A man came in today to buy lottery tickets and identified himself as the one who left me a generous tip. He bought a 20$ scratch ticket, scratched it right there, won 35$, and gave me 5$!
What an easy and inexpensive way to do something nice for someone.
My first morning in Las Vegas had me being driven down the Strip to McCarran airport in a stretch limo.
There, I climbed into a tiny helicopter that took me over the Mojave desert, within view of Mead Lake and the Hoover dam, all the way to the Grand Canyon. We landed within it and were given time to explore and enjoy a champagne brunch.
Let’s just say this was a more luxe experience than I normally go for. I was until then a backpacker, a camper, a youth hosteler, not someone who stays at a nice hotel and drinks fancy drinks by a pool lined with palm trees! And I most certainly was a frugal traveler, not one who would do such extravagant things as take a half-day helicopter ride from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. Nope!
I’m not sure what came over me during my planning of my southwest road trip. I’ll plead mental exhaustion, what with the stress of having lost my dad earlier that year. I needed to be pampered and catered-to, to do things just for fun to reawaken my zest for life. I didn’t know if I’d ever come back to that part of the US and I was so close to the Grand Canyon. The helicopter jaunt sounded like the perfect way to see the Canyon with the time I had available to me. It just about broke my budget, but it is now one of my most cherished memories.
Rather than taking photos during this jaunt, I made full use of the video setting on my camera, so the following images are stills from my movies, explaining the poor quality. Unfortunately, the second half of my Grand Canyon recordings have been lost due to reshuffling between several computers. I have managed to save a picture of me at the bottom of the canyon, proof enough that I was there even if someone did tell me that the image seems to be photoshopped. 😀
a glimpse of the Strip
Lake Mead
Mojave desert
Colorado River and the Grand Canyon
a non-photoshopped picture of me at the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Sometimes you end up in a place where you get the chance to experience an incredible adventure. Do it and @%@$ the budget. I applied this lesson when I decided to hike the Chilkoot Pass at a time when I financially had no business doing so.
Alcatraz Island is breathtakingly beautiful in a barren and desolate sort of way, architecturally graceful ruins blending in perfectly with scrub grasses, trees, and various flowers. Birds abound and, in fact, most of the island is white with guano. It is a stark, foreboding place, but truly beautiful. Some might think me crazy to find that place so pretty, but it is if you like ruins that blend in so thoroughly with their natural surroundings that you could not possibly imagine one without the other, then Alcatraz is the place for you.
I spent a sunny day touring the ill-famed Rock. Even though it houses one of the most notorious US jails and was the site of native protests, today the island is a peaceful bird sanctuary that belies the supposed horrors that went on between the crumbling walls of the prison.
chapel
mint green on the exterior
interior sampling of the mint green and baby pink colour scheme
those marks on the floor are bullet spray from a shooting during a hostage crisis
inmates had a lot of time on their hand (the knitting alone provides an interesting image, but the hot pink yarn is too much)
sample menu
The architectural details of the place are striking, showing an aesthetic that belies the purpose of the building. Add the surprising mint green and baby pink colour scheme and Alcatraz does not even remotely look as you would expect it would.
As it turns out, the prison’s reputation was not entirely warranted. I learned there that inmates actually tried to get transferred to Alcatraz as it was a more comfortable prison with some of the best food in the penal system. This is not to say that some of the stories that have come out of Alcatraz are not true; it was a brutal place housing hardened criminals, but there was a softer side to the Rock.
I had expected that I would return from my day on Alcatraz completed drained rather than refreshed, and instead learned that I should never assume anything, a lesson I applied during a humbling visit of the town of Banff.
I found out this evening that my sporadic part-time work schedule is going to come to an end in the new year. Starting January 2nd, I will be on a four day on, four day off, two pm to 10pm schedule. I could not have written a more ideal schedule for myself!!! It’ll be enough money to be to do renos and travel in my time off, and four day weekends will permit me to explore even the far flung corners of the Island.
I’m off tomorrow and Tuesday, so I’m going to go hand out resumes in the hopes of getting extra hours for the holiday season, but it sure seems that life will be a bit easier come the new year.
There hasn’t been much going on other than work. So long as I’m only working part-time, that’s all that’s going to be going on. I keep on applying for other work and working contacts for contracts, but nothing has panned out so far. I’m okay with the situation thus far in that I had braced myself for little travel and renovation until the new year, but something’s gotta give! I do have a nice blog pay cheque coming in at the end of December and that will be used for an excursion. Not sure yet what I’ll do, but I have until January to figure it out.
Work has settled into a routine; it’s definitely much, much, much better than the first couple of days would have left me to believe. I’ve been able to talk to the manager about my concerns and they have all been resolved.
I work a few four-hour mid-day shifts and a few eight-hour evening shifts, respecting my desire to never start before 10. Most of my shifts are alone. The manager used to stay on site while I worked, but he no longer does that, only returning at closing to lock up. He says I will be getting a key to the store and an alarm code tomorrow. Combine that with the inside key and safe code I received earlier this week and I’m now at the same level as the other employees.
As for the title of this post, that’s my title at the store. I call the manager the ‘President of All That.’ 😀