We are on the road ……………………………….
Day 1
Today I head to Reno! I am helping Chris move the motorhome from Reno to their new house in Texas. This should be a really fun journey! I have to admit however, I feel a little off today. I have spent the last week at home by myself. My wife is already off in Texas with Rachel and the girls. The moving truck has not arrived so they are out shopping for new items they will need and enjoying finding their way around the local area in New Braunfels. I bet they are having a blast! I won’t get to see Donna for another week as she will be flying back on Sunday and Chris and I will be long past Chandler by then. Bummer. And then it hits me…I’m going to have to do my own laundry…UGH!! In the end, I have to actually call my wife for assistance as we have lived in this house forever now and I have not even once used this machine. Man I miss my wife!!
Chris and I text back and forth throughout the day and get our final plans all set. I chat with my brother early in the day to make sure we are still on for pickup at the house around 6pm to head to the airport. Once again, I realize how much my wife does for me. I start searching emails for my boarding pass and can’t find it anywhere. I search and search, send her a text asking where mine is and then suddenly realize that, oh yeah dummy, you have to actually check-in to get one of those. Man, was I this useless before I got married?!
I spent the last hour relaxing on the couch with the dogs watching tv. My brother called and said he was out front. I loaded up, and off we went. I arrived at the airport at 6:20 for my 8:11pm departure. I make my way toward security and find that the lines at Sky Harbor are next to nothing today. I am flying first class so I get to head straight to the front of the line. It takes me less than 10 minutes from start to finish to be clear of security. I make my way to the gate and grab a seat. I check the board and it says, ‘Now departing at 8:50’. UGH…I am more than two hours early for my flight. Should I grab some dinner, a drink? Nah, I think I will set and just watch people until we board. I love people watching and the airport is an amazing place to do that. As I’m in the middle of my people watching session I get a text from Christopher…enjoy the hotel, I missed my connecting flight in Dallas. UGH!! Looks like our plans are going to change a little. He will be on the first flight out and be in Reno about 10:30am.
We eventually get called to board our plane. I get settled in my seat and am offered a drink. I decide on a soda as I don’t really know what I’m in the mood for. Again, this is where my wife and I normally chat about what we are going to have and I don’t have her here to bounce my thoughts off. Once we get going and up in the air I decide I will have a Chardonnay. The lady next to me starts to chat, and you all know me, I chat back! We chat the entire flight and I enjoy a couple of glasses of wine during our hour and a halfish flight. She tells me of her kids, her past career, where she was raised and where they live now. She also tells me about her husband Ron and his job in Alaska. How he fishes, hunts and does all sorts of other manly stuff. I find out he is former military and, based on information she is giving me, assume he and I were in about the same time frame. I’m pretty sure this guy and I are long lost buddy’s. Cheers to you Ron! Thanks for your service brother and maybe someday our paths will cross. As the plane lands and we roll to the gate I actually find myself telling the nice chatty lady that ‘nothing personal, but I sure wish my wife was sitting here’. #truth As I leave the plane I thank the pilots and head for the exit.
Chris has booked us, well me now I guess, a room at the Nugget. Even at 11pm the check-in line is fairly long. I get checked in and head to the room. I check out the in room dining menu as I didn’t have any dinner. I guess people watching seemed much more important at the time. I look at the menu and turn on the tv. Friends is on and I’m pretty sure I have never seen this episode. It’s hilarious! Apparently I decide not to eat about three episodes later. I’m tired so off goes the tv. One last text to the wife to tell her I miss her and love her and off to sleep I go.
Day 2
I wake up early in Reno on morning two. Chris won’t be arriving for a few hours. I get ready for the day, grab my luggage and head downstairs. I take a tour of the casino floor to see if I can find any of my favorite slot machines. After a very uneventful walk around the entire casino floor, I come up empty handed. Not much going on at 8am in Reno. Even the table games seemed very lackluster at that time of day. I decide to sit and wait and do a little more people watching before I head to Great Basin brewing where I will be meeting Chris. I eventually hear from him and he is just waiting on his luggage. I know the brewery is close, but I grabbed a cab. Come to find out, I didn’t need said cab as the restaurant was about 100 yards away. OOPS!! Cheapest cab ever!!
Chris arrives and we sit to have lunch and enjoy one of our favorite local beers. He picks the Philly special and I went with the cheddar stuffed sausage with kraut…DELICIOUS!! As always, the Icky didn’t disappoint. We finished up, grabbed a couple of growlers of Icky to go, a few other souvenirs and we were off to see the wizard!
We get all loaded up in the motorhome and on our way. We are full on fuel and just need to swing by their old house just to check on things and grab an item that got left behind. The house is fine and we grab the router and go. As we load back up and head to the freeway I decide I want the windows up and the a/c on. That is when I realize that the a/c is already on and only blowing out of the defrost vents. UGH!! We have to drive through four states that all have desert climate with basically no a/c. UGH!! It’s going to get hot real quick! Let’s get this bus to Vegas for the night!
We get to the Palms around 8pm. We get all checked in and drop our luggage in the room and decide to find some dinner and drinks and maybe spend an hour or two gaming. We can have food court food, super expensive steaks, or wings from Hooters. Hooters wins as we discover they have a tv that must be 150”. No, not a projector, an actual tv!! We will later catch hell from our wives for picking Hooters for dinner. LOL We ask our first server how big the tv is and she just said really big. A different girl brings us our water and silverware and Chris asks her if she has any idea how big the screen is. She responds with this long answer about people asking all the time so she is always asking her managers and they always tell her in feet and how is anybody supposed to know how many inches that is….I’m just gonna leave that right there…
We find ourselves at a blackjack table and have a pretty fun couple of hours. I go from a large stack to a small stack, back to a large stack and continue this for a couple hours. I am tipping on each hand and the dealers are loving us. A pit boss comes over, grabs our deck of cards and puts it in a box and marks it with and X with his Sharpie. Chris asks and the guy explains that the cards are sent out and repackaged and then sent back so you can buy them in the gift shop. I ask the dealer if they ever give cards out to great tippers and he laughs and says, ‘Oh yea, he will give a deck for sure’. We play a little longer and decide it is time for bed as we have a super hot, no a/c drive ahead of us in the morning. We color up and I ask the dealer if he can get me a deck of cards. New pit boss comes over and says, ‘Sure, you can get those in the gift shop’. Uhmmm……
We have breakfast plans with Jake in the morning before we leave. Jake is a bigwig at the Palms and Chris’ friend from college. We meet him around 9 at the café in the Palms and have a great breakfast
and some good catch-up conversation. Chris tells Jake about the cards and Jake says he will get me a deck LMAO!!! Not really necessary but I will laugh if he does!! We eventually hit the road around noon.
As we approach the valley of the sun, the heat index rises and rises.