OK, I’m back. I had a hell of a travel day today, but everything seemed to go my way, which I guess means a grand piano is going to fall from orbit and hit me tomorrow, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I had to get up at FOUR AM this morning to make my flight, so I went to bed at ten and loaded up on Tylenol PM. For whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep though, and I ended up waking up at about two and watching the clock for a while. Then I spent the rest of the day flying or hanging out in the Houston airport (oh sorry, the GEORGE BUSH airport) or trying to sleep on planes. I got back to 25-81 around 7

PM EST, and now I’m waiting on my sushi and listening to Spock’s Beard and bitching that my CD-R is not ripping CDs correctly. Business as usual.

Yes, I survived skydiving. It was an interesting experience, but I wouldn’t highly advise it for everyone. There’s something about looking down at the ground from three miles up through an open door and having any reaction other than wanting to secure yourself to the nearest bulkhead, let alone letting someone else push you out of the door.

Anyway, I am writing the story. There weren’t many pictures for the trip, mostly because there aren’t many things I haven’t already photographed. I will also have a DVD of the jump, but they will send that to me in about ten days.

OK, I am a year older. And I have a lot of crap to do, including the ripping of about 20 new CDs, and that whole eating thing.

I’m in a web cafe on the Las Vegas Boulevard, in a crowded strip mall just south of the Harley cafe. It’s not really a cafe, though: it’s really three computers in a giant gift shop containing Las Vegas shot glasses, ashtrays, t-shirts that disintegrate in two washings, and pretty much everything else that could have the words Las Vegas printed on it and could be made in China by slave labor for under ten cents. It’s also a Budget rental car desk and sells tours of the Grand Canyon. They are mostly empty except for the occasional wanderer, and the overhead speakers are droning some local 80s station, which is marginally OK but mostly sucks. I turn 33 tomorrow, and I’ve got a suite at the Stardust that’s roughly twice as big as my apartment and much better furnished. I have a thousand dollars in twenties in my pocket. I’m depressed.

I spent all weekend with Bill and Lon and Jaime, and just ate a taco dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe with Lon, the last to depart except for me. Then I took the long walk back to the strip to get on this place and delete 188 messages of spam and two legitimate messages from my friend Dani. I have to leave on Wednesday at seven in the morning. But tomorrow afternoon, I will jump out of an airplane at 15,000 feet. I try to do the most dangerous things on my birthday, so both dates will match on the tombstone. This seemed to work well for Shakespeare, because we’re still reading his stuff.

We did a bunch of cool stuff this weekend and I ate a bunch of good food and we saw some really incredible comedians. But sometimes when I’m out here, all I can think of is what I’ll do when I get back. And that’s what’s bothering me right now. These big milestone dates really make me wonder when I’ll get my shit straight, or what I should really be aiming for.

Ah crap, this is all pretty whiny stuff. I should pack it up and get out of here before they play some bad Madonna song that gets stuck in my head all night. I have a long walk ahead of me, and my iPod is in the hotel room. I see a cab ride in my future…

I have a 9

flight tomorrow morning, so this will be a quick update before the Tylenol PM kicks in and I try to get a few hours of sleep. It is catastrophically cold outside, two degrees with a -17 temp when you add in the 29 mph gusting winds. My old windows in this place might as well be screen doors, because the wind blows right through them. I am very glad to be going to a place where the apparent temperature difference is about 70 degrees.

So I’m packed, I got my damn haircut before I left, and I have the laptop and camcorder ready to go. I’ll be out of town until Wednesday, but I’ll post a full report when I get back. If you know my real email username and know that I have an account at tmail.com, do the math and send me an email on the 20th when I become a year older but not wiser. Anyway, I’m off to bundle myself up to avoid the wind…

I’m in that pre-trip panic where I think that I need to research or read a bunch about the place I’m going, because once I get there I will want to do nothing but watch TV in the hotel and eat at McDonald’s because I have no better plans. I have probably a whole shelf of books on Las Vegas, and I could probably name off every casino from Tropicana to Stratosphere without even thinking, but I still feel a great need to find other stuff to do.

To be fair, I think we have a lot of stuff already planned. We have tickets (front row!) to see Dave Atell and Louis Black on Saturday. I think we also have Penn and Teller tickets at the Rio for Sunday. Add in all of the meals and some gambling and shopping, and that’t at least two or three days of stuff. But I always want to eat somewhere new, check out something off the beaten path, or do something that isn’t part of the same old routine. So maybe I need to hit citysearch or something.

There’s a small part of me that also wants to do something outrageous and expensive on my birthday this year. It’s the 33rd, not a nice round number of any significance, but I think I should jump out of a plane at 15,000 feet or take an open-wheel racing course at the Vegas Speedway or do something else involving high adrenaline, higher cost, and little practical value. Sometimes I wish I could do MORE - climb a mountain, eat every single item on the Denny’s menu, marry a complete stranger, total a rental car and make my old insurance company pay for it. Something.

I have this vague idea that I am going to write an offbeat, quirky, and hilarious travel guide to Vegas, laced with personal anecdotes and useless advice and trivia. Maybe I will try to write some more damn stuff down this time and see what I can come up with.

OK, food’s here. Two more days of work and I can (temporarily) leave this awful land of high winds and low temps.

It’s amazing how quiet it gets when it’s so damn cold that you can’t go out without a heated astronaut suit or something. Last night, I closed my bedroom door to trap some of the heat, and it blocked out the sound of my computer’s fans and the occasional refrigerator noise, and I was stunned at how quiet it really was. It reminded me of when I was sleeping in Ray’s basement in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, or when I get the huge, soundproofed suite in Las Vegas, and all I can hear when I get in bed is total silence, and maybe my own heartbeat. By morning, it was almost warmed up to 15, and the mafia wannabes were outside yelling at the tops of their lungs while moving around cars. But it was nice to have a few hours of peace, and I do get that Vegas suite in a matter of days.

I haven’t left the apartment all weekend, as I mentioned, although I did go out to throw out about eight bags of takeout food garbage, and I made a quick run (literally) to the Korean bodega on the corner for some supplies. There weren’t many people on the street, although it’s now about 26 degrees outside. I believe the temps will slowly crawl up into the 40s and then drop down into total devastation again before I leave.

I realize it may be boring to be reading the Weather Channel here, but not much is up. All I’ve done all weekend is read or cycle through the channels, but I guess I’m pretty happy with that. If I had the opportunity to do it for another 10 or 20 days, I think I would. I mean, eventually I might do something drastic, like actually write on the new book or do some sit-ups or something, but I don’t think it will come to that.

OK, food is on the way, so I better find my wallet and eagerly await the door.