Lita Ford... Poison... Def Leppard

Our first trip to the outdoor ampitheatre at Red Rock Casino was a trip back in time, Def Leppard's 'Rock of Ages' tour featuring the openers Poison and Lita Ford.  We (I) shoulda listened to Tanya and left earlier to have supper out there but in my mind, I knew we had lots of time to get there.  We did, of course, but we (I) didn't calculate for the traffic snarl at the off-ramp to the casino.  The traffic was backed up for a mile and we completely missed joining the queu in the lineup to get off the highway.  So we drove for a bit, hit the next turnoff to turn around and come back, which was actually quite a bit quicker.

We wound our way through the casino and into the stadium grounds, entered under the bleachers and into the venue.  Its a really nice little 10,000 seat ampitheatre, with high aluminum bleachers on 3 sides, the stage on the end and chairs packed into the green carpeted floor area.  The stadium reminded me of a pro tennis venue, or somewhere they might hold a national dog show or professional dodgeball competition.  But we were in for a rock show.  Lita had already started up the evening and was laying it on heavy.  I didn't know she was the lead guitar player of her band, and had her Warlock guitar fired up full blast!  The sound was loud, with ear splitting squealing of the high gain guitars.  There was no doubt this would be an intense night of music.  Lita lit the fuse and left no prisoners, the crowd was primed.  As the sun set to the right of the stage and dusk filled the air, anticipation for Poison vibrated through the crowd.

Seats on the floor were $100 or more but we opted for the $50 seats up in the stands.  Waaay up in the stands.  It was steep, row U!  But there isn't a bad seat in the house.  Well, except for having to sit on aluminum for 4hrs, crammed in like sardines.  I don't know what the deal is with people claiming other people's seats.  You have your ticket, sit there.  Don't fuckin' wander and look for something better, especially if the place is sold out.  Some squatters claimed the whole row of seats beside us and a mexican jackass elbowed in beside me.  I never questioned whether it was their seats or not, but I might have shot a look for jostling into me like that... I never did figure out if it was a boy or a girl.  It was just a very hard and worn person who looked maybe 30, spoke like a woman but looked somewhere in between and acted like a cocky 18yr old jackass.  I looked at him/her, and he/she looked back, as if daring me to say something.  They didn't stay, the ticket holders came and claimed the seats at the end of the row and they moved on.

These concerts make me feel old.  I'm feeling less tolerant of people as I go, it might be the crankiness of not being able to let 'er rip like back in the good ol' days, which is also a blessing because I can remember the shows better by not indulging.  And I've missed some great shows due to my own stupid misbehaviours.  But I'm edgier with people and that's not good.  I must appear to be one of those clean-cut, uptight, well dressed and respectable middle age gentlemen sitting there without a drink, with his pretty little wife beside him with her head glued to her cellphone.  That makes me feel old, sitting there, sober, confined and controlled and unable to groove to the music like I would like to.  Its a different experience, the music isn't nearly as good as when the senses aren't skewed a bit, at least not a show like this from our bird's eye point of view.  However, it was a good perspective to watch the crowd, and it was a pretty good crowd-show.

Sooo many hot women here!  All the 80's kids came out to see the bands that made being bad sooo good.  Tight shirts, short skirts, big tits, wild hair, tatooes and denim and loose women... y'know, that pretty much describes the Vegas locals.  The locals really like to have fun, but so do the visitors to Vegas.  I'm honing in on the scent of who and what the locals are now, although sometimes its tough to tell who's local and who is not.  I'm guessing the older couple beside us who never looked up from their cellphones the entire night except to get that token picture to say, "I was there", they weren't locals.  The sour fat kid wedged in front of us with his mom, they weren't locals.  The boy/girl mexican fuck with the attitude and that crew, they were locals.  It was a pretty rowdy crowd all around with a lot of drunks and a lot of cheering.  Beer was spilt and flung on me on two different occasions.  I hate drunks when I'm not drinking, listening to that drawling babble all around.  Idiots.  Old Man Jones just wipes the beer away and sighs back to the memories of the good ol' days.

Tanya, and I think a lot of the crowd there, were there to see Brett Michaels and Poison.  I mocked her a bit, because what I knew of Poison... the hair band, the bad boy attitude in makeup and girls clothes and hairspray, the show... I just never respected that image or their cock-rock style of music.  But I'll say this now, that that was a great fuckin' show!  I've also gained some respect over the years for the bands that went that way, who put out this image that grabbed your attention whether you liked it or not, and let the world know they didn't really give a shit about what you think.  They wanted to party and they wanted you to join them, so if you didn't like it, you could fuck off.  It was your women they were after anyway, so you either accepted it or you let your women go it alone with those greasy bastards.  That attitude and their cock-rock anthems gets in your bones, and I guess that's why the girls get so horny over it all.  I never realized this either, that Poison is mostly a 3-piece band, with a keyboard player in a supporting role off to the side of the stage.  The sound was huge but  murky at times which could be attributed to the slight desert wind coming through the stadium or our alignment with the speaker system to our seats.  The bass was super heavy.  The boys worked the crowd pretty good and got everyone in a frenzy.  C.C. DeVille whipped the crowd relentlessly with his intense guitar virtuousity while Bobby Dall (!!) pounded us in the balls all night with his big bass!  There's no denying it, theirs is a straight up, no frills or gimmicks hard rock show.  Poison can still deliver the stuff that made them famous, and Vegas loves Poison!

Their final number of the night was one of their biggest hits and a song I've been covering for years and had relegated to my 'cheeze' list... 'Every Rose has its Thorn'.  What a joy to stand up there and sing along with the band and 10,000 other adoring fans who knew all the words.  A classic moment that somehow felt I'd finally come full circle after all this time!

I was anxious to see Def Leppard.  Something about their music is in my blood, maybe its because its been a soundtrack of my life for the last 25yrs... twenty five years!!!  We got up to stretch our legs and go for a walk around the top of the stands, and when we came back after a few minutes, a whole new crew of people had claimed our seats.  Jeezus!  We managed to get the reluctant cows moved down a few spaces so we could squeeze back into our designated spaces and soon the crowd came back and crammed in all around us again.  Why that lady brought that sour fat kid back up there I don't know.  He wasn't enjoying it, and was quite disgusted at my bare feet on the seat beside him during the Poison show, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  They switched places for the Def Leppard show and took up valuable knee space.  The girl beside me seemed quite unimpressed with the tactics I had used to move them over, but whatever.  She was a dancer-girl, so she was up for most of the show which gave me some room.  We were elbow to elbow, knees-to-back to knees-to-back, everyone sitting angled, way too confined for my liking.

Joe Elliot came out and told us that Def Leppard had been coming to play Vegas for 30 years, since the very beginning, and that it was the 25th anniversary of their breakout album 'Adrenalize'.  Now I know for sure, I'm getting old!

Def Leppard is renowned for their light show, and that was really cool to see.  But its not your stand up and groove type music, and was a bit of a letdown after the energy and the grit of the Poison set.  Their guitar player, Phil Collen, comes out shirtless and, well, I don't mind saying that this guy has a freakin' amazing body!  He's 55yrs old and cut like a 25yr old.  I aspire to look like this when I'm 55.  Tanya was thrilled over him.  He is a great guitar player and a master at using his effects to create artful, screeching solos, making his guitars wail over the music even more so than what we've come to know on the recorded versions on their albums.  It was really interesting to hear a master like that in action and hear those chilling Def Leppard riffs send electricity through the night.

Noticably missing from the Def Leppard's sound was the sailing vocal range of Joe Elliot.  Maybe he can't hit those high notes anymore, or it was all studio trickery on the albums, I don't know.  He's 53yrs old so maybe my expectations were too high.  But that was a huge missing piece of the Def Leppard sound and Elliot more often than not elected a lower octave for vocal leads and choruses that used to define those songs and set him apart as a lead singer.  He was still amazing and performed excellently, but unfortunately those missing pieces were the parts I had come to hear him sing.

Their drummer, Rick Allen, is a one-armed tour-de-force.  If you don't know the story, he lost an arm in a car accident in 1984.  That should have been the end of it, right?  No, he came back and became an even better drummer than he was before, or so claims Joe.  His is an amazing tale of perseverance over the odds, and it was amazing to see him in action.  Especially his drum solo, his feet worked the double bass pedal so fast the beats melded into one another.  His drums too, were heavily effected with reverb.  One pound on the eighth count was a super-beat, so freakin' heavy and oppressive it threatened to cave in the eardrums.  It must have been overwhelming on the floor cause it shook the stadium from where we were.  There again, a little slurring of the mind might not have noticed that or thought that it was really cool.  I've never been a real big fan of heavily effected guitars or overly produced sounds, I like my rock gritty and honest.  That's not Def Leppard.  They are in a league of their own in the music they create and that's what makes them special.

Halfway through their set, all five members came out to the middle of the crowd on the extended stage and sat together with Joe on a flight case for an acoustic singalong session.  The wind whispered over the crowd as the boys played a four-guitar acoustic medly of songs for ten minutes.  Rick was on the shaker.  Then it was back to the audial assault of the hits, and they played them all.  They had a great light show and stage setting with a full LED backdrop behind them so the visuals were great, but on the whole it was missing a certain something.  Maybe the excitement of being on the floor watching the show up close?  Maybe a good, skewed mental state for full effect?  Or maybe Def Leppard is just not your get-up-and-groove type music, just really good listening.  I really enjoyed the show, it was very fulfilling to see the boys live and experience the music that has been with me for so long. 

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

I Love Suishi... Battista's... Lindo Michoacan

One of the things I like to do when we travel to new places is to visit the restaurants that reflect the local flair and try the wines and micro-brewed beers of the area.  Well, since the world exists in Vegas in every sense of food, it is nothing short of spectacular the choices we have to choose from.  Tanya suggested I could even dedicate an entire blog itself on critiquing the restaurants here.  Perhaps.  But who am I really?  The Mountain Man, uncultured and uncouth.  Who am I to lay it down on those establishments and rate them?  I know what I like, and I know when a restaurant sells high and falls short.  With so many to choose from, we will never have to eat at the same place more than a couple times, but we do have some favorites.  Here are 3 of our favorites so far.   

Our favorite suishi place is called 'I Love Suishi', which is right across the street and one of the best suishi places I have ever experienced.  The service is great, but the atmosphere can be quite annoying.  The ladies are dressed in traditional Japanese silk robes and are very efficient at what they do, but they greet every new customer that walks in the door with a high pitched, ear-splitting three sylable Japanese welcome that sounds eerily contrived to reach some level of authenticity.  If its a real Japanese welcome and this is customary at Japanese restaurants, then I will claim my unculturedness and apologize to the fine girls of 'I Love Suishi', but it sounds horribly contrived and it kills me every time.  The music kills me too, the tin-can sounds of plucking and off-beat rhythms descend from the ceiling designed to relax and transcend, but it only winds me tighter and tighter until I'm a little ball of stress and fidgeting with my empty chopsticks.  It makes my fillings ache.  I let Tanya do the ordering at the suishi places.  Its always complicated and she knows better what all the items are and thankfully, you don't have to sit there very long before your food arrives.  I think the atmosphere is OK, and these comments are generally stemming from me going there hungry and easily agitated on a last minute, let's-eat-out decision.  Its one of the best suishi places I've been to, the service is slick and the food will blow your mind!!!  Wow! 

Another great little spot we were directed to is 'Battista's Hole in the Wall', an authentic Italian spot.  You'd never know it by its locale inside a little strip mall just off Flamingo, but it is well worth seeking out.  You are immersed in the atmosphere as soon as you get in, the dimly lit restaurant transports you back to another era.  Thick Italian accents could be heard in the room and the place felt like it was from the 50's.  Literally thousands of artifacts jam every space on the ceiling and walls, so it is endlessly interesting to look around.  There was a main bar area with seating and several dining rooms of varying sizes down a hallway.  We were led down the hall to one near the end which had 5 tables in it.  The menu was very simple and straightforward, permanently written on a placard on the wall, and the meal came with a bottle of their house wine.  I felt myself questioning whether my server's accent was a true Italian...a thick Brooklyn Italian accent.  It just didn't feel right to me at all, so I tried to engage him in conversation to get a little more but he was busy making his rounds and never got back to me until it was bill time.  I'm pretty sure he was faking it.  Before our meal came out, one of the treasures of this restaurant stopped by our table.  An old man, I would put him in his 90's, came out slumped over with the weight of his accordian and chatted us up, found out we were Canadian and played us a short tune.  I forget what he played us, but I was kinda taken with him and wanted to chat so there was a moment of awkwardness before Tan kicked me under the table, I retrieved $2 from my pocket and thanked him for the tune and he moved on to the next table, who turned out to be a crew from Edmundston NB.  I would have liked to talk to him more but he was working, he worked every table in the room then moved on to the next room.  Cute little old guy, there were pictures of him all over the walls in his younger days, so I figure this has been his gig for maybe 50years or so.  The wine was excellent, the food was amazing, and the atmosphere was spot on.  Very enjoyable meal, so we'll definitely be going back to Battista's. 

Last place on a quick trip around the Vegas globe of restaurants is 'Lindo Michoacan' gourmet Mexican cuisine.  Our buddy Andy was in town so we wanted to get him off the Strip to where the locals eat.  The restaurant sits on a hill overlooking the city, so we were able to watch the sun go down and see the city turn to gold over the course of our meal.  Its a spectacular vista, and what a meal!!  Lindo Michoacan is a beautiful restaurant, and a huge menu of things I've never even heard of.  I was quite taken with the complimentary appetizers of chips and mexican dips.  Everything was so fresh and tasty!  One of the dips was insanely hot, so Andy and I enjoyed a few Negra Modelo's to chill the palette.  We ordered some guacamole as an appetizer and the waiter came right to our table with the raw ingredients and did it up right there in front of us.  I was full before my meal even came, so when I left I was really full.  Maybe too full to enjoy my meal properly, but it was damn'd good!  The servers were super friendly too, very happy to have us there.  The thing gets me about some places, is that I never expect a higher end restaurant like Lindo to bring out a sombrero and shots of tequila and have all the servers break out in a big clapping, singing session for someone's birthday.  It has always struck me as a low brow thing to do, for a restaurant to have a staff-staged, festive blowout, but I'm learning now that that's just part of their culture.  The Mexicans like to celebrate and are loud about it.  So are the Acadians.  So I guess I will relent to being wrong about this whole celebratory thing in restaurants and accept it as a traditional part of the culture and not turtle to it anymore.  Just let it all in and accept it as is.  And, I will try not to fill up on the chips the next time we go back.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

Las Vegas 51's

We got an opportunity to go see a pro baseball team thursday night.  The Las Vegas 51's, Triple-A farm team of the Toronto Blue Jays!  We got tickets through Tanya's work and were seated in the 'Party Zone' right down the the third base line.  The Party-Zone could also be called the 'killer-foul-ball-zone' for all the baseballs that landed in the area.  We were warned as we went in, and it didn't disappoint.  Next time I'll be bringing my glove.

Cashman Field is located in North Las Vegas in an area that we hadn't been to before.  This is 'old Vegas', the decayed and decrepit part of town that progress moved away from and left for dead, the part we were warned not to venture to.  Every city has their run down areas with low income housing and hollowed out businesses and buildings that house all those sorrowed souls.  It is an unfortunate fact of life that for some to rise to such heights, civilization will pay their ultimate price.  

You can always count on a baseball game to get a true, cross-sectional representation of the community.  I don't think there would be many tourists at Cashman Field unless they were huge baseball fans.  North Vegas ain't your touristy part of town.  The stadium was filled up with locals, and I felt for the first time here that we were now part of it, part of that local showing coming out to support the team.  And its just too funny that the 51's are Toronto's farm team. 

You get a good sense of the local pulse at a baseball game.  Even more so than hockey, per say, because you don't get all walks of life at a hockey game, and the vibration isn't there like it used to be.  In baseball, its a social engagement in the stands and the babble of the crowd is ever present above whatever is happening on the field.  A hockey game is more serious and confined.  Most eyes are glued on the action all the time and the social babble is doused by the newly adopted arena policy to gag its audience with shitty loudspeaker music in between every whistle.  Shitty music to gag the rowdies and prompt some kind of crowd response, as if they didn't have anything to say, just there to react.  I hate that.  In my day, when we went to the Campbellton Tiger games as kids, the crowd was rabid.  Teams hated playing in Campbellton because it was OUR rink.  If the Tigers didnt' get you, the crowd would eat you alive.  The crowd is part of the overall energy of a game and a huge part of the home team's identity, but when they are not allowed to let their voices be heard it loses a part of that community vibration and character.  Hockey has gone to great lengths to clean up their show to make it a family-friendly event by keeping the rowdies out, gagging the breaks, keeping beer prices insanely high, and pushing the promotional gimmicks to sell the corporate ticket, hammering everyone in attendance into submission.  In baseball, I get a sense that the riotous spirit is alive and well within the community.  Dollar-beer nights, unleashed fans, the free spirit to smoke a doob and enjoy the night.  In baseball you can still yell insults at the opponents and at the officials and everyone will cheer to back you up.  Hockey has adopted the facade of some corporate, goody-two-shoe'd event which hides what every hockey fan feels in their heart... only to suffer another round of 'Cotton-Eyed-Joe'.  Its a good thing the game is so entertaining.

Cashman Field

People in the States love their baseball!  I never understood their fascination with it.  Its a boring sport really, so much sitting around and waiting.  I could never watch it on TV.  But the game last night was pretty cool to see.  Cashman Field is very nice, as are all the ballfields here.  Finally I understand that a bit more... that here in the States, you can play ball year-round, their fields don't get wrecked by winter, so the game is deeply engrained in their psyche.  Now it makes more sense to me.  Even the little league fields here are immaculate.  Now I understand. 

Our seats in the party zone were a little too close to the action for me to watch the game, but still really cool to be there right up close to see the guys warm up and work on the little things, the things that make their game special.  It was cool to be right there when one of the guys at bat drove a line drive past the 3rd baseman which hit about a foot inside the foul-line and rolled way back to the corner of the fence, the left fielder scrambled it up and ripped it in to the shortstop in a flash.  Holy shit!  The arms on those guys!!  Wow!!!  It was just neat to see the whole field in motion at the crack of the bat and the team working like clockwork to make the play at the base.  One foul-ball of many came into our area and it was dropping right at us, no one at our table was paying attention ...  I watched this ball dropping and let out a warning ...  it landed just behind us, a chubby fellow with a ball glove reached over top of the elderly couple sitting there but missed the ball completely and it smashed into the table right in front of her, knocking her water bottle flying.  Holy fuck, that was too close!  Why don't people pay attention when they're at these events!!  People must get hurt all the time at ball games.  I don't think there's enough safety netting at the Cashman Stadium.  Not so much in the area where we were, but back in the stands many low foul-balls rocketed into the stands and into the concourse of people.  Crazy!  We moved up to the bleachers for the last 3 innings to get a better view of the scoreboard and the field and a better feel for the crowd.

Too bad we couldn't have enjoyed dollar beer night like we would have liked, we had a long drive to get back home.  It was a damn'd great night for drinking beer too, the warm Las Vegas night is sooo comfortable, like a big warm blanket of air surrounding you!  The crowd was having a good time, so I was happy to live the experience through them.  A couple parties were making cracks at the Colorado boys but they just shirked it off and didn't pay them any attention.  It was a beautiful night for a ballgame.  The home boys couldn't bring it back though, and lost out 6-3 in the end.

After the game, as the crowd filtered out, the stadium lights all went down and the sky lit up with a fireworks show that lasted way longer than expected.  I don't know if they do this every night or not, but what an amazing show!  Maybe they have a fireworks sponsor or something, because it was way more elaborate than I would expect for just an after-the-game sorta display.  Pretty cool.  We then made our way back to our car and had no problems getting out of the area.  The cops were everywhere making their presence known.

One thing I think I'll never get tired of is driving down the highway past the Strip at night.  The night lights of Vegas are spectactular, such a beautiful city.  Its a long drive past the strip, and you get a better sense of how big it all is when you're cruising by at 55mph and the city just keeps going and going.  From the distant hills the Strip sits like a jewel set amidst a sea of spotted gold, everything is shimmering.  But perspective is one thing that's tricky here in the valley.  It may look close, but its not very close at all.  I gotta get a better camera to capture some of that magic. 

That was our first trip to North Las Vegas, probably a 25 minute drive home.  I think we'll be back to see more ball games, I really enjoyed that.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

The Valley of Fire

Our first weekend excursion out of Vegas was to the Valley of Fire.  This natural phenomena occurs 2 hours northeast of Vegas, straight out into the desert and into the heart of the world itself, where the bones of the very planet have been thrust up high into the sky to reveal its inner secrets.

Some 200million years ago, the sea retreated for the last time from the Valley of Fire, and Nevada, leaving in its wake vast beds of red mud, silt, sand and gravel.  For tens of millions of years after, extreme desert conditions carved and sculpted the land.  Desert winds capable of ripping apart mountains constructed mountain-sized sand dunes, which were then fossilized under the extreme desert sun and eroded away to form the exotic red and white rock formations we find today in the Valley of Fire.

About 70million years ago, during the Paleozoic Era, a great tectonic shift occurred.  An oceanic plate on the west coast was thrust eastward under the continental plate, which resulted in a complex series of compression shifts far inland.  Great slabs of limestone which had been buried deep in the earth were forced out and over top of younger rock beds, forming what is known as the Muddy Mountain Thrust Fault.  From that time til even today, harsh desert conditions have eroded 10,000ft (3km) of rock deposits and spread them across the far reaching valleys.  The very bones of the earth whittled down to sand.  The Valley of Fire is a geological wonder, in all its vibrant color and history.

We were in awe the whole time we travelled through the park.  The rock formations are surreal, the colors, the grandness of it all.  Words escape me to be able to describe it to you, and my camera can't capture those colors.  But I'll just have to let the pictures do the talking for this one.  Enjoy!

Red Rock Campsite

Fossilized Log

Barrel Cactus

The sand was too hot for Zuma to stand on.

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs

Zuma

Clancy

Zuma, Tanya, and Clancy

Me, looking for a way up

Hockey in the desert... The search for a neighborhood pub...

Hockey found me again on monday, as Tanya and I enjoyed the Stanley Cup finals at a local bar.  I had written off seeing any of the playoffs had lost interest, so it was great to get the opportunity to watch the final and cheer on the Kings with the west-coast crowd, AND be home by 9pm!

Just so you know, hockey does exist in Vegas.  I haven't made any inquiries about the beerleague yet, but am planning on it for the fall.  We even have a pro team here called the Las Vegas Wranglers.  They play in the ECHL (East Coast Hockey League) and are a farm team of the Calgary Flames.  I  caught one of their semi-final games at the Orleans arena but will vow to make more of them next year.  Its funny that hockey exists as it does here.  The fans are real hockey fans but... that is, FANS of HOCKEY.  It seemed that if you had a hockey jersey in your wardrobe, the thing to do was wear it to the game. 

Going up in the elevator, an older fellow hauled out his Leafs jersey and put it on.  I thought that was odd.  But then inside the arena, there were a number of NHL jerseys walking around.  There were  international league sweaters there too, all jammed up with sponsorship logos.  Freaky!  Kids were wearing their team sweaters too, and there were Wranglers' jerseys of all different kinds.  The Wranglers have many, depending on the event or cause, including a Shamrock jersey (for their home bar McMullans Irish Pub), a Girl Guide's jersey with a big brown sash over its shoulder, a pink jersey for breast cancer research, and this santa jersey!??  Wow!  The fans were representin' in all kinds of hockey fashion.  Unfortunately the beers at the Orleans were obscenely expensive and the game was pretty dull.  I think a good university team would give these guys a damn'd good run for their money.  The Wranglers went on to the Kelly Cup finals this year and lost out to the Florida Everblades.  Next year I'll make a few more games.

Speaking of hockey in the desert, I am currently reading a book by Dave Bidini called 'Tropic of Hockey' that has been great poolside reading.  Bidini embarked on a worldwide search of the game in some unlikely places, finding that the spirit of the game exists in cultures far from the epicentre of Canadian culture.  He journeyed to China where they hold a tournament called the 'Hong Kong Five'.  The tournament hosts teams from all over the world, some countries being totally in their infancy in terms of hockey development.  His description of the United Arab Emirates National team was pretty funny.  Imagine big, heavily bearded, super-serious bunch of Arabians on skates, wearing pink jerseys.  They in fact had a goalie who played with them back in Dubai who was from New Brunswick, but to achieve their goal of being the first all-Arab hockey team, had told him to stay home and picked someone else to play the position.  Once the Singapore team realized the UAE's goalie couldn't stop a puck, they began shooting from anywhere and everywhere.  The Arabs in turn, realized the effectiveness of shot blocking and jumped at every chance to knock it down by sliding at everything, wherever they were on the ice.  As Bidini describes, it wasn't exactly your 'traditional' hockey game!

I've been out of the hockey loop and playoffs til this week.  I don't have a TV so I missed all of the playoffs and just put it out of my mind.  Then I read about the Los Angeles' Kings incredible playoff run and that tweaked my interest.  I knew game six was being played monday night, but I had already thrown in the towel on catching any of it.  It was Tanya who came home after a bad monday and suggested going out to the bar for some beers to watch it.  She'd just heard an ad on the radio to c'mon down and join the crowd at Buffalo Wild Wings for the big game, so we did just that! 

I haven't experienced many hockey games at the bar where the game was broadcast over the house sound system and had lots of fans cheering the home team so that was a new one for me.  The baseball games still outnumbered the hockey on the bigscreens, but the hockey game had precedence on the loudspeakers and two dedicated bigscreens to watch it on.  The medium sized crowd at the bar was into it too, a lot of them wearing their #99's and Kings jerseys!  We had a couple beers and supper over the course of the game, and amazingly stayed for the whole thing!  Finally, we get to enjoy a late-starting west coast game and be home by 9pm.  And thanks to Tanya having a bad monday and wanting to go out for a beer, AND staying to the end of the game.  Otherwise I would have missed this one too, so cheers to you Tan!

LA played fierce!  I think they would have won anyway, but that 5minute major hit by Steve Bernier on Rob Scuderi in the first period sunk the Devils beyond hope.  If I was in that guy's dressing room, I would have had some nasty words for him.  Or just raging silence.  Stupid fucker.  A very selfish act that cost the Devils that game.  There was no way they'd come back from that 3-0 deficit, the Kings were just too much to handle and they topped of their playoff run in style with the Stanley Cup. 

We're starting to zoom in on what we might consider a good neighborhood pub to frequent.  There's nothing really close that isn't a restaurant-proper, or features a patio.  But last friday we found 'The Beachhouse' and their rooftop patio about 2 city-blocks away and we think that might be it.  We climbed the outdoor stairway and the music got louder as we got to the top.  I don't know what 'live' album was playing, but the music was very loud and the rooftop was wailing with terrible singing from a gathering of their patrons who were already in full flight and were loving that song!  There wasn't a tonne of people there but those who were were letting loose and gathered in small parties and talking over the music.  This bodes well.  Tanya wasn't dressed for it at all at 102degreesF.  The misters and fans on the ceiling blew a gentle cool mist over us but it wasn't near enough to fight the heat.  I ordered us some beers and a plate of chili-fries, but Tanya started melting in her jeans and got cranky very quickly.  I ate the whole plate by myself and will never do that again.  I estimate The Beachhouse will be a good 25min walk home, so next time we go there we'll be prepared to stay a little longer and dress for the heat and the hike. 

Thanks for reading!

TRJ

Memorial Day Weekend in California!

I have often dreamed of California.  In my childhood way out on the east coast, way up in the northern hills of New Brunswick, I lived vicariously through the many antics of Archie Andrews and his comic book gang.  The beach, the music, the carefree scene.  It was so far out of reach that I might as well have been dreaming of fun times on Mars.

So here we were, packing up for my first weekend of Californian exploration!  It was a really cold morning, about 45F (8C), and the wind blew icy drafts up my shorts as I gassed up for the trek.  I had to put pants on for the first time in about a month here in Vegas.  Here in the desert, I realize I will not need a lot of pants or the sixty-five pairs of socks that I brought down with me.  Underwear too, is optional.  Its a special day when I get to wear the cozy clothes of the north. 

Off to California!  Into the desert we go, the Mojave Desert and Death Valley.  Wide expanses of desert across an ocean of sand, with only grey outlines of mountains far off in the distance.  The desert vegetation gets bigger and more condensed as you go, and soon the rocky mountain ranges pop up more frequently and begin to close in around the highway.  We had to make an emergency poo-stop for Zuma so I got to examine one of these giant tree-like cactuses up close and personal.  They are called Joshua Trees and I found it to be extremely sharp and pointy!  We ran Zuma between us to get a little exercise and all of a sudden a great bird appeared out of nowhere, swooping in low just over our heads and then rising up to circle above us, scoping out his nice furry meal below.  Zuma's shiny white, fluffy coat shimmers against the desert sand.  We quickly collected him and got out of there.

We stopped for lunch in Baker, CA, home of 'Alien Fresh Jerky'.  They've capitalized on their proximity to Area51 and cornered the alien-themed consumer market in Baker.  They had an otherworldly selection of jerky, hot sauces, pickled items, a wild selection of soda-drinks, and of course many alien novelty items.  We bought a bag of jerky and a 'Stalin-ade' beverage which boasted "Join the Party" on the label with a big soviet hammer-and-sickle logo.  Upon leaving Baker, I drove back to the highway where I'd gotten off and unwittingly got back on, IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!!  After a brief meltdown and many miles passed I was finally able to negotiate my way out of the traffic and across the sandy median to the other side.  No big deal.  The jerky was fantastic!  We (I) got centered again and were on our way.

Just past Hesperia the highway climbed into a mountain range 4000ft above sea level, and when we crested through the Cajon Pass a most spectacular view of the San Bernardo Valley opened before us.  My heart choked at the sight, the rolling green velvety mountains stretched for miles and miles and the highway snaked down and down, far out of sight into the vast, grey-green distance.  That was an awesome sight!  It was a very scenic drive, moderate traffic, and the Sirius Satelite service which we have for a while with our new car was good entertainment. 

We are driving a new Volkswagen Tiguan TSi right now, and its a great travelling machine.  We desperately needed a car in Vegas and Volkswagen is the ONLY dealership in the United States that will lease a car to newcomers who have no credit.  When you move to the USA, all your previous credit is wiped out and you have to start building at zero again.  You can't get a credit card either, so you have to build your credit over time with cash.  Volkswagen realized the absurdness of this situation, having highly-paid Canadian professionals move here who couldn't get credit cards and who couldn't afford to purchase vehicles, and so created their 'Foreign Financing Program'.  This is a 'for Canadian professionals only' program for those who have come to work in the USA.  Volkswagen just outright trusts that the government did their due diligence in checking out Canadian imports and that they are pretty good people who will pay their bills.  Well duhh!  And so, Volkswagen enjoys their niche market of selling vehicles to Canadians while all the other dealers stick to their 'No Credit=Big Penalty/No Sale' policies.  It was a good deal for us and we're quite happy with our Volkswagen.  The Tiguan is a great little SUV, lots of power to be aggressive in highway situations, comfortable, lots of storage space, and a kickass onboard computer which has already proved invaluable around town and on trips.  And all things considered, this vehicle was not much more expensive than the KIA Rondo we leased back in New Brunswick, but would easily be worth double what we're paying here.  Crazy!

As we approached Los Angeles the highways started getting wider and traffic heavier, we plugged in the address of the Days Inn in Torrance and 'Tiggy' drew out a roadmap for us and guided us in.  The highways move at a pretty good clip, 60mph, and I got to experience the long, arching, sky-high interchanges of my many nightmares.  Many a night I have been jerked awake with the feeling of falling when the roadway gives way from under me, and these structures, like bridges, make me nervous.  What a tangle of highways!

We arrived into Torrance and drove down the main street.  Everything was so green and lush and vibrant, it was quite exciting.  The main street was lined with shop after shop, different buildings of all sorts of styles and colors, businesses of all sorts, ethnically rich and diverse, stretching over the rolling hills side by side.  There was a definite pulse that struck me, that there were communities here, good and bad, that supported all these different shops.  And there were only a few corporate 'power-sales-centers' among them for a one-stop, all-your-needs shopping.  Then it struck me, that is one of the main things I don't like about Vegas.

Vegas is a 'planned city', it didn't evolve like normal cities did.  It grew fast and in a time when all things could be considered in its planning.  It was designed a certain way to maximize efficiency and to meet all the needs of the surrounding communities within their smaller areas.  Especially in the newer outlying areas like where we live in Henderson.  Traffic flows effortlessly along wide road systems with sidewalks and greenery on either side.  Each area of town has its designated residential zones, and to serve those areas you have the power-centers, strategically placed by city planners for maximum efficiency which will always feature a gas station/mini-mart, a restaurant, two fast-food places, a huge drugstore, a food store, and a few other stores thrown in for good measure.  These power centres occur on every corner of every main street and, like everything in Vegas, is painted some degree of sand or brick color and features rock accents.  The names on the signs change, but the buildings themselves look pretty much the same wherever you go across the entire city.  The communities and houses themselves are always walled in and are often mired in their own roundabout street-systems with only one or two exits to the main streets.  Most often, those communities are gated to keep the 'element' out and the prices up.  It is very beautiful, set in a desert valley, and an amazing feat of engineering that they've been able to build such a flourishing city of green in the desert.  But the real human quality of any city, that of the time-honed livelihoods of its residents, is non-existent.  Corporate powerhouses built this city.  They own the land, the golf courses and communities, and the buildings that house the big-name businesses.  You won't find any 'Chez-Serge's Poutine' stands out here painted the blue-red-yellow of the Acadian tradition.  Those places have never existed because it never had those early pioneers of families just trying to make a buck.  Vegas evolved as a greywash of corporate control and structure and because of this, it is a city that lacks culture, human character, and feels soul-less.  Its been only 2months for me here though, so I'll give it a fairer review in a year.

Torrance was refreshingly green and open and vibrant.  No walls, no sand-colored houses, lots of trees and grass and hills with communities built on the hillsides, winding roadways dipping and rising, curving around soft slopes.  Lots of different styles of houses, colors, and people of different nationalities out walking on the sidewalks.  It felt used and lived in and had a real human quality to it.  4.5hrs into the trip, we found the Days Inn and got to our room.... yep, it too seemed very used and lived in!  It wasn't dirty, but it was dark and dingy and very 70's.  The only window in the room had a view of the outdoor, second floor walkway.  I pulled the curtain shut and lay on the bed to let the highway ease off my mind a bit.  A power nap and two beers later I was good to go again!

We headed south.  Destination: Huntington Beach.  It being the Memorial Day weekend, there were a lot of people in town.  We pulled off the main road and parked and made our way down to the shore to christen our feet in the Pacific.  The beach was amazing, and the water was freezing!!  We found out pretty quickly that Zuma is not a beach dog.  The whipping wind blew sand in his eyes and to fix this, he drove his head into the sand to wipe his eyes...?  And to fix that, he tried to wipe his eyes out with his paws...?  Note to self: Don't bring Zuma to the beach unless you're willing to carry him.

I am so envious of the people who get to live there, grandfathered in.  The beachfront community is lined wall to wall with beach houses of all shapes and descriptions, several blocks deep from the shore.  Everywhere there were crowds of people gathered, hanging out and partying, bbqing, drinking and sitting back in garages, front yards, patios and rooftops.  Many of the assembled parties were groups of university-aged people.  Scores of hot, young, tanned women and men seemed oblivious to the cold as they made their way from the beach to plan their evenings affairs.  Oh to be part of that scene...  We were hungry but we drove past the many bars which were overflowing with young rowdies, I didn't want to be anywhere near those frat-boy reunions.  It was enough to be the eye in the sky and move on through, sucking in the energy of the community, a thousand stories running through my mind, all those picturesque beach houses and their lifestyles.

Eventually we made our way back to Huntington Beach Pier and parked to catch the sunset.  The pier and the streets were still packed with people of all ages.  The wind ripped through us on the pier as the sun quickly dipped into the ocean and was gone.  Far off on the horizon, several oil rigs lit up like white christmas trees against the darkening orange sky.  We ate supper at a fast food place and wandered the streets til we found a Starbucks for a much needed coffee, then made our way home and let the seat-warmers in the VW take the chill out of our bones.  All along the way, Huntington Beach was lined with bonfires and campers enjoying the warmth and company of friends and family.  Our bed was much welcomed at the end of a long day.

On Sunday we set out North.  Destination: Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, and the Pacific Coast Highway.  We cruised up the coastline, an amazing drive!  In Malibu the beach house community skirts the mountainside between the ocean and the road with a wall of garage doors, grand entrances of luxury vacation-houses.  It leaves much to the imagination as to what is on the other side of that roadside wall because you couldn't really see the houses beyond their garage-door-facades, nor could you see the ocean.  I reckon theses are houses that sit on the edge of the world, suspended by stilts and hang over the beach as the ocean devours the cliffside beneath them, and are worth millions.  On the opposite side of the road, a steep, lush hillside, with luxurious homes propped and nestled on every peek and cranny, enjoying a splendid view of the ocean.  The whole area is so rich and beautiful.

We came to a spot on the highway where a massive sandbank stretched from the road up to a peak, way up the mountainside.  Here, cars were stopped and small groups of people were climbing up to the top.  It was very steep, like a ski-slope, and we could tell it was a very difficult climb as some athletic individuals were struggling near the top, sinking and climbing in sand up to their knees.  One poor fellow was sprawled out three-quarters of the way up... or down.  He looked like he could have been injured or something because he didn't move the whole time we were there.  Even when we continued on and came back this highway later, he was still sprawled in the same spot and someone had come to check on him, but he was still in the same position.  Another day, perhaps when the Pacific is warmer and I can wash the sand off, I would love to climb this hill!!

We found a beach north of Malibu where many surfers were out in the waves so we decided to stop and watch for a while.  That was pretty cool!  They all had wetsuits on, floating in the water and waiting on that wave.  I would LOVE to spend a summer learning to surf!  I understand how it could be addictive.  My only surfing experience came on our trip to British Columbia several years ago.  My buddy Boris took us out to Long Beach, BC and we rented wetsuits and boogie boards for the day.  The water was fridgid so the suits were necessary, but the suit made me clausterphobic and overheated my body.  The trade off, which I settled for, was freezing in the water with just swim shorts.  That was stupid.  The Pacific ocean punished me badly that day.  I may have gotten on that board a handful of times but never really figured it out.  What I did figure out, was what a 10foot wave feels like when it breaks over you and slams your body into the ocean floor!  Holy shit!!  It feels like a building collapsing on your body and grinding you into the dirt like the stupid little man you are!  Those were the biggest waves I've ever experienced and after a few of her cruel lessons I was beaten dumb, frozen, dehydrated and crying for mommy!  Watching the guys out there surfing was pretty cool and my blood started tingling, looking forward to trying it again soon.

We made our way south to Santa Monica, but by this time a hundred thousand people were trying to find their way onto the beach and we got mired in traffic and pedestrians.  We decided to abandon our plan for the Santa Monica Pier and go further south to Venice beach.

Venice Beach was a very interesting place.  We parked close for $20 and stepped out into the sidewalk masses with Zuma in tow.  Wow!!  A hundred thousand people slowly rambled by along a wide sidewalk.  It was different from the other areas we'd experienced.  This was the bohemian, counter-culture crowd, dirtier and more carefree.  There were huge wall murals on some buildings, and the buildings themselves looked very run-down.  One huge mural on a building was of Jim Morrison, this was his old stomping grounds.  I could feel his inspirations here, the things Jim used to fill his head with and write about as he wandered.  His name still resounds through these streets.  There were artists, vendors, and street performers all along the way, and bands set up every couple hundred feet or so.  The music floated in the air above the babble, and patios were packed with people enjoying their beers and the music in the afternoon sun.  Homeless people were everywhere, sacked out in the shade of trees with all their belongings.  And there was an army of cops.  They were out in a show of force for Memorial Day weekend and patrolled the area on foot, on bicycles, on pedways, on 4wheelers, on horseback, by car and truck, and by helicopter.  The criminal element lurked invisible to us, but the cops got 'em and had several arrests pushed up against their vehicles. 

Beyond the sidewalk there was a designated bike path where a steady stream of thousands of bikers rolled on by in big rented 'cruiser' bikes of all different colors, and beyond that, Venice Beach.  Wow!  That beach is the widest expanse of sand I've ever seen, so much so that you couldn't see the shoreline for it.  We didn't even try to get to the water, it was difficult walking in the sand and it would have taken a long time to cross.  We weren't there for the beach anyway.  We were happy meandering around the crowd and taking it all in.  Zuma was getting tired and mosied along beside us, a little skitterish with the chaos all around.  He did pretty good though,  although I ended up having to carry him some of the way when we crossed any sand or it got too crowded or it seemed he needed a rest.  He was draggin' ass by the end of our exploration.

People always feel the need to stop and comment on Zuma too, he's such a friggin' people-magnet.  Which is another good reason NOT to bring him on such adventures.  He and I spent a lot of time waiting for Tanya while she shopped, and he would sit there perfectly poised in her direction awaiting her return.  His cuteness opens the door to all kinds of public reaction from all kinds of people.  I really should have had a hat on the ground with a sign that said "Pet My Pet for a Buck!" or something like that.  Jeez, even the men took on that cutesy, baby-talk voice when they saw him sitting there, "Oooooh!  Lookie the little puppeee!"  Holy fuck.

We took in all the sights and activities.  There was a wicked little skate-park, a few basketball courts, beach volleyball, paddle tennis (which I'd never seen before), handball courts, the world famous Gold's Gym, an outdoor boxing ring, a small ampitheatre, and a rollerskating park.  There were many head-shops, a bunch of places selling medical marijuana cards, fast-food places, jewelers, clothiers, and an actual Freakshow Palace who claimed to have a five-legged dog and a two-headed cat.  It was pretty wild.  Far out on the beach a crowd was gathering, the sound of many drummers carried across the sand, pounding out tribal rhythms that had people flocking from all directions to join the throbbing mass.  We decided to stop for a beer and watch the crowd for a bit and were served up an an old lesson about stopping for patio beers, as there were only 'public' facilities, and they were dirty and in super-high demand.  Why our culture has never embraced the concept of the pissing-wall I will never know.  Boys don't need closed doors, they just need society to turn the other cheek and not be so uptight about pissing so that the ladies can have the privacy of their stalls.  If I ran things....  things would be different.

It had been a long day of exploration, and all our sea-seeing had cultivated an appetite for some seafood.  We decided to top off our weekend with a good meal and plugged Joe's Crab Shack into the onboard Nav system and set our course.  We like the Crab Shack, they serve your meal in an orange fishnet in a steam-pot, and you get crab legs of different varieties steamed with spices, a corn on the cob and a couple red potatoes.  Its not someplace you would take a date, unless you really wanted to know what she was made of.  We love it!  Its expensive, but its a good meal and a dining experience you can really get into, all decked out in a plastic splash-garb and wielding cracking and picking utensils to perform the task.  It satisfies our maritime cravings.

We hit the road early on monday, the holiday.  The rolling green hills faded away behind us as we entered back into the mountains and into the grey-brown desert once again.  The traffic on the other side of the highway leading out to L.A. was incredible!!!  It was backed up for a hundred miles, in sections all the way back to Vegas.  Nearer to Vegas it was an absolute standstill.  We stopped in Baker on our way to get another load of Alien Fresh Jerky.  We ended up eating in Baker at 'The Mad Greek'.  Tanya went in to order while Zuma and I waited for her in the shade of a big tree across the street from the take-out.  She came out after a bit all excited and told us that Sonny Corinthos of General Hospital was in there eating with his two sons!  She didn't know his real name, which is Maurice Bernard, and sure enough, he soon came out and it was HIM!  The badass himself!  He looked very much like he was in-character, cool and sophisticated, all decked out in black with his hair slicked back.  I thought a guy like that would have been driving a nicer vehicle, but he was just out with his boys on the way back from Vegas.  His son took command of the vehicle and Maurice slunk down low in the passenger seat as they drove by Tanya and I on the roadside, checking us out while we watched him pass.  He knew he'd been spotted!  If I weren't so Canadian, and maybe known his real name, I might have had to approach him for a photo with Tan.  Sonny would have never approved of such actions, his goons would have taken care of business up front and told us to take a hike.

It was a fantastic trip and I can't wait to go back.  Tanya and I travel really well together, she is the brains of our operation and I am the muscle, the machine, the road warrior.  We have always worked well as a team and we really enjoy each other's company so we have fun wherever we go.  We can't wait to go back out there to California!  There are a lot more adventures awaiting us from our launching point of Vegas.  So stay tuned!

Thanks for reading!

TRJ