews!!




Flew outta Reno-Tahoe International Saturday afternoon, got into Denver Sunday Night, and stayed at a hotel in Cherry Creek for two nights that I got on Priceline for, like, thirty-five buxx a night plus taxes. Had a LOT of friends in and around Denver offering to put me up, but the Geographic location of this place only made sense since I had no wheels, neither two nor four of them, and this place wasn't really far from DIA (Denver International Airport), was close to the skooter hospital (giving me an EARLY START OUT Monday Morning), and it was a place where I could be alone, drink vino, and smoke Export A greens, and write.....

Reno – Tahoe was neat all in all. The only three casualties were my mum losing her wallet (NO ca$h lost....just a coupla credit cards and her ID......a LOT of fun watching her get interrogated for half-an-hour at the airport by the TSA before they'd let her git on the flight home to Buffalo), spilling coke on her cell fone (which is fatal, as, had it been tap water, it'd be just fine when it dried out, but Coke, as we all know, is a corrosive agent, so that was fatal.....fortunately, it was a very base, easy-to-use Samsung t219....not like a Blackberry or some shit like that), and the final casualty was the time factor for me.....which now dictates that I gotta gun 300-plus miles a day to make the end-of-tour party on Friday the 8th at Rockaway Beach.

No more easy rides from this point......

Home in Oregon on 8-8-08....

.....lucky day, say the Chinese....

.....guess it's only fitting......

-E-