After a nice week celebrating both Dad’s and Sam’s birthdays, and doing some last-minute planning, Monday morning, Dad and I got up, got cleaned up and ready, and Sam drove us to the airport. Hugs and goodbyes, and Dad forgot his cane in Sam’s car. (Dad doesn’t need a cane, precisely, but he finds it helpful.)

Check-in at the kiosk. We were flying American Airlines, ‘fancy’ coach, through Dallas to Las Vegas. We each had a big suitcase to check, a personal item, and I also had a rolling carry-on that I didn’t really need with me, but didn’t want to spend money to check. No big problem getting through security. Found the gate, then took ourselves to a nearby airport restaurant for breakfast. This restaurant was focused on ‘boards’, like charcuterie boards, and the breakfasts were a little weird. Dad’s was based around hard-boiled eggs, and mine was about salmon and cream cheese, but not bad. Our waiter was a technically nice, but clearly bored, young man. The funniest part was after he sold us expensive bottled water, he came by later and refilled our glasses from a pitcher of tap water. Dad and I just looked at each other.

Flight #1 was fine. One cool thing is, unlike Delta which will often offer to let you check your carry-on, but you have to get it back from them right at the jet bridge, American will just check it through to your destination. So I handed off my roller and didn’t have to worry about it any more.

I so rarely travel with someone else, I wasn’t quite sure how to pick our seats. I’d booked aisle and window, in the hope that no one would show up for the middle, but apparently that’s not really a thing any more (all our flights were completely full, almost). When we got to our row, middle-seat guy was already seated, but we offered him the window, which he was happy to take, and I took middle, because I’m a good son. By this point, I think, I’d already discovered that I was missing a knitting needle, so couldn’t actually knit on the plane, one of my favorite ‘I’m trapped in this seat’ activities. Oh well. I read and listened to audiobooks and music.

On time landing in Dallas/Fort Worth. The app had warned me that we didn’t have a lot of time to get to our next gate, and good thing they warned, because DFW is huge and we had to take the shuttle train to a different terminal. But we got there in time for me to quick run grab us a couple of sandwiches. And we wolfed them down just before boarding time. Whereupon:

• First, the plane was too hot so we couldn’t get on.
• Then they let us on.  I’d booked us into a one-off 2 person row in front of the exit window, so that was good, no middle seat problem.
• Someone ‘unplugged the plane’ accidentally.
• In reboot, some warning signs were hit – they needed maintenance to come out.
• The auxiliary machine to give us power ran out of gas.
• Then a thunderstorm hit and, because of danger, no one could push us out or refuel the auxiliary.
• So we had to deplane and sit around waiting for all of these things to be solved.

Finally, we got back on and left.  Were about 3.5 hours late to Las Vegas, way past both our bedtimes.

Flight itself uneventful, once off the ground. Once in Vegas, they routed us to the farthest luggage carousel, which then turned out to be the wrong one – but the right one was right next to it. Corralled my tired dad off to the rental car shuttle – would we still have a car? Yes, turns out we did.

(as always, once you actually do the travelling, you can see ways you could have done it better. For instance, I’d waffled about renting the car right as we got to Vegas, or waiting until we were ready to move on to LA before picking it up. We picked it up right away – and then didn’t use it at all in Vegas.)

Neither Dad nor I had been to Vegas before. The Vegas airport is close, so shouldn’t be that hard to get to our casino hotel, the Park MGM. But tootling down the road, all of the sudden, this police car ZOOMS in front of us, pulls across the road, and a cop jumps out and lays traffic cones across the road. Like – suddenly we’re trapped! What’s happening? Turns out this was some sort of traffic control measure for a sports game letting out, and we just had to kind of sneak around what he’d just done and keep going. But it was really startling and not at all what we tired people three time zones off were looking to deal with.

Parked the car in the garage, got the luggage in, checked in. Were asked ‘would you prefer closer to the elevator, or quieter’? We chose ‘quieter’, which may have been a mistake, because it was approximately a mile from the elevators, heh. Room had a Strip view, cool, but no coffee maker. Also, the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen – the door to the bathroom was also the door to the closet, and it slide back and forth. So if the bathroom was closed, the closet was open and vice-versa. But it was a reasonable amount of space and the beds were fine.

Now it’s like 8:30 local time, and Dad would have gone to bed hours ago, and we hadn’t had dinner. We wandered downstairs through the casino looking for a restaurant and ended up in a sports-betting bar where you could order food. Dad ordered one of his odd versions of a negroni or such (and ended up with this enormous amount of booze) and I got a cosmo, and we each got bar food – he got tacos and I got a chicken sandwich or something. Maybe a second drink each, wine, probably. Served with very cheap plastic cutlery, and water in plastic cups. It was all perfectly adequate. Then I got my first “welcome to Vegas” surprise – the bill, with tip, was over $100. Holy crap. (a guide told us later what we’d already figured out – they lure you in with cheap rooms, then overcharge on everything else)

And off to bed.