"Blogs in Vegas"

I've just been rifling through my drawers in Hamilton, looking for green paint when I found a piece of paper that's been remarkably well-preserved since I scrawled on it in June 2007.

Can you believe it's been two years since Hoffman? I can't... but here's a little something I wrote while holed up in the Lucky City.

"Blogs in Vegas - June 7/8, 2007

With ease the most ridiculous place I've been to in my life, I arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada at around 10:40pm on Thursday June 7, twelve hours after touching down in Los Angeles. With a connecting flight to Baltimore due to leave at 10:45pm, I ran - barefoot and in a skirt - from one terminal to Gate B12, where I was told to reticket.
This of course was after I noticed the slot machines in the departure lounge - yep, only in Vegas.
I was placed on "HKN" on an overbooked flight to DC instead. I'm unsure why. Anyway, I sit for an hour in the departure lounge fairly gaping at the travelers gambling right there before their flights, presumably - that and listening to a Wisconsin college student on his cellphone talking about how much money he lost in his two nights in the city.
As luck would have it, there are no spare seats on the DC flight, so US Airways employees Laura, Simin and Daniel take around forty minutes to reticket me onto a Continental flight direct to Newark early the following morning. Mind you, they throw in a complimentary roundtrip anywhere in the Lower 48 - Nashville, here I come - and some meal vouchers, so in my best phoney but somehow convincing Californian accent, I tell them that it's been no trouble.
I don't mention that it's been a two-hour drive, twelve-hour flight, nine-hour layover, and now another six-hour layover... all without a shower. Mmm.
I set up camp at 2am next to a 1956 Thunderbird on display in the terminal and lay around waiting for my ankle swelling to go down.
Lonely in the Lucky City..."

This was written neatly and in the tiniest script possible on the back of a piece of paper I'd printed out before leaving New Zealand, with the addresses of all the stores I wanted to visit in Santa Monica and Austin, Texas.

Those were the days...