Danube Cruise

 Monday, October 11, 2021: Tracey and I ordered an Uber to pick us up at 11:30 am to take us to the airport. The flight to Dulles was miserable because we were packed into our seats on a very small plane. United Airlines must have a committee whose whole purpose is to think up new ideas on how to make air travel as uncomfortable as possible. In our case, there was a speaker right over our heads, with the volume up as loud as it could go, and Tracey and I jumped in shock at every announcement. The trans-Atlantic flight was nice because we sprung for Economy Plus tickets so we had an additional six inches of sitting room. Lufthansa gave us earphones so I watched a couple of movies on our eight hour flight. Still, it was hard to sit that long and, by the time we arrived in Bucharest, Tracey and I had been up for twenty hours. I couldn’t concentrate on reading or watching the movies and drifted in and out of consciousness.

Tuesday, October 12, Romania: Our fight landed in Munich but, because there were so few people flying to Bucharest, we had to walk on the tarmac to our plane and then climb the stairs to gain entrance. Finally, we arrived at our hotel at 1:30 pm. The best way to acclimate yourself to European time is to get on their schedule immediately and do not fall asleep in the afternoon. Try as I may, I couldn’t follow that rule and fell asleep for an hour. A lot of the 90 people from U of L who went on this trip socialized in the hotel lounge so I did my best to introduce myself to as many people as possible before our buffet dinner.

Wednesday, October 13, Bucharest: We spent the morning at the Casa Ceausescu. The Romanian dictator was overthrown in 1989 but spent his 25 years in power living in the house which is now a museum. Our tour included a look at the Italian statues that had been gifted to Ceausescu; heads of state and powerful people gave him the statues to remind visitors of Romania’s link to Ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance. In an interesting side note, our guide said that when the Ceaucescus were assassinated, the wife had many more bullet holes in her body because she was even more hated than her husband.

In the afternoon we toured Dracula’s (Vlad the Impaler) tomb at the Snagov Monastery. The structure was built in 1407. The Byzantium art on the walls, and the Romanesque architecture, was beautiful and it looked just like a picture from a history book. If we had more time then I would have liked to have spent more time in this space because I wanted to take in all of the frescoes from our ancient past. It was a privilege to be at this monastery and our visit was one of the many unexpected pleasures from our Eastern European trip.

Thursday, October 14, Bucharest: We began our day at the Palace of the Parliament. Ceausescu built this massive structure as a monument to himself and completed ninety percent of it before he was assassinated. In order to make room for the Palace, Ceausescu wiped out whole neighborhoods and demolished three churches. This was one of the many reasons for why he was so unpopular. But the project also helped employ people because he hired five million laborers to build the Palace. Also, he insisted that all of the building materials, especially the marble, come from Romania in order to give a boost to their economy. Today, the Palace is a drain on Romania’s budget; the cost of heating, electricity, and lighting the building costs over six million dollars per year.

Lunch was on our own but, before we ate, Tracey and I took a side trip to see the statue of Romulus and Remus. It was a labor of love because the rain never stopped coming down for our first few days in Eastern Europe, but I had to get a selfie in front of this statue because I shared the story of the famous twins for decades when I taught world history. Once again, the statue is there to remind people of the Roman influence on Romania to this day. After lunch we took a bus tour of Bucharest and then embarked on “The River Duchess,” our Danube cruise ship.

Friday, October 15, Bulgaria: I started the day with a walk with Peter, the physical fitness expert

on our ship, through the streets of Nikopol, where we saw the famous fountain and gate. Then the whole U of L group took a bus tour to Arbanassi where we toured “The Church of the Nativity,” a 17th century stone church with beautiful frescoes. We were treated to an Orthodox choir at the end of our tour. They sang a cappella and it was magical because their voices were fantastic, they dressed up in period costumes, and we listened to them while viewing the Byzantine art.

To round out the morning, we toured the “Konstantsalisva House,” which served as a good example of how a rich person would have lived in the Middle Ages. Next, we were treated to a true Bulgarian lunch and folk dancers entertained us at the end of the meal. One of the women in the troupe grabbed my hand to get me out of my chair so that she could dance the last number with me. It was all in good fun and I made sure that I got a picture of me dancing so that I could share it with the kids.

Our final destination of the day was Veliko Tarnovo, which had been the capital of Bulgaria before and after the Turkish occupation, to do some shopping. Before we went back to the ship we stopped the bus on the side of the road so that our group could take some pictures of the ruins of the Tsarevets fortress, the former seat of the medieval tsars.

Saturday, October 16, Bulgaria: I mixed up the types of excursions that we experienced in the hope that each place we visited would have a unique memory. With that in my, our first activity in Vidin was a “Cooking with Mona” class. Tracey was happy because it was a hands on class and she made Banista, a traditional Bulgarian pastry dish. We went back to the ship after the class and our cruise director gave all of the extra Banista to the crew. It was too early to call it a day so after I dropped Tracey off I took a long walk in the rain. It took about twenty minutes to walk to the Banda Vida Fortress. It is a 17th century Turkish upgrade of a 10th century Bulgarian fortification, built upon the ruins of a 3rd century Roman fort. It was closed to the public so I took a quick loop around the fort, having the place to myself because of the rain, and then I returned to the ship.

Sunday, October 17, Serbia: Our morning started with a close up view of the Djerdap Dam as our ship went through the locks at dawn. The Djerdap Gorge is better known as the Iron Gates and it is where the Danube cuts through the Carpathian Mountains. Later in the morning we passed by the Decebalus Cliff where a Dacian king had his portrait carved into the side of a mountain in 100 AD. The carving was forty meters high and it was Decebalus’ way of thumbing his nose at Trajan, the Roman emperor who was his rival.

The rest of the morning was spent at the Lepenski Vir Archeological Park where the Serbs recreated a dig that included human remains from 9000 years ago. Our afternoon was spent at the Golubac Castle, a fortress that was built in the 14th century but had been overrun by Serbs, Magyars, and Turks. It is a major tourist attraction in Serbia

Monday, October 18, Belgrade: We started the day at the Palace of the Karadjordjevic Dynasty. Our guided tour of the grounds and the buildings were nice but the best part was meeting Crown Prince Alexander II, and his wife, Princess Katherine. Our U of L group had been told that there was a chance that we might meet the prince but we didn’t know if it would actually happen. Alexander gave a quick speech, had his picture taken with our group, and then he shook Tracey’s hand and patted her on the back as he left. As he passed by us I told the prince that Tracey is blind. He looked down and saw her cane and that is why he reached out to her. The princess, trailing right behind Alexander, said to me, “Thank you for bringing the good weather with you” because, after a solid six days of rain, the sun finally came out while we were at the palace.

The best excursion of our cruise was the Yugo Car Tour of Belgrade because of the

memories that it triggered. The Yugo was a piece of junk, having all the power of a lawnmower, a stick shift that took all of our driver’s strength to shift gears, no safety features at all and the whole vehicle felt like it would shake to pieces if we went over ten miles an hour. I loved the experience. It reminded me of driving around in Tod’s V.W. Bug while we were in college and Tracey said that it reminded her of packing six people into Ted Luna’s car to drive down to Fisherman’s Park.

Our driver was Rolph and he showed us the remains of some of the buildings that America destroyed in the 1990s. “Are the Serbians still angry at us?” I asked our guide. “Of course,” responded Rolph. “You bombed us.” Then, to lighten the mood, our driver told us the story of how the young people of Belgrade used to have roof-top parties as the bombs fell. It was safe to watch because the Americans would announce where and when we were going to bomb so the young Serbs could watch from a safe distance.

We arrived back at the River Duchess just in time to see a troupe of dancers perform for the passengers. It was almost too much good to happen for one day. If anyone had asked me, as our cruise ship pulled away from Belgrade, if our trip up the Danube was worth the trouble and the expense, I would have told them of the day that we met a prince and rode in a Yugo.

Tuesday, October 19, Croatia: In the morning we toured the city of Vukovar where the Croats held out against a vastly superior Serb army for 37 days in 1991. Then we took a bus trip to the Vucedol Archeological Museum before having lunch in Karanac. Our final stop of the day was at the Bjian Winery where we saw huge casks in the cellar and we drove past miles and miles of vineyards.

Wednesday, October 20, Budapest: We only had time for one tour today because our whole morning was spent being tested for COVID again. I wanted to do something different for our last day in Europe so we went to the House of Terror, the former headquarters of the secret police in the Soviet-era Hungary. The museum pulled no punches as it kept the prison cells and the execution rooms exactly as they had been before the breakup of the Soviet Union. The main attraction was a T-84 Soviet tank that was parked in the middle of the building and it was surrounded by hundreds of pictures of people who had been killed in the House of Terror. To lighten up a bit after we left the museum, our guide took us to Liberty Square where he could give us a running commentary on the art and architecture of Pest.

If we had been asked why we didn’t start our European adventures with a trip to London, Paris, or Rome, Tracey’s pat answer would have been, “anyone could do that!” Besides, it was fun to travel where comparatively few people have toured. The weather alone was enough to discourage most tourists as it rained on us for the for the first five days that we were in Eastern Europe. Cold, dark, and wet was exactly the weather that I was expecting, however, and I think that I would have been disappointed if it had been bright and sunny.

The whole trip to Europe could not have gone better and I cannot remember the last time that I was this happy for such a sustained period of time. I was so nervous before we left because this was my first time on a trans-Atlantic flight, my first time in Europe, and my first time on a river cruise. Once we finally arrived at our hotel, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. And when our trip was over, I continued to ask myself why we didn’t do this type of vacation before 2021. The hard fact is that Tracey and I were not in a position to do it until we retired in May.

As always, it was the other passengers that made our vacation interesting. We have found our tribe; these people were well-educated, well-mannered, and refined. Most of them were older than Tracey and me and that made them more interesting to talk to. They would describe

themselves as affluent and their occupations were as physicians, lawyers, and teachers. Tracey and I were the youngest passengers at 60 years of age and, like us, most of the passengers were retired. I was reminded that retirement is the great equalizer; these people obviously used to be important and powerful, but now no one really cared about their past work lives. It felt nice to be able to relax, full in the knowledge that the other passengers didn’t want anything from me, other than a new friend to talk to, and I didn’t want anything from them except fun people to share this experience with. We were literally all in the same boat together.

The other passengers taught me that life doesn’t end at 60; they had paid their dues and, to reward themselves, they take one vacation after another. “After all,” said one lady, “what am I going to do? Leave my money to my kids? They are doing well enough without inheriting anything.” This was a point of view that I hadn’t considered before and I found her opinion refreshing. So I have answered my own question on what do I want to do with my next thirty years that I have left on earth and the answer is to travel. This moment of clarity is just one of the reasons as to why our trip up the Danube was life-changing for Tracey and me.

And finally, an unintended consequence of this trip is that it really strengthened our marriage. Tracey and I have reached a new plateau, having the time, money, and energy to pull off a massive trip. It helped that we were in lockstep in terms of our goals and expectations. Tracey possesses the organizational skills to pull it off, liked the challenge of packing for an eleven day trip, and kept me from becoming overwhelmed. Our touring gave us some seasoning, made us more interesting people by having us transcend above our mundane lives, and separated us from the crowd a little bit. Our Eastern European cruise marks the beginning of a new phase in our lives, leaving behind our careers and the daily grind, and transitioning into what we will become, which is world travelers.

My Father Drives

                  Nobody liked to drive with my father.  Every time that he got behind the wheel he acted as though he were a gladiator in the Colosseum.  When he was in his teen years, he made his bones by driving trucks all over the Midwest, and that gave him the right to tell other people how to drive.  He would honk and yell at the other drivers and give them instructions on how to drive better.  On our road trips to Minneapolis or Vermont, Dad would prepare the car by strapping the luggage onto the roof to make room for the kids and dogs on the inside.  Then he would test his level of endurance by leaving our house in the middle of the night and drive until he exhausted himself.  Mom was his copilot, and her job was to read the map and to make sure that he had a supply of gum and a Coke at the ready.  When he was happy, Dad would whistle, and when “King of the Road” came on the radio, he would sing along to his favorite song.  I think that our road trips reminded him of his days of being a long-haul truck driver.

As time went by, his driving became worse because, while he was still as aggressive on the road as he had always been, his skills had diminished.  His eyesight became so bad that he would have to ask, after he had stopped for the traffic light, “Jeff, what color is the light?”  I would reply, “it’s red Dad.  I’ll tell you when it’s green!”  If he had to stop at more than two lights in a row, Dad would yell out, without any warning, “Every Goddam Light!”  It was hard to relax if you were a passenger in his car.  Eventually he couldn’t even drive anymore because of his eyesight.  One day, when he tried to take a sharp turn in his little Mazda sportscar, he hit the curb and the concrete scraped the side of the car.  Dad got out of the car, looked at the damage, and handed the keys to my mother.  He never drove again.

This came hard to a man who had few passions, and his love of driving was at the top of his list of things that made him happy.  My earliest memory was that of my father driving a little GM sports car at breakneck speeds through the backroads of Louisville.  It wasn’t a good memory because Dad drove so fast that I was terrified.  Cave Hill Cemetery is juxtaposed between the downtown area and our house in St. Matthews.  The road around the cemetery is full of twists and turns and Dad loved to take them as fast as possible.  I think that I left indentations on the dashboard because I had gripped it so hard in preparing for the crash that I was sure was coming.  Now that he had given up his driver’s license, Dad was deprived of the one thing that he unquestioningly loved.

Hawkeye is Alex Stephens

          One of the guys who worked out at Camp Van Dorn in 1980 was Alex Stephens, only nobody knew him by that name.  On the first day of camp Alex took on the nickname “Hawkeye,” because he wore an old red robe every morning and it was just like the robe that the main character from the television series, “M.A.S.H.,” used to wear.  Hawkeye was the chief of the Cherokee tribe but his real value was that he was a quiet leader and calming presence.  But he could also be silly.  For example, he couldn’t stand still when he brushed his teeth so instead he did a little dance.  Eventually, the idea of doing a “Toothbrush Dance” caught on and all of the counselors were doing it.  Another example of Hawkeye’s silliness is that when he drove his car he liked to wear a vintage aviator hat and he put on gloves.  It was a weird thing to do but the campers and counselors liked him in spite of his quirks.  

   The first day of camp was Saturday and the counselors were busy setting up their cabins.  George hadn’t had a chance to get to know his cabin mates, aside from packing up the truck at St. Alexander, so this was the first time that he had a chance to talk to Hawkeye.  George saw Hawkeye in the Camp Van Dorn parking lot and noticed that smoke was wafting from Hawkeye’s car when he opened the door.  Obviously, Hawkeye had been smoking a joint on the long drive into camp.  He hadn’t shaved and looked like he hadn’t put on a new set of clothes for a week.  Instead of getting angry at Hawkeye, Fr. Jubal Early looked him up and down and said, “you look like you have already been out here for a few weeks.”  It was a good line and was funny only because it was true.

   At twenty years of age, Hawkeye was the oldest counselor on the staff and he was not the type of person whom George would ordinarily know.  If this were the 1960s, an apt description of him would have been a hippy.  He had an unusual past, growing up in Knoxville but spending his summers in Aruba because his grandparents lived there.  Meanwhile, to release his unlimited supply of energy, Hawkeye had run cross country at Farragut High School.  When he was eighteen he was involved in a bad car accident and was put into a medically induced coma.  He wished that he had a good story to tell but the truth was that he had passed out in the back seat while his friend was driving when a drunk driver ran a red light and t-boned his car.  Hawkeye didn’t remember a thing about the accident.  Everything turned out fine medically but, feeling isolated and vulnerable from his time alone while recovering, Hawkeye almost joined a cult.  He made the mistake of showing interest to a group from “The Children of God” who tried to recruit him.  When the cultists arrived at his house, Hawkeye hid from them, and eventually a neighbor shooed them away.  It was a close call but, after the car wreck and an extended stay in the hospital, Hawkeye knew that he needed a change,  He called Fr. Early to get a job as a chief and escaped his enclosure at his parent’s house by working at Camp Van Dorn.

   George had never met anyone like Hawkeye before in his life.  Before his car accident, Hawkeye had gone hiking and camping many times and was so enthusiastic about being in the woods that he enjoyed Camp Van Dorn more than the campers did.  He was like a breath of fresh air; wild and free because he had been given a new lease on life.  All of his energy was bundled into a really small package as Hawkeye was thin, tone, and coiled, as if he was ready to spring at the least sign of any stimulus.  Hawkeye’s eyes were on high beam; always fully aware and sparkling with fun.  He constantly played with his shoulder length hair when the campers were between activities and, if he had to wait for anything, like standing in line to get into the mess hall, he couldn’t stand still and bounced in place.  Fr. Jubal Early like to kid Hawkeye by saying “I’ll bet that you were a pain in the ass to have in the classroom” because he was in constant motion.  He smiled, unsure if the comment as a compliment or an insult.  With Fr. Jubal Early, you never really knew what ground you were standing on.

   At first glance, Hawkeye looked like a typical twenty year old but, but upon closer inspection, with his long blonde hair tied up in a pony tail, and with his round John Lennon glasses and a golden ear ring, he looked like a throw back to the Woodstock era.  George liked to say that he didn’t want to hang out with just people like himself.  “How boring would that be?”  He was happy to spend time with Hawkeye.

   After his car wreck, Hawkeye was really into mental health and discovering his “spiritual journey.”  Mindfulness, and trying to figure out how to center himself, took up most of his attention.  On his finger, he wore a ring in the shape of a wave, and that reminded him to “go with the flow.”  Given the opportunity, Hawkeye told anyone who would listen that he would like to visit Northern California to hike Mount Shasta, which is a root chakra.  Most people have never heard of Mount Shasta, but apparently it is one of the roots of the Earth’s energy; it regulates the earth’s life and acts as a geyser of upward energy.  Mount Shasta is one of earth’s seven energetic chakras, which parallels the seven chakras of the body.  If he couldn’t make it to Shasta, however, then his alternate plan was to fly to Bangkok because he thought that he would like the energy there.  His plan, after his job as a camp counselor was over, was to support himself by becoming a teacher in Thailand.  If that job fell through then Hawkeye had a backup plan which was to become a bartender, a preschool monitor, or a real estate agent.  Really, it depended on what day that you talked to him about his future plans because they were constantly changing.

   When Hawkeye asked George what he brought to decorate the cabin the reply was “nothing!  I have become a minimalist.”  Hawkeye liked that remark a lot and used his trade phrase of “I love it” in response.  George and Hawkeye shared a nice bonding moment when he said that “I don’t collect things because objects could weight down your life.”  George was an amateur Buddhist and tried his hand at philosophy by quoting Buddha.  “The root of all suffering is desire,” was the best quote that he could think of but his efforts at talking about a subject that he had no experience in fell flat.

   They had some free time on that first Saturday afternoon and they spent their time together by chatting amicably.  They talked about nothing in particular, but what George really wanted to ask Hawkeye was, “What happened to you?”  They had already discussed the car accident and the convalescence afterwards, but something must have happened before that, a messed up childhood or something, for Hawkeye to look for answers to life’s questions at Mt. Shasta.  Deciding to probe gently and tread lightly, George asked him about his parents.  Either Hawkeye didn’t hear the question or he pretended not to hear; either way, he didn’t answer so George assumed that they are on the outs.  Hawkeye’s face darkened when he realized that George was trying to get him to open up about his past.  To lighten the mood, “Do you know what the Buddha would say?”  Hawkeye, responded, bracing himself for a lecture, with, “No, what would the Buddha say?”  This was a set up to a joke, so George told him “The Buddha would say, ‘You gotta let that shit go!”  Hawkeye liked the comic relief.  “I love it!”  That was enough honesty for awhile as George recognized that Hawkeye wouldn’t open up to him until he was good and ready.

Hawkeye (Alex Stephens) in 2010
   Nobody recognized Hawkeye when he entered the courtroom because he had changed so much.  While he had shoulder length hair at Camp Van Dorn, now it went all of the way down his back and he had braided some of the strands.  His hair used to be dark brown but it had lightened up because of all of the time that he spent in the sun and it was also streaked with gray.  When he pulled his hair back up into a ponytail the former counselors could see that Hawkeye wore a gauge in each ear and added a couple of earrings for effect.  When the counselors knew Hawkeye he had a perpetual three day beard, but now that beard thick and long and scraggly.  To complete the look, he wore a twisted stud in his nose so that everyone knew he was a rebel.

   While he didn’t know it at the time, the car wreck that sent him into a medically induced coma ended his formal education.  Hawkeye just couldn’t have any long term goals when he knew that his life could be snuffed out at any time and for no reason.  The plan had been to finish his summer at Camp Van Dorn and then travel to Mount Shasta or Bangkok.  He didn’t do either of these things because he got distracted by other places.  For example, he and a buddy drove to New Mexico so they could hike the trails.  They worked their way up to the La Luz Trail where there no accommodations so hikers had to carry a gallon of water to drink throughout the day to avoid dehydration.

   Hawkeye had a secret plan that he didn’t share with anybody, not even his hiking buddies.  Once he was old enough to retire and his parents had passed on, his plan was to move to Bhutan to take advantage of their free health care.  Not being able to pay for his insurance was Hawkeye’s single biggest fear.  He had read that Bhutan is the happiest place on earth because it put the well-being of its people above capitalism.  The country is rich in lumber, coal, and minerals but it refused to cash in.  The focus is on ecological harmony while long-term sustainability is emphasized over short-term gains.  Hawkeye liked the sound of that.   Also, most urban areas have 5g coverage. Free health care, good internet, and a government that was concerned about the environment: it sounded like heaven but the dream was so outlandish that Hawkeye kept it to himself.   

   After suing the drunk driver who caused the wreck that cost Hawkeye his health and desire to obtain long term goals, he was awarded enough money to fly to Australia and live in Melbourne for a year.  When the money ran out he moved to San Francisco where he could swim laps in the bay all year long if he wore a wetsuit.  He rented a room in Haight Ashbury so could be next to the house where Grateful Dead lived.  After his parents died he inherited enough to live in the Bay Area for a couple of years but when the money ran out, he moved back to Knoxville where the rent was a lot cheaper.  Since he hadn’t bothered to renew his driver’s license, Hawkeye chose to live in a neighborhood that was walkable and he took a bartending job in a saloon that was right around the corner.

   Hawkeye was into cross country in high school and trail running after Camp Van Dorn.  Since his knees had been giving him trouble, Hawkeye gave up running but took long walks instead, which is why he was still as thin as a rail.  He used this time to meditate and smoked a lot of weed to lubricate his mind.  He had a kit where he kept his marijuana and, first thing in the morning and before he took his walk, he would light up on the back porch.  And that is how he spent his days: working at the bar, sleeping eight to ten hours, getting high, and then walking to meditate.  It wasn’t the life for everyone but for Hawkeye, it was enough.  

Alcoholism

  In the movie, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Paul Newman plays Brick, a former college football star whose career was over. He felt trapped because he thought that his wife was cheating on him, his over-bearing father had become estranged from him, and Brick could not stand his extended family. To escape his problems, Brick began to drink. It was only when he “feels that click,” or when the alcohol affected his brain to the point where he became numb, did Brick get relief from his problems. Similarly, in the television show, “The West Wing,” Leo McGarry, the Chief of Staff for President Bartlett, who was often overburdened by his office, said “any true alcoholic prefers to drink alone.” Both Brick and McGarry felt trapped by heavy responsibilities or circumstances beyond their control so they drank to ease the pressure. As I watched the actors perform, I had the realization that I had a lot in common with their characters.

On some days, when my problems seemed to surround me and choked off my feelings, I used to get so uptight that I had tension headaches. Alcohol provided relief. At the end of the day, when I was worn out from work and training for the triathlon, a shot of whiskey and a couple of beers helped to take the edge off. Like Leo McGarry, I preferred to drink alone because I could only lower my defenses when I felt safe. If I were to stop off at a bar then I would only have one beer because I would be afraid of being pulled over for a DUI. Besides, I couldn’t relax in public. I drank when I was bored and had a long day filled with nothing important in front of me. I drank when I was feeling anxious and the alcohol took the crazy away for a while. I drank for no reason whatsoever because I didn’t need a reason.

Drinking alcohol made my brain feel like a living thing, it helped my blood flow, and it was like basking my thoughts in a warm blanket. It felt good to become numb. Without alcohol, especially at the end of the day, my brain felt like a lump of coal; cold, dark, brittle, and lifeless. And besides, I liked myself better when I drank because I could let go of my type A, controlling personality for a while. I could be my natural self under the influence of alcohol and that was another reason why I didn’t drink in public. There are those who turn mean when they drink but I was the absolute opposite; everyone was my friend and I liked to hug all the girls and back slap all the guys. Some people didn’t take that very well and, when I was a lot younger, my gregarious nature almost got me into a couple of fights.

My brand of alcoholism began when I was in the seventh grade. I met with a buddy and we walked up to the liquor store and hung out around the corner from the front door, waiting for someone to pull up and get out of their car. Before they could enter the store we would ask them to but us a six pack. Most of the customers ignored us but it only took one person, usually a twenty one year old guy who thought that it was funny that a thirteen year old kid wanted to get drunk, to take the bait and buy us beer. We gave them a couple of bucks for their trouble. Because we were young and stupid, we began drinking the six pack immediately, usually right behind the liquor store, and then save at least one for the walk back home.

In high school and college, everyone drank, so for me to over indulge wasn’t unusual. We all had our favorite bars that we went to on the weekends and then finished up at someone’s house or a dorm room. It was seen as the cool thing to do as long as you didn’t take it too far. My problem was that if one beer made me feel good then two would make me feel better. Taken to its logical extreme, the more beer the better, and I spent a lot of regretful Saturday and Sunday mornings nursing a hangover. If it took too long to get drunk on beer then it made sense to preload with a shot of whiskey. And if drinking to excess made me feel so good then why should I wait until five o’clock to start enjoying myself. Why not noon or even earlier. It was a slippery slope.

  

  When I used to have a house and a yard, I would pick up the kids right after school on Friday afternoons and start to drink. After a shot and a beer, I mowed the grass and then, after I finished the trimming, I downed another beer. The combination of alcohol, hard work, and the knowledge that the work week was over meant that I could truly relax. Once all the yard work was done, I sat by myself in a lawn chair in the shade and nap. The kids spied on me and laughed at me as I nodded in and out of consciousness but that was a small price to pay for a few moments of peace. While I basked in the glow of bourbon and beer, my thoughts and memories stewed. It was not necessarily a bad thing to sulk, and I am sure that there are better ways of dealing with depression and loneliness, but alcohol provided a quick fix.

Today, I barely touch the stuff. It isn’t that I don’t have the time to drink, it is that I don’t have time for the hangovers. Recovering from a binge has the same consequences as recovering from minor surgery. Besides, the kids are gone, my career is over, and we have moved into a small condo. The relentless pressure isn’t part of my milieu. My health has never been better because I have given up caffeine and alcohol. On my next birthday I will turn sixty and intend to live until I am at least ninety; I want the last third on my life to be absent of artificial stimulants and depressants so that I can enjoy the highs and lows naturally. If the emotions are pure then I won’t need alcohol to cloud or mask them for me.

  

    

    

Tijuana, San Diego, and Highway 1

    I enjoy the whole process of traveling because it inspires self-confidence.  While planning my California trip, I took care to schedule my trip well and enjoyed the challenge of making my flights, trains, and buses on time.  I love staying in hotel rooms, talking to the Uber drivers, taking the tours, and eating on the fly.  Further, I am proud to have taken on the long, hard days where I have travelled and toured by myself.  For some reason I look to Robert Kennedy Jr. as a role model.  Kennedy is rich and handsome and could have satisfied himself by being the scion of a martyred politician but instead he dedicated himself to environmentalism.  Similarly, I have inherited a fortune and I have decided to dedicate myself to self-improvement through travel.  Kennedy would probably say that the rich life was vapid, vacuous, and unrewarding.  There must be a job, or an idea, that is worth transcending to and that is why I like to spend time on the road.  

   Another role model for me is Aragorn, the once and future king, and hero of the “Lord of the Rings” novels.  When we first meet Aragorn he is sitting in the corner of a tavern, the dust covered man made weary by his travels.  No one knows that he is all powerful.  Like Aragorn, I like to disguise myself.  With my scraggy beard, backpack, and cargo pants, my affectation is that of a cool old guy; road weary and knowledgeable and potentially all powerful.  For example, I got a big kick out of being stopped by security in the foyer of the Hilton in San Francisco.  The officer said, “Excuse me sir, but do you have a room key?”  What security meant was that he wanted to stop stragglers from entering the premises to use the bathroom.  Clearly he thought that I did not belong in his high priced hotel.  “I’m checking in,” was my curt reply.  Or, there was the maitre’d at the Hilton San Diego who tried to dissuade me from using his restaurant by suggesting that I might be more comfortable eating at their patio grill.  After eating a lot of McDonald’s and Subway Foot-Longs during the week, I was ready for a salmon dinner with brown rice on the side.  I took no offense, because I knew that I looked like a bum, but I wasn’t going to be dissuaded either.
    I boarded a plane destined for San Francisco on an early Sunday morning 6:00 am flight.  I landed at 9:30 am, PacificCoast Time and called for an Uber.  My driver was Rita and we chatted amicably on the way to the pier where she dropped me off at the first stop of the bus tour.  I was determined to not repeat my previous trip to San Francisco, so I did not go to Pier 39, but instead rode the bus around town.  The idea was to run the whole circuit once and then stop off during the second loop to visit anything that interested me, but the only location that I thought was worth stopping for was Chinatown.  I had never been there before so I took my time window shopping and took selfies next to the Buddha statues that the shops had to offer.  It was fun but I walked to my hotel early and checked in, knowing that I had to get up at 4:00 am to meet my bus the next day.
    I had booked a tour down Highway One and had expected to meet a huge bus with a big, fat, and  old man for a driver.  I had been instructed to wait outside of my hotel at 6:00 am and, since these things rarely go on time, I sat down on the floor in the doorway to write down some notes and wait for my driver.  That was when Lisa first approached me.  Initially, I thought that she was a woman who had been clubbing because, in the dark, she looked like a party girl.  Suddenly, she was standing over me, and she asked, “Are you Jeff?”  I couldn’t have been more surprised to hear my name come out of her mouth.  It soon became clear that Lisa was going to be my driver for our two day tour.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  She was young and beautiful and, being back lit with the street light shining behind her, she looked like an angel.  Instead of having a fat old man to drive me in a school bus, I got someone much closer to a supermodel who got behind the wheel of a Rav 4.
   Lisa was not the type of person whom I would ordinarily know.  If this were the 1960s, an apt description of her would have been a hippy.  She had an unusual past, growing up in Buffalo but spending  her summers in Aruba because her grandparents lived there.  Meanwhile, to release her unlimited supply of  energy, Lisa had been a ballerina from throughout high school.  When she was eighteen she was involved in a bad car accident and was put into a medically induced coma.  Everything turned out fine but, feeling isolated and vulnerable, Lisa almost joined a cult at twenty two.  She made the mistake of showing interest to a group from “The Children of God” who tried to recruit her, and only through the intervention of a neighbor did she repel the cultists.  It was a close call but, needing a change, Lisa escaped Buffalo by becoming a surfer girl in Hawaii and a tour guide in California.
   I have never met anyone like Lisa before in my life.  She had led this tour many times before but she was still so enthusiastic that I think that she enjoyed our excursion down the Pacific Coast Highway more than I did.  She was like a breath of fresh air; wild and free with the demeanor of a big kid.  All of her energy was bundled into a really small package; thin, tone, and coiled as if she was ready to spring at the least sign of excitement.  Lisa’s eyes were on high beam; always fully aware and sparkling with fun.  She constantly played with her hair when we were between activities and, if we had to wait for anything, like standing in line to get out room keys, she couldn’t stand still and bounced in place.  I kidded her that “I’ll bet you were a pain in the ass to have in the classroom” because she was in constant motion.  She smiled, but I couldn’t tell if she took my comment as a compliment or an insult.  It was intended as a compliment.
   The great thing about being my age and happily married is that I am not looking for a girlfriend and cannot imagine dating someone like Lisa.  At 28 years of age, she is really into mental health and discovering her “Spiritual Journey.”  Mindfulness, and trying to figure out how to center herself, took up most of her attention.  On her finger, she wore a ring in the shape of a wave, and that reminded her to “go with the flow.”  Given the opportunity, Lisa told me that she would like to visit Northern California to hike Mount Shasta, which is a root chakra.  Since I have always been more into history than philosophy, I had never heard of Mount Shasta, but apparently it is one of the roots of the Earth’s energy; it regulates the earth’s life and acts as a geyser of upward energy.  Mount Shasta is one of earth’s seven energetic chakras, which parallels the seven chakras of the body.  Instead of going to Shasta, however, Lisa found herself called to fly to Bangkok because she liked the energy there, and she supported herself by becoming a teacher.  Unfortunately, the pandemic isolated Thailand, and Lisa was almost stuck permanently in that foreign country but flew out before everything closed down.  Before becoming a tour guide for our trip, Lisa had been a bartender, preschool teacher, and had earned a real estate license from the state of New York.  She also has her commercial driver’s license to become a tour guide whenever her friend’s company needed her, and that is how I came to meet her on an early Monday morning.
   The first order of business was to pick up the other people who had signed up for the tour.  Since the pandemic, few people are taking trips and what should have been a tour for twenty five people turned into a tour for four.  The other people on our tour were Linda, who is 70 years old.  She lives in Pittsburgh and is married to Al, who has established a career in coding software, and her son, Jeremy, who is severely mentally handicapped.  Linda’s other son is Dan, a mattress salesman who is married to Emily, the fourth person on our tour.  Emily and Dan share a twelve year old daughter and a common interest in the paranormal.  I know all of this because I spent two full days with Emily, Linda, and Lisa, and they shared everything with me.  That was fine but but I found Emily’s belief in the paranormal, and Linda’s constantly interrupting our conversations to ask questions, a little annoying.  However, since I am trying to become a better person, I did my best not to argue or criticize, but instead became quiet when Emily or Linda said something controversial.
   The four of us made an unlikely group as we drove the scenic route down the west coast of California.  Our first stop was at Moss Landing to watch the seals.  There were kayak excursions available here, but since no one signed up for them, Lisa drove us around a seventeen mile loop to see Pebble Beach and Carmel.  It was all so beautiful but we needed to break up the day so Lisa dropped us off at Cannery Row in Monterey to do some shopping.  When she picked us up, Lisa asked me what I bought.  “Nothing,” I said.  “I have become a minimalist.”  She liked that remark a lot and used her trade phrase of “I love it” in response.  We shared a nice bonding moment when I said that I don’t collect things because objects could weight down your life.  I tried my hand at philosophy by quoting Buddha.  “The root of all suffering is desire,” was the best quote that I could think of but my efforts at talking about a subject that I had no experience in fell flat.
   On Tuesday, we drove to Big Sur.  A lot of our two days together were spent in the car and, since I shared the front of the vehicle with Lisa, we chatted amicably.  It helped to pass the time, talking about nothing in particular, but what I really wanted to ask Lisa was, “What happened to you?”  Meaning, she must have had a messed up childhood to look for answers to life’s questions at Mt. Shasta.  Deciding to probe gently and tread lightly, I asked her about her parents.  Either she didn’t hear the question or she pretended not to hear; either way, she didn’t answer so I assumed that they are on the outs.  Her face darkened when we talked about her childhood, so I said, to lighten the mood, “Do you know what the Buddha would say?”  Lisa responded, probably fearing a lecture, with, “No, what would the Buddha say?”  This was a set up to a joke, so I told her “The Buddha would say, ‘You gotta let that shit go!”  Lisa liked the comic relief and said, “I love it!”  That was enough honesty for awhile and, to distract me and the other tourists, she connected her iPhone to the Rav 4 and put on her “Highway One Playlist.”  She knew the demographics of her customer base well, so most of the songs were from Motown.  We drove down “The One” while singing Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and all of the greatest hits from the 1960s.
   One of the items on Lisa’s bucket list is to ride a bicycle across the country and, when we saw a bicyclist on the side of the road, she parked the car and ran over to him.  The man’s bike was loaded down with panniers on the sides and front of his bike and he was grungy from a long ride.  He had been on the road for two months, had started his trip in Key West, and was ending it in Santa Cruz on the very day that we ran into him.  The guy must have felt like rock star because all four of us were making a big deal out of meeting him and were truly impressed with his cross country trek.  I swore that I would buy him a beer if we ran into him in Santa Cruz because that was our final destination as well.
     After spending the morning hiking in the woods at Big Sur, Lisa dropped us off at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz.  This boardwalk is similar to the one at Coney Island, filled with rowdy teenagers and sun burnt parents, and it definitely wasn’t my scene.  Hoping to spend more time with Lisa, I asked her where she was going, intimating that I would like to tag along.  Lisa didn’t like this line of questioning at all and clearly needed to keep some boundaries between her and her customers.  “As a tour guide,” she replied, “I am allowed breaks throughout the day so I am going shopping and then will meditate.”  She probably could guess that I didn’t want to do either of those things, so I took the hint, got out of the Rav 4, and strolled the boardwalk by myself.  After two hours, we met Lisa in the parking lot of a local hotel and said, “Hey Mom!  Thanks for picking us up.”  And she immediately joined the bit by asking, “did you kids have a good day?”  It was funny because all four of us joined in on the joke.
   Our final activity was to go and watch the surfers at the edge of town.  It was getting late and I had an attitude about what I thought was going to be a boring activity but Lisa was so enthusiastic that I couldn’t turn her down.  Watching the guys catch a wave turned out to be one of the nicer moments of the day and I chastised myself for having to learn the same lesson over again, which was “keep it light and loose and keep your mind open.”  
   Our day, and tour, was over and Lisa dropped Linda and Emily off at their hotel first.  She got out of the car and hugged them goodbye and we were on our way.  Once we arrived at my hotel, however, Lisa didn’t get out of the car and I awkwardly handed her the tip by reaching over the seats in the front of the Rav 4.  I didn’t even take offense at this because I am sure that Lisa is used to her customers hitting on her because she is so pretty.  She wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t interested in a tryst with a sixty year old man and I respected her for that.  I wasn’t interested anyway because I love my wife and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
   I took a thirteen hour Amtrak bus and train trip from San Francisco to San Diego.  The plan was to have a day of rest after touring for three days and it would be nice to have some solitude after the hours spent with Linda and Emily.  I encountered two surprises; the first was how crowded Amtrak was and the second was how many homeless lived next to the track.  As always, it was the people who made the trip memorable.  Four baseball players, who were taking a break from college, were on their way to watch the Padres but they argued incessantly amongst themselves over who they thought was the best player.  On the bus trip to downtown Los Angeles, a woman across from me gossiped non-stop on her phone and the heavy woman sitting next to men spilled over into my seat after she asked me if she could remove they hand rail that separated our seats.  Mr. Miles worked for a private security company and, since he took the train “four or five times a week,” he personally knew the conductor and the whole staff.  I am glad that I took the train but won’t ride it again because I could have rented a car and driven the distance in less than half the time that it took for Amtrak to get me to San Diego.
   Paul Theroux, the famous travel author, once wrote, “when everyone tells you not to go to a place, that is where you want to go.”  His advice always held some resonance with me, and I remembered Theroux’s words when I signed up for a tour of Tijuana.  Everyone I told about my tour said, “why would you want to go there?” Or, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”  As it turns out, Tijuana was the highlight of my time on the west coast.  My guide was Humberto and, because the pandemic had scared away so many tourists, I was the only one on this excursion.  In effect, I had unwittingly hired my own personal driver for the afternoon.  I said to Humberto, “show me your city,” and I think that he got a kick out of being unleashed.  Humberto took me to places that he would not ordinarily show to tourists.  We drove to the refugee camp where we saw thousands of immigrant from Honduras and El Salvatore who were hoping to gain entry into the United States by waiting next to the border.  We followed the border wall to its terminus in the Pacific Ocean and my guide told me the story of how two young girls drowned a couple of months ago when they tried to swim around the wall.  Our final destination was Tijuana’s “Red Building.”  It engulfed a whole city block and contained “The Hong Kong,” a giant strip club, on the inside.  On the outside, prostitutes leaned against the walls of the “Red Building.”  They were spaced out every ten feet or so but they weren’t like you see in the movies; the hookers were more interested in looking at their iPhones than in me and, if it weren’t for their revealing clothing, they looked like a bunch of women waiting for a bus.  Still, Humberto took off his tour guide badge and instructed me not to take any pictures because the prostitutes might think that we were government officials or something.  The idea behind the “Red Building” was that a man could drive around it, select a hooker, and then take her to a rented room above “The Hong Kong.”  It was all perfectly legal as the local government needed the tax dollars earned in the flesh trade.  Humberto asked me if I wanted to take a look around inside of the strip club and looked disappointed when I said no.  At the end of the day, I tipped my guide well and thanked him for what was, without a doubt, the most interesting part of my trip.
   Friday was a milquetoast day.  I took the trolley tour of San Diego, and then a boat tour of the bay, but it paled by comparison to the previous day’s trip to Tijuana.  I started out early and arrived at “Old Town,” a collection of historical California buildings brought to one place by the state, and had it to myself for an hour.  The trolley tour took me to the boardwalk on the harbor, and then the affluent area of Coronado which includes the hotel from the move “Some Like It Hot,” and finally Balboa Park, which contains the San Diego zoo and an air and space museum.  It really was a good day of tourism, and I am glad that I did it, but the trolly tour and the harbor cruise seemed a little too easy, a canned experience, for my taste.
   I met the airport shuttle bus in the hotel lobby at 4:15 am on Saturday.  San Diego closes its airport from 11:00 pm to 6:00 ambecause it is located right in the middle of the downtown area and the municipal authorities wanted to ensure some quiet time for the locals who might want to have some sleep uninterrupted by the roar of the airplanes passing overhead.  Only when I was safely on the flight home did I realize that I had enough of traveling after a week of being in constant movement.  I missed my wife and was tired of the road.  Apparently, seven days is about all that I am good for on a vigorous trip.  
    “The reason why I love this so much is because there is always that possibility that something can go wrong.”  That’s what Richard Gere said about a business venture in “Pretty Woman” but I think that the quote also applies to travel.  It all could have gone badly but I have learned some valuable lessons, the most important of which is to take care of all of your physical needs first.  Never pass up a chance to visit the bathroom, for example, and keep your sleep cycle intact as much as possible.  The second thing to do is to keep an open mind.  I tried to relax, enjoy myself, and welcome new experiences.  My final lesson is to take risks by striking up conversations with strangers.  I loved telling people that I am from Kentucky because that makes me unique on the West Coast.  The fact that I married a blind woman and that I participated in eleven Ironman competitions are also good conversation starters.  These three lessons made my trip go well and I patted myself on the back for making solid plans and for keeping a good attitude during the whole week.  My next solo trip will be to Machu Picchu in 2022 and Tracey and I will sail the Danube in October.    

Notes        
• Lisa tried to teach me some Swedish words, like Hej is the Swedish word for hello.  I told her, “You can try to teach me the Swedish words but they are never going to stick because I only have so much RAM in the brain and I choose not to use it for Scandinavian words.
• Lisa said that she meditates a lot during the day.  I compared meditating with writing in that I am always writing in my head.  If I take a long walk, I am writing.  When I am waiting for the bus, I am writing.
• Our group of four discussed dating and I said that smoking is not a deal breaker for me.  What I need is a wife who is smarter than me so that she will challenge me.
• Lisa said that I have a presence.
• When I told her that my scabs were falling off, Lisa said “we will be leaving part of Jeff in the car: and then laughed at her own little joke.
• Lisa kept her energy up for the whole trip.  She always kept some in reserve by taking breaks and meditating.  She wasn’t in to drugs or alcohol but turned on by doing yoga.  She likes the natural vibes and wants to go the the Mount Everest base camp in Nepal for the energy.
• When asked if she had a boyfriend, she demurred.  Lisa said that she had only one long term relationship but, “He couldn’t hang.”
• She would suddenly stop and start doing, deep knee bends, squats and others wise stretching
• Lisa seemed truly happy to see me when she caught up with me on the hiking trail; but, she embarrassed herself.  She had struck up a conversation with a middle age man at the bottom of a hiking trail.  When she asked him what he was doing, Lisa thought that he said that he was waiting for his better half.  I wasn’t in on that conversation but did meet that same man, who was with an old woman, on our way down from the mountain.  Lisa asked the woman, who was much older than the man and clearly not his wife, if she was married because Lisa thought that the old woman was the significant other that the middle aged man was referring to.  “No,” said the woman, who was clearly confused by this line of questioning, “my husband passed years ago.”  Not to be deterred, Lisa asked the man where his wife was and he replied, “she is staying at the lodge.”  It became clear that the old woman and the middle aged man were not married and didn’t like the inference.  As the saying goes, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”  Lisa was embarrassed that she had made such a mistake and said “well, we’ll be leaving now” and all of the people involved were left confused by this altercation.  Cute because she showed us her vulnerable side.
• I don’t want to vacation with people like me.  How boring would that be?  Lisa was the perfect companion for a two day tour but she would drive me crazy in the long run.  I did my best not to screw up our relationship..
• I would like to do a five to seven day camping excursion, where they hang out at the end of a long day and pass the bottle around to swap stories, and I could hang out with twenty Lisa’s.
• Unflappable.  Didn’t let her customers get under her skin and was very patient
• When we had breakfast together, Lisa looked like an ordinary twenty eight year old woman but, but when she was driving down the road with her hair messed up because she had the windows down, and with her aviator glasses on and a nose ring through her right nostril, she looked like a rock star tour guide.
• I told Lisa that I actually cleaned my hotel room a bit before I checked out.  “Of course you did,” she exclaimed.  I said that you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat the staff.
• Emily immediately got on her phone to research me.  I told her, “Just look up Jeff Frazier in Louisville, Kentucky, and I’ll come right up!”
• They really liked hearing me read from my book and were interested in what I wrote.  Linda said that it was cool hearing an author read from his own work
• I think that I lost the other three when I told them stories from my old cheerleading days, or my commentary on how the bums of Las Vegas deserved their fate. 

Las Vegas Boulevard

                    Las Vegas Boulevard

   “When I sin, I like to sin clean.”  This is a quote from Ernest Hemmingway’s mistress and is applicable to our family trip to Las Vegas because, in Vegas, it is all about the cash.  There are no pretensions to altruism and everything was exactly as it appeared to be.  It was all surface stuff.  There were party girls who would do anything for you if you bought them a drink.  These girls did not believe in healthy living; they were loud, immensely overweight, and looking for a good time.  There were other women, the ladies of the evening, thin and hard and muscle-bound, who took their craft more seriously.  They looked me up and down, trying to decide if I was worth the effort, knowing that their time being young and attractive was limited so they were trying to make their best deal while they still had the time.
   I have a hard time sleeping at night and, since my sleep schedule was still on Eastern time, I was up and ready to go when many people in Sin City were just winding down their Saturday night.  Let me take a few minutes, Jack Kerouac style, to describe what I saw on Las Vegas Boulevard as I took my walk at 4:30 am.  The homeless population made an impression.  There was a guy who was taking a dump in front of Caesar’s and was singing at the top of his lungs so that the pedestrians walking by could not but help to witness his natural act.  Another homeless guy blocked the stairs leading to the pedestrian bridge, clearing enjoying the temporary power that he held over the tourists, while a casual observer said, “He’ll move” to the couple that was climbing the stair case.  I took an escalator up to the “Denny’s” that was on the second floor but when I reached the top a young lady barfed up all of the contents of her stomach.  Instead of waiting in line, standing in someone else’s puke, I immediately took the escalator back down again to the ground floor and exited to the boulevard.
   Joseph Conrad wrote, in “Heart of Darkness,” how civilized adventurers journeyed into the African bush to see how the savages lives.  Similarly, I am a rich white guy from Kentucky so I walked Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:30 in the morning to see how the other half lives.  I wasn’t looking at the drunks with a disapproving glare of a saint.  No, I gave each participant a quick glance, without judgement, and then moved on.  Keeping my head on a swivel, I was careful to be aware of my surroundings, but sensitive enough to take note of anything unusual.  For example, I saw a man in a wheelchair at “The Venetian” who had locked himself in the stall in the public bathroom and who was using the toilet to wash out his clothes.  There were fake showgirls who wore nothing but pasties, a thong, and a feathered headdress who charged you twenty dollars to have your picture taken with them.  The homeless were passed out on the sidewalk or laying in the decorative bushes.  Meanwhile, there were police officers outside of “The Flamingo” who were sweeping the ground with their flashlights, looking for evidence.  A large black man was bending wheeled out of the casino on a stretcher.  He was well dressed and looked high class but the paramedics were taking his to an ambulance for what was probably dehydration.  
   This is not a “there but by the grace of God go I” type of story.  No, these people deserved their fate.  They were the lowest form of humanity, black or white, hugely overweight, dull and simple and willfully uneducated.  The people who lurked on Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:30 in the morning were my worst nightmare; dull and simple and content to remain that way.  They were satisfied to wallow in their own filth and interested only in making a buck.  There were no winners on Las Vegas Boulevard at that time of the morning, only losers.  Many of the partiers were young but they they had already let themselves go; the women wore cheap Lycra body suites that revealed an over-flowing gut, spilling over their waistline.  The young men had already developed a slight bend to their posture, the weight of their lives had been a burden. They must have know, deep down in the recesses of their minds, that they were only young once so they may as well burn through their youths while they could because their bodies, and their minds, would degenerate soon.  Looking through the situation in that lens the whole thing was just so sad.

Not everything that I saw fit into a paragraph form.  I have written some bullet points on the other things that I saw on Las Vegas Boulevard.      

1. A Couple of little kids following their parents at 4:30 am
2. Cannot tell, by the way that they are dressed, if the women are prostitutes or if the men are pimps
3. Openly smoking marijuana because it is now legal in Nevada
4. Keep your distance, don’t gawk, and they will leave you alone.
5. Garbage picker looking in canisters for aluminum cans to recycle
6. Compare clientele of the Flamingo to the clientele of The Wynn.
7. “I like the energy,” said the white guy, encouraging the black girls to continue to yell at the traffic, hoping to get some play
8. A drunken woman sitting next to me blurted out, “I’m going to sleep right here!” And then passed out at the bar.
9. Whores were looking me up and down, trying to decide if I could be their last trick of the night before their evening’s work was done.  Most of them couldn’t be bothered to look up from their iPhones
10. A couple had just finished with their tryst.  The woman said goodbye to her partner before leading him to a cab.  After she was sure that he had left, she called a cab for herself.
11. A bachelorette party was winding down and the girls were twerking with absolute strangers as they danced up to the hotel bar.
12. A bunch of fraternity brothers were egging each other on by yelling, at 4:30 in the morning, “Do you want to go to bed or do you want to see some strippers?”  It was a rhetorical question because the answer was so obvious.
13. Wannabe rock stars pressed home made CDs into our hands in the hopes of getting five dollars for each copy.
2. The Buddhist monks, who wanted five dollars for a beaded bracelet and a prayer, weren’t even real monks.  “Everything here is fake!” Said Grant.  I replied with, “the beauty and the tragedy of Las Vegas is that everything is fake.”















































































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