Ten-Finger Exercises

fly, flew, flown

What fun! We finally got out of here Friday, amid gusty clouds and threatening rain. The temperature was still warm enough though that we didn't worry about icing up the plane, and the forecast for Nevada looked good. It wasn't clear and bright, and we flew into quite a headwind, making the trip to Reno take nearly five hours altogether, but it was a celebration just being up. The countryside was barren but interesting, mountains and sand dunes and peaky little hills in the middle of nowhere that look like volcanoes but have no holes or cinder tops. I took a lot of pictures, but I was flying on the sunny side going down; so between the sun and the haze, they didn't come out very sharp. I took a lot of an area where the earth's crust tore apart: mountains on each side with a wide, flat center that didn't look water eroded. Wish I'd had Earth Science in college. Everyone took it because it was the easy physical science requirement. I didn't take it for the same reason. I took physics instead--stupid, stupid, stupid! Then after failing that, took geology. Wish I remembered more of it though.

Our intended destination had been Las Vegas, not for the gambling, by any means. We were glad Friday that we'd found a room in Reno instead, because we arrived shortly before it got dark. We would have had to fly another couple hours to reach Vegas. The air show was what Bill wanted to see, so we did miss that. He'd like to go to the air races in Reno some year, in September; we did look around and ask questions with that in mind.

Friday night we just stayed in the hotel, walked around some after dinner and went to bed early. Saturday we'd intended to rent a car and drive out to the Lake Tahoe and around. It was pouring rain, and the rental car places had no cars left! I guess because it was a 3-day weekend, everything was booked. So we wandered from one casino to the next, up and down the strip. On my only previous experience with casinos, when we spent the night in some smaller Nevada town on the way back from Arizona, I'd decided that a casino looked as close to hell as anything I'd ever seen. Garish, full of hopeless looking people drinking and smoking, pulling those levers with a steady, monotonous motion, hoping to make their lives change.

This looked much better. Mainly, there wasn't much smoking allowed, and people didn't seem to be drinking much either. Of course, that was nighttime, and this was day. There were still plenty of lone souls who looked as if they haunted the place, sometimes winning. They didn't show much emotion, didn't look like they were losing or winning, just plowing their way through the motions of having a good time. The people who came together in groups, especially women, laughed and cheered for each other. They were the lively ones, and I wanted to cheer with them too.

Circus Circus was a disappointment. I thought there'd be lots of acts, but only saw one. Mostly it seemed like a training camp to turn kids into gamblers. Lots of kid things to do, which won tickets that they could buy prizes with. It's no different than the average carnival, and I never thought particularly badly about that, but this was on such a grand scale and surrounded by all that gambling. And the hotel didn't even have a pool!

But we had fun anyway. I've always been a little intolerant of gambling, and found myself enjoying the nickel poker machines. I could play for a very long time on $5, never getting far enough ahead to cash in my earnings, but not far behind either. It was a good experience to feel that urge to not leave with five quarters still in my pocket. I'm too tight with my money to ever make gambling a hobby, but I was glad to see how people could have a good time.