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Why was Vegas an adventure?  First off, I wasn’t completely well from the virus that laid me low.  I was no longer contagious, but I felt pretty rough the night before the trip.  Getting up at O-dark-thirty, to catch the plane didn’t help.  Okay, having to get on the plane didn’t help either.  Stupid phobias.  I was actually doing pretty well on the plane, I even fell asleep.  I really am getting more comfortable on the plans, though not sleeping at all, and getting up at 4:00 A. M. probably helped the sleeping.  So, it was good, until I had the dream.  I dreamed the plane was falling out of the sky, and woke up on the plane.  Not good.  All the hard won calm threatened to go out the window.  I had to have Jon turn off his iPod and simply talk to me, while I clutched his hand. I’d been listening to my iPod while I slept.  I find Sarah McLachlan very good for flying, she’s very soothing.  I have to say that when I sat there all afraid, I began to rethink some of the trips I’ve said yes, to in the coming year.  I barely made it through a three hour flight, how was I to do more.  But I’ve done more before.  I’ve flown to Europe, and that was okay.  I got a lot of writing done in eight hours. 

We met Shawn at the airport.  His plane got in earlier than ours.  He was amazed that we only had on checked bag.  He remembers the days when I over packed, but Jon and I have traveled a lot since then, and we’ve gotten better.  We still don’t pack as well as friends and family that are ex-military, but then, we haven’t had the necessity of it.  We stayed in the same hotel that we had honeymooned in nearly eight years ago now.  But, not at all the same room.  This time we had a suite so there was a desk, and an extra room for meetings and such.  It was nice to know that all those years ago we couldn’t have afforded the suite.  Always nice to know you’re making progress.

Vegas changes every time we visit.  More hotels gone; others built anew.  Vegas is a city that doesn’t hold onto it’s history.  It demolishes it and builds the future on top of it.  In our driving around to find older Vegas we were just in time to see part of a sign beside the road.  The sign read, "ontier," and I realized that empty area of ground was the Frontier, or had been.  Don’t know the Frontier, I bet you do.  It’s the casino with the huge cowboy out front, waving his arm back and forth.  Yeah, that one.  See, I knew you’d seen it in a dozen movies or specials about Las Vegas.  The Frontier cowboy was a landmark, and now he’s gone.  There was a sign about what was coming soon, but I didn’t catch it.  It was strangely upsetting to have the casino gone, and I’d never been inside of it.  I guess if more of us tourists had gone inside of it, instead of just driven by, or taken the cowboy’s picture, it might not have been torn down.  Or it might have, Jon says over my shoulder.  Vegas is not a city to stand still.  It’s about bigger, brighter, more.  It is a city of excess, and proud of it.  Vegas doesn’t lie about what it’s selling, it’s very up front, and it delivers.  It’s gaudy, loud, stylish, always in style, never in style, and unrepentingly decadent, but in a sort of Walt Disney for grownups way.  It ain’t called Sin City for nothing. 

The telephone book was an eye opener.  Look up entertainment in the yellow pages.  Here in St. Louis, they’d hunt you down with dogs and clubs for the adds alone.  Okay, not really, but the visual is about the level of disapproval you would suffer here.  There are adds for redheads, blondes, young, old, male, though far more for female, transgendered, every ethnic flavor you can think of, and the adds that said couples preferred.  Why preferred?  I mean do the workers get paid by the person, like piece work in a factory?  I couldn’t figure it out, and couldn’t think of a reason to call and ask, because when I start asking questions, I always sound like a cop.  But I really did want to know what the heck they meant.  Jon was most interested in the adds that said, you don’t like them, don’t pay.  What?  You enjoy their company, then you don’t pay them?  Is that what they really mean?  Again, no way to find out without doing the whole sitcom thing, where,  no I really just wanted to talk.  We couldn’t think of any way of getting our curiosity satisfied that wasn’t embarrassing, so we’ll just have to wonder. 

But living in a city where the powers that be told me I couldn’t even put a fictional Bondage and Submission themed club on the St. Louis side of the river, it’s nice to be in a city that isn’t afraid to be a grownup.