must. get. sleep. just not quite yet

I'm back from Vegas. It was a great, relaxing trip. Unfortunately we didn't see topless steer riding, although I heard it wasn't painful from someone who participated.

There was walking, lots of it. Lots of cabs too. Before I nod off (12 hours of sleep in 91 hours make me a tad sleepy), one quick story. I get a kick out of hearing cabbies' stories. Why are they there? One of them was making a documentary in Syria, but needed to graduate UNLV film school. A couple lifers....then there was Troy. Troy picked us up on our first night there. He is 74 years old. On the way to our destination (the Sahara Casino if you must know), I chatted him up. "What do you do for fun around here?" I asked, rather innocently.

This grandfatherly gentleman responded "I like to fuck me some women. I got this Vietnamese woman now I been dating for 6 months. Not once in the time we been dating have I put toothpaste on my toothbrush. She always does it for me. I go to put on my seatbelt, and she buckles it for me. And she cooks too. You can't tell these Vietnamese women thank you. They say it's just their job. And I can get sex whenever I want. She'll be cooking dinner, I'll slap her on the ass, and she'll come back and we'll fuck."

Later he told us about his previous girlfriend, a Chinese girl with a bad gambling habit. He went through other asian women before these two as well, and from his energy, he wasn't slowing down.

On the way to Sahara, he got pissed about the traffic. "You could have a birthday waiting for these fucking traffic lights." He took us down the backroads. We went in and out of mazes behind the casinos by the trash bins. There was a moment when I wondered if we were going to dead end somewhere seedy and there would be someone waiting for us. Every once in a while he'd say "oh, yeah, you're gonna feel these speed bumps. WATCHOUT."

He almost missed the turn into Sahara. He made a sharp turn going 30 mph into the driveway, and barely missed the curb. I got out knowing that that this was going to be the start of a great trip.