Cross Country Drive Day 1: Nevada

Annie and I drove from Tahoe City, CA, to Lexington, KY, convoy-style in two separate cars over the course of 7 days.  We departed her parents' house at about 7:30am on January 2nd, drove around the north half of Lake Tahoe, and headed down through Nevada toward Las Vegas.  I have never been all the way around Lake Tahoe, but the first part of our drive was spectacular.

Day #1

Once we were in Carson City, and the rest of Nevada stretched out in front of us.  We planned the first day to be the longest, since we were well-rested after 2 weeks of celebrating the holidays at snow-less (but Zumba-full) Tahoe.  Before that, we had packed our cars full of stuff in Oakland and sent the rest of it with movers.

Nevada kind of gets a bad rep for being awful to drive across.  Honestly, I've seen worse.  The drive from L.A. to Vegas is awful.  Nothing I've seen yet compares to the god-forsaken drive across South Dakota (which I did as part of my previous cross-country trip from Michigan to California in 2008).  Throughout the whole drive, you have mountains in the distance on both sides, so it makes for an interesting terrain to drive through.  Plus, I got to drive by Yucca Mountain, which holds a special place in the hearts of nuclear engineers throughout the country.  I also went by Area 51.  How many people can say that?

It wasn't perfect, though.  We weren't really on a freeway.  I mean, why would they have a freeway running between the 3 most important cities in NV?!  So, if at any point we were stuck behind someone going 20 mph below the speed limit.  We were stuck behind them for good.  Annie refuses to pass people.  Let's also point out that you have to stop and go 25 mph through the 4-5 random towns along the drive.  Towns filled with nothing but modular homes.  After this trek, I'm forced to wonder what percentage of the population of NV resides in a modular home.

Finally, we finished our drive just past Las Vegas.  I begged Annie to let me go to the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace.  It holds my favorite chocolate place ever, Max Brenner's, and she didn't let me.  I'm so deprived.  We ate at Bdubs for dinner, since we wanted to catch the last of the BCS Bowl Games.  They didn't have anything good left to cook, but we survived.

That's Day 1 of the XCD,
~RoB

Winds are Changing

I used to be one of the luckiest people I knew.  While at Michigan, I:

• won cash at a 50/50
• won a digital camera
• won a DVD player
• Granny won (and gave me) a free trip for 2 to Las Vegas ($$, amazing room in Caesars, luggage, airfare, etc.)
• Pops won the lotto and bought me a new car
• won a pre-show Rent raffle in NYC
• won a pre-show Wicked raffle in Chicago
• Annie's sister was the 1st name pulled in a pre-show Wicked raffle in Los Angeles
• went to a free Ludacris concert and sat in the middle of the 4th row

Then I moved to CA.  It got so bad (which is probably regular-person luck) that I thought it must only happen 'east of the Mississippi'.  The worst moment was when I won premiere tickets to Mummy 3 from a Bay-area radio station, and when I took a group of friends, they handed out ~150 extra tickets and we didn't get it in.  I have reason to believe things are starting to swing my way again.  Here's why:

1. I think I'm going to pay off one of my credit cards (entirely) by the end of the summer.
2. I won 2 prizes out of 5 raffle tickets that I bought when seeing my roommate perform in San Francisco (tickets to another show & a psychic reading).
3. Yesterday, I got a free $130 tennis racquet.

Here's the story.  I bought a Babolat racquet from tenniswarehouse on crazy clearance in 2003.  It was a black/white, over-sized,  Power+, and I used it to win the Huron League Championship and to be named to the Monroe County Dream Team as #1 Doubles my senior year.  I'm getting back into tennis big time.  I took a bunch of lessons in my last quarter at UCLA, and I was playing regularly with one of my closest friends in L.A.  On Friday, I busted the strings on it (though I just had it strung in October).  I took it to Sports Authority, since it was the only place I could find nearby that restrung racquets.  (Yes, I spell it the right way, and not the American way, which makes it look like a gambling racket.)

Anyway, I got a call on Tuesday notifying me that while tensioning the strings to the weight I asked (3 lbs above the tension recommended by the manufacturer), they cracked my racquet.  Instead of blaming me for having an old, over-used racquet and requesting the tension to be higher than it's supposed to (all us tennis players do this), they offered to replace it.  I went there yesterday, and when a manager finally came out to talk to me he said "Grab any racquet on the wall. No limit."  This would be like winning the lotto if I was in a tennis specialty shop, but all the racquets at Sports Authority are pre-strung (note, not super-fancy).  Regardless, I got a brand new racquet to replace a racquet that I paid less for almost 9 years ago.

They even went so far as to refund my string and grip purchase since they "didn't provide those services".  So, I guess, technically, they gave me $160 (+ tax).

I'm obviously ignoring the premiere for She's Out of My League that I saw at Paramount Studios, or the free VIP Paranormal Activity experience I got at Hollywood's Arclight Theater that included free food and meeting the stars of the movie, and the silent auction I snagged for 50-yd line tickets/parking/chancellor's party at a UCLA football game, and everything else I've forgotten I've won in the past decade,
~RoB