Tehachapi to Vegas

Day 5 started at about 6 AM with a cold blustery wind shaking the tent. I noticed that I'd tattooed my pants with the chainring while opening the trunk with the bikes loaded (it's possible, but stressful for the trunk).

We did a quick breakdown and pack up and had Gunilla lead us into town.



This coffee shop was the ultimate small-town locals coffee shop. Great service and good food.

The current owners purchased it in 1952, three weeks before it was destroyed by the Tehachapi earthquake. We had one waffle, one egg, toast and coffee. Totally filling.

We had a good tailwind as we headed through the pass.

We were in classic cowboy-style desert at this point,

and were literally counting the miles to the first rest area. No showers for a few days now, and we wanted to do some clean up.

We got there, and it was closed. Lena had a lot to say about this, and it was cute since she's never really gotten the hang of swearing in English. Without going into detail I'll tell you that it her swearing includes the words “fart” and “throw up.”

We stopped in Boron, your prototypical desert micro-town and home to 20-mule-team borax, but there were no public restrooms.

The next rest area was only about 70 miles away, and it was a nice one. They segregate the rest rooms not only by gender, but by bodily function:

More desert driving and Al utilized the napinator

It was now time for lunch, and we wanted to cook up the chicken that couldn't be cooked due to wind the previous evening. We fired up the Pepsi-can stove, shielded it from the wind, and did a stir-fry.

Gunilla held our hands and took us right to the door of the Sahara hotel and casino in Vegas.

Our room was only $24 ($36 will all the mandatory add-on fees and taxes). This hotel does the job, but it's a bit past it's prime. You have to wait in a long line to check in, the service is mediocre, and the rooms are “faded,” but it was great to take a long shower.

I carried the bikes in one at a time using the old “walk with purpose, look like you know what you are doing, don't make eye contact” trick.

It's actually a pretty long trek from four levels up in the garage, down the elevator, then through the casino and lobby, and up 22 levels in the hotel elevator. With the division of stuff into many backpacks, a number of trips were involved.

After our showers, we headed up to the exercise room on the 27th floor. I used the weight machine, and Lena used the treadmill and stationary bike.

We then rinsed off and headed down to the pool for a dip. This was the warmest pool I've ever been in.

We'd planned to pick up some coupon books which essentially allow you to do some gambling with other people's money. For example, you can use a match play coupon to get an additional $10 when you win. So, Lena could play even on the roulette and I could play odd, and we'd almost certainly make $10.

However, we were told that because of traffic, we didn't have time to drive the 10 blocks to the coupon place before 5 PM, and that we couldn't walk there. So we didn't do any gambling.

After another shower, we got dressed up like tourists, and headed down “the strip.” If you picture elegant people walking around town having fun gambling, then you have the wrong channel. Mostly what you see are overweight and obese tourists in shorts sitting in a trance in front of slot machines.

You see some elegant people, but so few that when they appear you say “Wow, look at that!”

However, I did see a few people laughing and clapping as in the gambling ads.

Sorry, we didn't have the camera with us. We had a great dinner at Circus Circus. It was a southwest club sandwich which we split.

We watched a relatively pathetic ten-minute circus act consisting of a girl hanging from and messing around in a hula-hoop. She was very good, but there's only so much you can do hanging from a hula hoop. She was accompanied by a keyboard player and drummer who seemed disappointed with the direction their musical careers had taken. We saw 150 people who wanted us to see all-day presentations on time shares in exchange for a free show.

We probably walked four miles altogether. It was less glamorous and flashy than I'd expected. I'd wanted to be overwhelmed with the waste of electricity of the flashing lights. But Lena enjoyed it a lot, and it fulfilled her need to “see Vegas.”

We headed back to the hotel and promptly fell asleep. Here's the view from our room.