At Least It Is In The Middle of The Desert

I didn’t know what time it was and it didn’t matter. I’d lost most of my reasoning to keep track. I’m sitting at a bar in the Las Vegas airport. I’ve been here before and I can hear her blithely striding upon me, trying to seduce my soul. This time I will win. Sorry darling, but you are no longer a mystery.

Las Vegas is a town of rapid expansion. It is profitable, growing, and largely dependant on a coal fire plant in South East Nevada. Once I took a tour of the Hoover Dam. On said tour the guide told us that “Las Vegas actually gets only about 1% of the power generated by the dam. Most of Las Vegas’s power is generated by coal, but don’t worry folks, its out in the desert and can’t hurt anyone.” Obviously this guy was not a man of science. This desert flower is more like blight. Yet the city grows by attracting residents and tourists alike.

Hypocrite? Yes, I am. I am here, for the second time. Last time was curiosity, this time is economics. I took the cheapest flight that would get me to California. The voice said, “Go West”. I wanted to ask why, but all that came out was, “yes, yes, ok”

My flight here was o.k. We shook a little but that is the nature of life, shake a little or don’t leave the house. However, I left the plane disturbed and uncomfortable. When I travel I do so for adventure, to “rough it”, and to see the unknown. My travel is not a vacation, it is work. On my flight I was surrounded by paisley shirts and knee high tube socks. One woman made it very obvious this was her first flight. As we left the ground she screamed, “Oh My God!!!!” followed by other very frantic and unarticulated screams. By the tone of her voice I thought that smoke was coming from the engine, the wing had fallen off, or possibly there was a gremlin on the side of the plane. I was certain that the plane was going down. As the people around her started to laugh it dawned on me that she was just excited. This lead to me contemplating the ambience of flying for the rest of the flight. When did it become something retirees did in the meantime?

With greater opportunity comes greater cost. Not monetarily, but to the soul or panache’ of something once mysterious and prestigious. Las Vegas, like flying, has become more affordable and in doing so has they have lost the unavailability that made them unique. Humans are expanding into the world so greatly that soon there will be nothing left to imagine. Very soon to travel will be no adventure at all. As I sit here my conscious tells me not to worry. In any case, it can’t hurt anybody; it’s in the middle of the desert.