I knew that the first day was going to be chaotic, having booked an early flight out of Newark, departing 7:29am eastern time, and set to touchdown in Phoenix at 9:55am local time. But since I was working the night before (well, at least until 5am, anyway), I hoped to catch a few Zzz's on the plane, and then be relatively ready to go once we landed.
Of course, it did not work out that way.
Indeed, the guy that was supposed to relieve me showed up on time. Right on the dot, actually. Then, my ride (my ex-wife, who was bringing our son) found the place easily enough, and was also on time. So far, two for two.
It was still very early in the morning, and still predominately dark out. We got to the airport smoothly, with hardly any traffic. All still appeared to be going smoothly.
We said our goodbyes, and he hugged her hard and watched his mom drive away, and then we turned and set our sights on the airport and the upcoming flight. I found the airline okay, and began the process of getting the tickets.
Only, the computer told us we needed to go to seek special assistance. We hit our first real snag when we were told that our flight had been cancelled. I had been suspicious of this from the night before, when I received two calls in quick succession regarding the flight. But they gave me a number to call back, and when I did so, it asked me what I was calling in reference to, which was strange. Maybe I did something wrong, but it said nothing about this, which meant that we went to the airport assuming the flight was still on, even when it was not.
We were told to go to "Door 5," which sounded ominous. I was picturing a small room where we would be scrutinized, or some bureaucratic nightmare at best. It proved to be the latter.
We went on line, and had more than enough time to talk to some of the people already on line before us. One woman was with her young son, who was leaving by himself (to San Francisco or San Diego, if memory serves me correctly). She was just trying to get a pass for herself to go through security and escort him to his gate. Then another lady, who mentioned that this was not the first time that a flight had been cancelled on her (although it was the first time for us). She said that this happened frequently with United, and was a sign that they did not really care about their customers.
About maybe 45 minutes passed, with the agent trying to juggle a bunch of different options. There were numerous possibilities with literally cities across the country, from as nearby as Washington's Dulles Airport to Seattle. Most of the connecting flights were long waits, and it seemed for a while that the best that they could do was to have us land in Phoenix early in the evening, sometime between 5pm and 5:30pm. It seemed that all of my pains to get an early flight (and leave work early by two hours in the process) were in vain.
Then, finally, I guess she tried something else, and found something. It was a flight to Las Vegas, departing Newark at 8:31am, and arriving in Las Vegas at 10:57 local time. There would be a connecting flight to Phoenix at 12:40pm, and we should arrive in Phoenix at approximately 1:30pm or so.
Okay, so we would not have quite as full a day to work with as we had hoped (or at least as I had hoped), but this was the best that could be expected under the circumstances. We rushed out of "Door 5" and went through the security checkpoint, which was not too bad of a wait. Found the gate, then waited for a while before boarding. I let my son have the window seat, because it seemed more important to let him enjoy the scenery and everything.
We took off, and were both excited about it. Maybe this makes me sound like a kid, but it still feels exciting, that whole process of taking off. The initially slow movement (but at least you are no longer just sitting there waiting in a parked plane), then the approach towards the runway, the airplane then revving up, and finally picking up speed before lift off. We were airborne, and the next stop was Las Vegas.
The scenery from the air at first was routine, with the greenery of the wooded east giving way to farms. I eventually fell asleep, which I was glad about. Maybe an hour or two later, I woke up, as we were approaching the Rockies. When we reached them, the captain made an announcement that we were approaching the mountains, and to expect turbulence. It was exciting for both my son and I to look out the window and see the snowcapped mountain peaks relatively nearby, lending a soft look to otherwise surely jagged peaks like so many of the other, surely lower peaks that we saw otherwise.
We were out west, finally. And we kept on flying, and the ground went from looking still predominately green in between the mountains, to looking more brown then anything. We flew past some impressive peaks, and were told that we would be arriving in Las Vegas shortly, and the flight attendants should prepare for landing.
The descent came, and we were suddenly at the same altitude as an impressive looking, jagged mountain (albeit bereft of snow). Las Vegan has some impressive peaks nearby, some reaching almost 12,000 feet above sea water, and over 9,000 feet above the city itself, although I do not know if the peak that we saw nearby was the famous Mount Charleston or not. It did not have any snow on it, and no snow was visible anywhere, even in the distant mountains. Las Vegas was somewhere around here, we knew, but we still did not see much of anything out there. Once past the mountain, however, we saw human development. Before too long, we were above the suburbs and, as we landed, we saw the famous part of Vegas.
It was incredibly close to the runway, and I vaguely remembered a friend explaining how close the runway was to the main part of town. The famous hotels were right there! We could see the Eiffel Tower (the scaled down, Las Vegas version of it, anyway). We saw fake Paris and fake New York City. The MGM Grand. The pyramid, with the Sphinx in front. The Stratosphere Tower, which reaches an impressive height of 1,149 feet, or 350 meters. My son mistook it for the CN Tower, and I reminded him that that was in Toronto, in Canada, and that we had been there before. This was Vegas, and neither of us had ever been here before.
I was admittedly glad to see the Eiffel Tower, because it had always intrigued me, the thought of an exact replica. Not having seen the real one in a decade and a half now, it was a nice consolation, although it did not feel at all like the same thing. For one thing, it most certainly does not tower over the rest of the city, like the one in Paris does, where you can see it from everywhere. It looked like there were numerous buildings around that were taller than it, actually. We got clear views of it from the air, and from certain vantage points on the runway. But when we were at the airport, we could barely see the tip of it.
That is one thing about the Vegas Eiffel Tower that I am not a big fan of. The other is that it is so crowded around it. The thing that makes the Eiffel Tower so interesting and pleasing in Paris is that it is a fairly modern looking, tall tower that both dominates and compliments the city. There is plenty of space around it, and it stands out as being unique, truly a site to behold. In Las Vegas, the Eiffel Tower looks like just one more gimmick, one more thing to think that this city truly stands apart from other cities. Hell, there are buildings all around it, even a part of a building underneath, so that it truly does not stand out on it's own, but is just one more thing in an overly busy scene - the polar opposite of the real Eiffel Tower in Paris, which feels tranquil, somehow.
In truth, a lot of what is to be seen in Las Vegas is cheap imitation, from the scaled down Eiffel Tower and Paris, to the scaled down New York City skyline, to the imitation pyramid and Sphinx, to the scaled down Venice (which we could not see). Vegas is where you go to escape the everyday, yet there is a definite aspect of it that blends the worst elements of our everyday. Advertisements everywhere, with glitzy lights competing to draw your eye. And all of it, of course, for money. Money, money, money. That is what Vegas is all about, and you can tell that from just how crowded the city skyline was. It truly looked like a mirage in the middle of the desert.
As it turned out, we had a limited view of these things from inside of the airport. I was tempted to go out and explore the city a little more than just from the airport, only we had the boarding for the next flight in a little over an hour. That did not allow much room to explore, so we stayed in the airport.
However, we were both hungry, and so I got us lunch. It proved to be super expensive, and pretty much everything in the airport was, quite predictably. For two sandwiches, one drink, and a small package of Doritos for him, it came to $30. At least they gave us a lunch bag with it, which proved to be our only physical souvenir from the city.
This was as far west as we would be on this particular trip. Already, boarding the plane to Phoenix, we would begin the process of heading eastward. The flight was delayed, first by twenty minutes, then by significantly more. I was feeling the loss of time affecting the trip in a negative way, as the first day was an important one, hoping as I was to drive down to the Mexican border to cross over into Nogales, Mexico.
Eventually, we took off from Vegas, and again enjoyed some of the views of the surrounding area. The circus like appearance of Las Vegas's famous casinos and hotels, the palm trees everywhere, and the surrounding mountain ranges. We flew over some of the clearly affluent suburbs, and there was one neighborhood in particular (I know not which one by name) where I had a difficult time seeing any properties without sparkling aqua colored swimming pools in the back yard.
As we flew out of the Vegas area, we saw the vast expanse of brown desert, broken by mountains and Lake Mead. It was interesting to see this huge lake in the middle of the desert. It really was long, and huge! I was not aware of it prior to this trip, but marveled at the site of it as we flew over. It seemed to go on for quite a long time, and I presume that this serves as drinking water for residents and tourists in Las Vegas.
This was the "free" bag that came with the purchase of lunch. Expensive lunch, but I will admit that the bag served a purpose later on the trip, keeping lunch and water cool, and holding a surprisingly large amount of stuff within!
Lake Mead from above. Again, it just seemed to keep going and going, but it was an interesting contrast to see what appeared like a sparkling blue lake smack in the middle of the desert like this, with mountains surrounding on all sides.
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