Some of you may remember that just before Christmas I paid a visit to a rather posh hospital in London to have something removed, and I don't just mean the large wodge of cash from my wallet. A few of you may also remember that due to a post-op niggle I forewent my family Christmas day and shared it instead with the fine people of Kingston A&E. Further, a relatively small number of you will recall that following a night at Mistress Perry's House of Delight, I was afflicted by a nasty bout of Pancreatitis which, possibly brought on by a 4:00am sampling of my own homemade Sloe Gin, saw me delivered by my good friend Mr Goat to Honiton A&E.
It will come as no surprise to any of you then, to hear that I made it only as far as Las Vegas before being hospitalised.
The day had started with such promise. The bike had had its 500 mile service which meant I no longer had to poodle around on the freeway at 70mph and could now mix it up in the fast lane with 500bhp pick-up trucks and 150mph japanese shopping trolleys.
I had 280 miles of desert to cross on a freeway that appeared to have only a dozen bends and passed through only three small towns. It may seem strange to point out the number of bends and towns along the course of a road, but when the road runs through nothing but faceless desert scrub, bends and towns actually become quite interesting.
The ride, as expected, was pretty straight forward, with the only thing breaking up the monotony being the occasional stop to drink water - and you need plenty of it in these hellish temperatures. When I left Los Angeles it was about 92F. 60 miles on around San Bernadino it had risen to 99F. Then up in the desert (up sounds funny for a desert as I always consider them to be down, but this stretch is between 3000 and 5000 feet above sea level) at Barstow it had risen to 105F, and at Baker it topped out at 111F.
I've never ridden in 100F, let alone 110+F, not even in the far east, and it is quite an interesting sensation. At 90mph - exactly 75mph if you happen to be CHP or Nevada Highway Patrol - the air doesn't seem to have any cooling effect whatsoever. For those of you with fan assisted ovens - Cycotherm for you Neff owners - I can demonstrate how this feels. Firstly turn on your oven to approximately 200F . Once up to temperature open the door approximately 6 inches and place your face 10 inches above the door opening. Finally, close your eyes and imagine speeding across a large empty desert on a large beast of a motorcycle - et voilà.
I arrived in Las Vegas as the sun was going down. I remember this because about 20 miles out I noticed the shadow of me and the motorbike getting extremely long. It was huge and obviously something to do with the low and very distant horizon. I'd say my shadow was about 50 feet tall running along side me in the dirt and incredibly sharply focused; again I would point out that this ride is mind numbingly boring and inane things like shadows can become incredibly interesting. What's more they can become a means to idle away the time. Thus whilst blasting across the Mojave Desert at 90mph on a sharkish looking 1000cc V-twin motorcycle, I decided to play shadow puppets, and damn I was good.
I must at this stage point out that my hospitalisation had nothing to do with my motorcycle or motorcycle shadow puppets, nor did it involve fan assisted ovens.
No, the key to my little incident lies in the wisdom that is "never eat seafood more than 50 miles from the sea", which shall, in my household at least, now be amended to "never eat seafood more than 50 miles from the sea and least of all in the middle of a feking desert you ijit". For it was in the middle of a desert, on my first night in Las Vegas, in a hotel called New York New York, that I ordered the mixed seafood antipasto.
That night I was fine. The next morning, either from the ride and the heat of the day before, or the antipasto, I felt a bit off. So I slept - all day. Then around 7:00pm it kicked off...in predictable form, of which I will spare you the detail. Around 11:00pm and having virtually no juice left, my hands beginning to cramp and my breathing getting a little shallow, I decided to call for a doctor. Now, had I been at home, in England, in Putney, I would probably have toughed it out. However, I was in a grotesquely overblown city in the middle of a desert, 6000 miles from home, and in retrospect I don't feel in the slightest bit feeble for making the call.
Having described a few symptoms to extension 6122 I was told that someone would come to my room. Ten minutes later two security guards and a paramedic arrived. Having taken my blood pressure and temperature and having established what medication I was on for my mild agoraphobia, I was asked if I wanted to go to hospital. Now, I'm badly dehydrated, shivering like a streaker at an Iceland versus Greenland footy match, my hands and stomach are cramping, I'm shallow breathing and I'm really confused, what in Christ's name did he expect me to say, "no, but could you give me a lift to Caesars Palace, I fancy seeing Celine Dion tonight".
I'm not quite sure who decided on the hospital, because by this stage I was beginning to get a bit freaked out, which in turn was making me anxious, which wasn't helping my breathing, which in turn was fueling the whole cycle. The next thing I remembered was a veritable army of people storming into the room led by two firefighters and followed by, in no particular order, 2 members of the ambulance crew, a further two hotel security guards and, as I was to find out later when I opened my wallet to find her card, the head of night time security, Heidi Beck; who had an extraordinary quiff-like hairdo that made me think Elvis was back in town. At this stage, and I may be out by +/- 1, I guess there were 10 people standing around in my room. If a violent bout of food poisoning, bad dehydration, cramps, a temperature of 102F and shallow breathing aren't enough to freak a healthy young man out, then this little ensemble ought to do it.
At this point I should mention the rollercoaster. The New York New York Hotel, which is built in several sections to mimic the New York skyline, has a rollercoaster. The rollercoaster is built around the hotel and ensnares it much as a giant Anaconda snake would, if one were to grow to such a size, which, judging by the size of virtually everything else around here, is certainly a possibility.
Returning to my predicament for a moment, the ambulance crew, concerned by my dehydration and inability to hold down any fluids, decided to put me on a saline drip. As those of you who have had the pleasure of escorting me to an A&E department will recall, needles and I are not the best of bedfellows and the sight of one can, and often does, freak me out.
Now, I'm badly dehydrated, I have stomach and hand cramps, I have a temperature of 102F, I'm shivering like a polar bear with alopecia and my breathing is shallow and getting shallower as I get more anxious. I'm confused. I'm surrounded by approximately 10 people, all of whom are wearing uniforms and staring intently at me whilst muttering amongst themsleves. Four of them are carrying side arms, handcuffs, batons and big nasty bunches of keys.
Then all of a sudden one of them pulled out a needle the size of a pencil and tried to jab it into my arm. This was too much and I had to turn away towards the window...just as 20 people on a rollercoaster barreled past, screaming and thrashing their arms in the air like someone was trying to jab them with a needle the size of a pencil.
At this point I would like to be able to say I passed out, but I didn't. What I did do was get into some good old full blown hyperventilation. This the medics didn't take too kindly to and resulted in me being strapped very firmly to the gurney as I was wheeled unceremoniously into the service elevator and out through the garbage entrance to the waiting ambulance.
Once onboard and my straps checked I was offered oxygen via those little tubes that go up your nose and hook over your ears - undoubtedly very stylish but they do tend to tickle the nose hairs. Now I'm no medic but offering oxygen to a person who is hyperventilating, i.e. has over-oxygenated blood, is never a wise move, not unless the gurney straps have 500lb per inch break strength and you have large calibre firearm loaded with elephant tranquiliser darts. Fortunately neither of these were needed as the oxygen was removed, just after I started screaming gibberish and thrashing around under my straps, and just before I turned green, shredded my clothing and destroyed half of downtown Las Vegas looking for enemies of Bruce Banner.
Having returned to my normal shallow breathing state the lady paramedic started to quiz me about the medication I had stated earlier I was taking. I explained that it was prescribed primarily to deal with my long term agoraphobia. Further, I explained that contrary to popular belief, agoraphobia was not about a fear of open spaces, but a fear of being away from what is considered a person's centre, or home. Thus a severe agoraphobic can find it impossible to leave his or her bedroom and at the other end of the scale, a very mild agoraphobic can find trips abroad difficult or unsettling. I, I explained, was in the latter group but had sought help after a recent worsening of my condition. I guess I had expected at some stage, someone somewhere would ask the question that she then asked; "What exactly are you doing thousands of miles from home when you have a worsening mental condition that makes you anxious when you're thousands of miles from home?". And although I had expected it, I had no answer to it. The rest of the journey passed in silence, save for the pant of my shallow breathing.
Once we arrived at the hospital I was wheeled, fully strapped, into A&E, only over here it's ER. Now Las Vegas is a big place. It's got dopers and hookers, gangstas and bad drivers...but there were no helicopters falling off the roof crushing one armed doctors. There were no lesbian cripple Hitler type senior registrars marching around giving lots of pretty nurses and handsome doctors serious ear ache. No, there were two very nice middle aged matriarchal type nurses, a doctor from India, another from China and a cleaner with wheelie bucket from Mexico called Jose. This last fact I knew for reasons that will become apparent.
It was probably around midnight by this stage and although the ER was surprisingly empty, there was still a short wait. I expect in order to avoid loosening my straps, I was not invited to take a seat in the waiting room, but was kept on my gurney in a corridor just around the corner. Fortunately this corridor featured a toilet and after a few minutes I was forced to request a visit. Now, ambulance gurneys have built in poles to hang drip bags from and since the gurney wasn't going into the toilet with me, I was told to hold the drip bag in my hand whilst I did what I had to do.
Holding your own drip bag whilst shivering, aching, cramping, shallow breathing, in a state of dehydration, slight confusion and with a temperature of 102F is do'able in my book. However, and highlighting the "slight confusion" element and remembering my state of anxiety for a moment , when you have it in your head that squeezing on your own drip bag too hard is going to drown you intravenously or send air bubbles into your veins killing you instantly, the concept of an emergency trip to the bog is an extremely hard one to deal with.
Suffice to say that in my own frantic, cautious, anxious way I managed to pull it off without incident. Pulling off a visit to the the same little room for the purposes of an emergency evacuation of internal contents via the main facial cavity, was not so incident free. In fact it was incident packed and leads me to reveal how I came to know the name of the cleaner, Jose. For it was he who was called upon to clear up the whole mess.
It appeared my ambulance crew were getting a bit twitchy about me hobbling around holding my own drip bag, probably less for reasons of my own safety and more for the fact that until they officially handed me over to the hospital medical team, I was still their responsibility and any accidents that might befall me would be on their watch. Given the litigious culture that exists over here I didn't blame them. So when I suggested that I might need to make another trip, they promptly produced a bowl and plonked it on my chest. When I pointed out that this little bowl was unlikely to contain what I expected was soon to be putting in an appearance, they shrugged and commented that it was going to make a mess where ever I threw up. And that I thought was a fair comment from a purely technical standpoint, but less so from a "I don't want to throw up sitting upright on a gurney in a corridor surrounded by lots of people" standpoint.
When the inevitable and unstoppable moment came I took matters into my own hands, and grabbing my drip bag I hopped off the gurney and headed unchallenged down the corridor towards the toilet/restroom/bathroom/loo/bog. Unfortunately I had mistimed my little adventure and was feet short when involuntary muscle spasm took over and I recreated one of my favorite scenes from The Exorcist - only mine was a reddish brown and not green. This violent torrent started in the corridor itself, turned left through the toilet doorway and fell about a foot short of its intended target. Such was the duration of this evacuation and allied to my shallow breathing, I felt totally unable to breath, a fact that I somehow managed to shout repeatedly to my ambulance crew who where by now standing at a safe distance with that look on their faces that people get when they tread in dog shit.
The fact that I was shouting this fairly loudly whilst standing in the middle of a hospital corridor decorated in my vomit, wearing only boxer shorts and a t-shirt with the words "Fuck You" emblazoned across the chest, whilst holding my own saline drip bag above my head, must have been a truly scary sight indeed. Even if I say so myself, I may even have surpassed the master of mayhem himself, Hunter Thompson, who wrote the book on scaring innocent bystanders with scenes of depravity and physical excess.
After being convinced that I had not totally lost the ability to breath and having both returned to my gurney and to my normal state of shallow breathing, I was wheeled through into a treatment cubicle. Here I had various drugs administered to treat my various symptoms. Blood was drawn, temperature and blood pressure taken and the same old medical questions repeated for a third time; however this time I omitted the part about agoraphobia to avoid falling into the clutches of the house psychiatrist and being temporarily sectioned - as this evening had served to prove, if things could get worse they would get worse, unless I attempted to prevent them.
From here on in things tended to settle down and 6 hours and three and a half litres of saline solution later, I was deemed fit enough to leave...in a cab, in my boxer shorts with a t-shirt bearing unspeakable words and with no shoes and socks. Now Las Vegas is a pretty wild place and all sorts of behavior goes either unnoticed or simply laughed at. However, walking slowly into the lobby and across the casino floor of a big hotel on The Strip, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt saying "Fuck You", with fresh matching track marks in your arms, is going to be a big "no no" in somebody's book. And the last thing I needed at 7:00am after a night of hell was to end up justifying my appearance in a small security room somewhere in the bowels of my hotel, or worse, in a cell at the local police station.
Fortunately two things conspired to save me from this gruesome fate. Matriarchal nurse No.1 and a business card that I found nestling in my wallet...from the Elvis impersonator and sometimes head of night time security at my hotel, Melissa Todd.
At this point my main concern was my state of dress, or undress to be precise. Shuffling slowly through a casino I could easily pass for a very tired and pissed customer after a long night on the town, if I had trousers and shoes. And with my arms folded across my chest, the track marks would barely be visible. There were only two ways I could think of to acquire the necessary clothing. Firstly find a washing line and steal them or, as you were forced to do at school if you had forgotten your gym kit, borrow from lost property. The first option was clearly not an option at 6:00am in the middle of Las Vegas and therefore it was going to have to be option two.
Having had my saline drip removed, or to put it another way, having had a patch of hair and the saline drip brutally removed from my arm, I broached the subject of my lack of clothing and the lost property solution, with matriarchal nurse No.1. A few minutes later she returned not with a soiled old pair of trousers recently cut off a vagrant with gangreous leg ulcers, but a neatly pressed pair of medical trousers of the type used in operating theatres. These were powder blue, not exactly a good colour for evening wear, and were size XL, which gave them a certain baggy, low crutch, hip hop look.
However, with "Property of Angelica, plant#33 Never remove from premises" neatly printed down the right leg, they did tend to shout out "hello, I've just escaped from a mental hospital...don't turn your back on me". I could also have done better on the shoes front given that they turned out to be more like socks with bits of rubber tread on the bottom - in fact they were socks with bits of rubber on the bottom. I was to be dressed like the permanently institutionalised and it would stand out a mile.
But, at the end of the day - or night, to be more accurate - I had clothes. None of them perfect, including my nihilistic t-shirt, but none the less, not bad for free at 6:00am in a strange city far, far from home.
And so to my second piece of good fortune - said business card from said Elvis impersonator. Perhaps Elvis could whisk me up to my room without me having to walk the 50 or so yards across the casino floor looking like a mental patient. It was worth a shout so I gave the card to matriarchal nurse No.1 and asked her to ask Elvis if the hotel could pick me up. The answer came back as a yes. I knew it would be yes because, as I have mentioned before, this is a litigious land and the near certainty that the hotel had served up my particular little dose of food poisoning weighed well in my favor.
Actually that's virtually a complete lie because, as my Chinese doctor had explained, it's very rare, although not unheard of, to have a high temperature with food poisoning. The probable culprit being a virulent stomach flu. However, he did not totally rule out food poisoning. Either way the hotel would be none the wiser...that's if matriarchal nurse No.1 hadn't mentioned it to Elvis on the phone...which was actually not a problem, because Nevada law is particularly clear on PHI, or Protected Health Information, and any disclosures by the hospital to the hotel would have enabled me to bring suit against the hospital...and my bet was that that could have been worth a few million quid.
Having been issued a little stack of prescriptions and told to take nothing but fluids for at least 24 hours, I dressed - if what I had to wear constituted dressing - and was wheeled into a little office...the accounts office! Money! Being a Brit, I had totally forgotten that none of this was free. I had wondered why my ambulance crew had been so keen to find my wallet in my bedroom before we left. I thought it was a security thing to make sure I was who I had claimed to be. Unfortunately I had not made a note of my travel insurance policy number nor who to contact in the USA to initiate a claim. Fortunately Mrs Accounts Lady believed that I had cover, but swiped $500 on a credit card...just in case, and that was for the ambulance alone.
Things where beginning to look a little brighter now. My temperature had been Tylanol'd into submission. The little white pills had made my urgent trips to the loo less urgent and less frequent. A jab had taken the edge of the nausia. And the roughly hewn monster white pills had apparently taken care of my electrolyte imbalance. I had a kind of pair of trousers and a kind of pair of shoes and my lift was on it's way to take me to my hotel bed on the 19th floor...next to the rollercoaster.
I had one worry left. The walk across the casino floor and how to get my prescriptions filled. Two, I had two worries left. The walk across the casino floor, how to get my prescriptions filled and where to get hold of large quantities of Gatorade. Three, three, I had three worries left...
The solution to the last two problems came in the shape of Walgreens 24 hour pharmacy, on the Strip opposite my hotel. My hotel security guard, come driver, rather hesitantly agreed to stop, I think more at the though of being asked to go out himself to get the stuff I needed, having dropped me at the hotel.
At this stage I was feeling like Ronnie the rag doll after a 50 mile run with a 50lb backpack, and any cares I had about my general appearance were fading fast. After a good two minutes of button pushing by my driver, which saw every window in the vehicle go up and down, the tail gate open and the washers screech across the dry windscreen, I finally convinced him that child locks did actually exist and that the best way of solving the problem of unlocking my door was for him to get out and do it manually. This he finally did and off I shuffled into the store.
Most of these 24 hour stores, and especially pharmacies, have armed security and as expected I received a pretty good visual inspection, which clearly took in the words printed down my left leg and across my chest, neither of which caused a reaction. Perhaps my look was common place and people without medical insurance were forced to leave hospital to get their own medicines. Or perhaps he thought they were a new designer clothing thing. Who knew and I didn't care. Forging deeper into the store with the aid of a trolley used in the fashion of a zimmer frame, I found the prescription counter, handed in the paperwork and loaded up with 6 litres of very colourful gatorade and 2 litres of water from an adjacent aisle.
Having had each of the three prescription medicines explained to me I was presented with the bill...for $376. And there was me thinking that America was far cheaper than rip-off Britain. Ten Zofran orally disintegrating anti nausea tablets cost $330, and as the pharmacist was only too keen to point out, this was my fault, or rather the fault of my dear close friends at the British owned GlaxoSmithKline who I had to blame for charging the US four times as much as most other countries around the world. I made some feeble comment about the scandalous behavior of some US drug companies in the third world and beat a hasty retreat. No point in aggravating the natives too much, but at the same time I wasn't going to let his rampant jingoism go unanswered.
Back in the hotel vehicle and having swept past the store security guard in a slouching, shuffly, Ozzy Osbourne kinda way, with only the slightest of suspicious looks and no movement towards his firearm, I was safe and into the final straight.
On arrival at the hotel front entrance we were met by a hotel security guard with a wheelchair. It looked like the hotel was on the ball and aware of the potential trouble I could cause with a call to the local Food Health Authority. However, little did they know that I knew that they didn't know the truth of the matter. Fortunately at 7:00am there were only a few people in the casino and to be honest, I wasn't really that bothered. To all intents and purposes I was someone famous - who else, looking out of their head with track marks on their arms, would have their own wheelchair with one security guard to push it and another to carry their shopping.
Finally, with the sun streaming through my window, I was wheeled into my room. I had the feeling there was a little loitering and checking I was OK for the purposes of a tip, so I simply groaned, threw myself into bed and pulled the covers over me. And that was that.
Here are a few top tips for when visiting Las Vegas, some of which will apply elsewhere:
• Never eat seafood in a desert.
• Never book a room with a rollercoaster running past the window.
• If you find yourself surrounded by 10 uniformed and armed men and women whilst in bed, try not to panic.
• When admitted to hospital ensure you have trousers and shoes.
• Try to avoid wearing particularly rude t-shirts were there is a danger of ending up in hospital.
• It is impossible to drown intravenously.
• Blame everything on food poisoning and make loud litigious noises.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of utter exhaustion...in a comfortable bed, with no impending deadlines or chores to complete and with a stack of powerful drugs to deliver the body from pain and the mind from reality. Add to this the feeling of control afforded by American style high-speed room service, high-speed wireless internet, a hot line to the head of security and a large shark like motorcycle lurking in the bat cave below, and you are pretty much set for some serious recuperation.
Having carefully organised five canisters of pills, six litres of Gatorade and two litres of water on my bedside table, I pulled the curtains shut, inserted earplugs to ban the constant screaming and fell asleep.
Approximately 12 hours later I awoke to the sound, or to be more accurate given my use of earplugs, the sensation of banging. Now, when I say banging I mean banging in a number of different senses of the word. With my audio suppressed all I could sense was a steady rhythmic banging on the wall between my room and the next. As I sat up and removed my earplugs this was joined by a steady rhythmic yelping that varied in pitch exactly as an engine does when going through the gears - higher as the speed increases and lower as the speed decreases.
This was some serious action and whoever was in the driving seat was moving more than just his or her partner - the bed and headboard, the wall and my headboard to be precise. Normally I would listen for a few moments - not that this is a situation I regularly find myself in - make sure I was not mistaking the whole cacophony for someone taking a heinous beating at the hands of some axe wielding homicidal maniac, and then give the wall a few long hard bangs of my own to cool things down. However, this was Vegas and I figured that events of this nature were both commonplace and an essential part of the dynamic Vegas experience. So having moved the bed away from the wall and turned the television on LOUD, I tried to put the whole thing to the back of my mind.
With the aid of 105 cable channels and with a battery of drugs to consume, this worked for at least ten minutes. But there comes a point when banging, yelping and screaming in concert become too much to bear, and given that I was powerless to stop the screaming, the banging and yelping had to go. Having delivered a number of fist thumping salvos against the wall and not having noticed even the slightest sign that the engine was stalling, I opted for the direct approach.
Turning left out of my door and into the corridor I was confronted by a baseball cap wearing, beer bottle swigging, late 20 something male of some considerable stature. When I say considerable stature I actually mean built like a brick shit house with a two story extension. Normally this would not faze a man of my athletic prowess, however, in my somewhat weakened state I felt it ill advised to take any unnecessary risks. Thus, adopting a slightly friendlier demeanor than I would do normally, I approached the monster and, drawing my frame up to full height, asked,
"Could you ask your friend to go a little easier. It would be nicer for his guest and far quieter for me". He nodded slowly, his mouth agape. There was no reply, not that one was needed. He was clearly impressed by my grasp of the situation and so, confident that my message would get through, I beat a hasty retreat to my room. I was unsure as to what would happen if the monster, who was clearly next in line to entertain "the guest", got it in his head that I was going to phone the hotel management. The last thing I needed was another ugly scene involving hotel security, paramedics and a trip to hospital.
Back in my room I heard the door next door open, the steady rhythmic banging abruptly stop and a short, loud, hushed, urgent conversation start. Whatever loudly whispered urgent words were exchanged, they had the desired effect and the banging never resumed. Two door slams later - the first I assume being the pay-off, and the second their departure - I was left in silence, baring the screaming that is.
This dealt with, my next concern was the hotel room that I was currently occupying, or more to the point, the cost of the hotel room that I was currently occupying. When I checked in, the idea was to stay for only two nights. This being Vegas it seemed logical to stay where the action was - on the Strip. Thus having shopped around I found a $250-a-night room for $139-a-night - given the dollar/sterling exchange rate this was a steal for 400 square feet of prime 24th floor Las Vegas real estate, with main room jacuzzi, walk-in double shower, 28 inch TV, high-speed internet and a bed the size of a small Caribbean island.
However, and as with all steals, there was a catch. If I extended my stay the rate reverted to $250-a-night. Unfortunately I had slept my way past checkout time and was careering irreversibly towards full room rate on night three. It's strange, but at $250-a-night, the whole 400 square feet of prime 24th floor Las Vegas real estate, with main room jacuzzi, walk-in double shower, 28 inch TV, high-speed internet and a bed the size of a small Caribbean island thing, suddenly becomes a bit extravagant and wasteful. There was no way I was going to be fit to leave for another two days, so in total, I was set for a 4 night stop in Las Vegas. Thus I needed to secure another two nights for considerably less than $250-a-night.
I had two choices. Firstly, negotiate hard on my existing hotel room and perhaps downgrade by a couple of hundred square feet, a few floors and a jucuzzi, for a subsequent night. And the second, to move out immediately and find a motel off the strip - none of which looked particularly great, but did hold the promise of 24 hour triple x rated porn channels, free ice and with some, membership to a special "gentleman's" club which invariably sported blacked out windows and no obvious main entrance.
I've been in situations like this before, and the key is confidence...plus if possible, loud litigious noises. I rang down to the front desk and my call was picked up by a very polite lady called Mary Lou.
"Hello Mary Lou. This is a guest in 2412. I was admitted to hospital last night with acute food poisoning after eating at the Italian restaurant here in the hotel.
"Gee, I'm really sorry to hear that Sir. That's terrible"
"Yes Mary Lou it was, and thank you for your concern"
"You're welcome"
"Thank you"
"You're Welcome"
"Thank you"
"You are very welcome"
You can try this in any service situation, e.g. in a restaurant, a hotel, at a petrol station, etc. Whenever you say thank you, you receive an automatic "You're welcome". It appears to be the first rule of service in America. I'm not decrying this practice; Britain would be a far nicer place to shop if we adopted it. It's just that, as with all things new, you tend to want to play with them until the novelty wears off. Thus I had adopted the practice of going at least three rounds of thank you's when ever the opportunity arose.
"Mary Lou" (Using names is very important as any hostage negotiator will tell you. It builds an immediate personal relationship and effectively stops you being viewed simply as meat, or in my case a hotel guest.) "Firstly I was wondering who I might contact regarding the food contamination at the Italian restaurant. And secondly, due to being in hospital all night on a drip, I appear to have over-shot my check out time. Is there anything you could do for me?"
"Let me take a look at that Sir, I won't be a moment"
"Thank you"
"You're welcome"
I left it at one round given how finely balanced our negotiations were.
A minute later Mary Lou was back.
"Sir"
"Yes Mary Lou"
"I have been authorised to hold the rate on your current room at the special check-in rate. How would that be?"
"That would be great. Actually I was wondering if tomorrow I could move to a smaller room and whether you could do me a special rate on that? It's just that the doctors at the hospital were keen for me to get at least two days bed rest given the severity of my food poisoning. The problem is I was only planning a two day stay and I seem to have blown my accommodation budget"
"Let me take a look at that Sir, I won't be a moment"
"Thank you"
"You're welcome"
Again, no point in pushing it.
"Sir, I could move you to a queen size non-smoking room which is between 300 and 400 square feet, on the 18th floor, at a rate of $99 a-night. How would that be"
"That would be fine Mary Lou."
"That's done Sir. Is there anything else I can help you with this evening?"
"No, I think that's about it for now"
"OK, have a good evening and I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay"
"Thank you Mary Lou, you've been very helpful"
"Thank you Sir"
Thank you"
"You're welcome"
"Thank you"
You're welcome"
Two was enough. Again, no point in pushing it.
With my room sorted I could relax and, with a move to the 18th floor, recuperate in peace...without the screaming.
If you spend enough time in a hotel room, even a super-duper one in Vegas, it becomes much like any other hotel room, a box. No matter how many gadgets, how large the TV, or how much fake marble in the sparkling, mirror strewn bathroom, it all dissolves over time to leave four walls, a floor and a ceiling. After 2 days in my room I was down to the six basic surfaces.
There are only so many times you can flick through 105 television channels of relatively uninteresting, poorly acted, made for TV programmes, and only so many times you can read the local entertainment guide - although this being Vegas it's a tad more interesting than its Skegness equivalent.
My room since downgrading was obviously smaller, but actually now contained two queen sized beds instead of one. Now what's all that about? Are these rooms for swinging couples or has the size of the average American reached the point whereby single beds are no longer adequate?
I occupied the bed closest to the window to maximise my view of the Las Vegas sprawl outside. My previous room had had a westerly aspect and looked out across i15 and low-rise residential Las Vegas towards the mountains. My new room looked due east out onto the bright neon lights of the Strip and directly at the MGM Grand. Actually neon light is not strictly accurate anymore. Most of the illumination on the strip, for the large hotels at least, comes from video driven LED displays of the kind you find at most large rock concerts.
Thus 24 hours-a-day up and down the Strip run huge video trailers for the biggest acts in town; Elton John, Celine Dion, Penn and Teller, Rita Rudner, Cirque du Soleil, Siegfried & Roy (the one armed white tiger guys...well what the hell do you expect playing with tigers!), Engelbert Humperdinck, err, Clint Holmes...hmmm, David Cassidy and of course the legendary Flying Elvises, or Elvi as they are referred to here in the plural.
Coming back to Siegfried & Roy for a moment, and I know these boys have had more than a few knockers (not that knockers look like they would be of much interest to these boys), but I have to say I have never seen such intensive use of Photoshop in my life. They must have been running Photoshop CS with a full set of plug-ins on a supercomputer at MIT to get effects like that.
Either this or their plastic surgeon / chemist must have perfected a real life Photoshop look. These guys, with their fixed grins and painted orange faces (although Roy seems to have taken to a paler shade of matt emulsion to remind us of his near death tiger snack attack), are proof positive that many prominent humans are actually extra terrestrial lizards intent on world domination and hamming it up on stage.
Then again if you take a moment to study most of the bus-side and road-side posters, you could be forgiven for thinking that this town has been over run by extra terrestrial lizards. And what is the story behind this orange look? Clearly it's not confined to America, as Dale Winton and a host of other British show biz lovies attest. Is this the beginning of some new western caste system that has all entertainers as orange, academics as grey, politicians as yellow (as befits their inability to come forward with the truth), successful people as purple and the rest of us left the natural hue of subjugated consumers.
Of course it could also be that bowls of orange M&M's are de rigueur in the dressing rooms of the world's top entertainers. Or, in an effort to convince their respective publics that they work so hard and don't have time for holidays, they apply conspicuous amounts of fake tan. Whatever the reason it's clearly an international phenomenon and Vegas is where a large number of key exponents of the dark art are to be found.
Most things in this town have an extra terrestrial complexion or the feel of a parallel universe where things are just a tiny bit twisted. The approach here to building reminds me of the way Victorians built their great civic buildings and grand private houses, as testaments to their own power, wealth and influence - a form of architectural aggrandisement. In Las Vegas the detail and craftsmanship of the Victorians gives way to scale, colour and contrast. Here you are either taller, wider, stranger, more vivid or totally at odds with your surroundings. Whatever draws the eye goes and if that's a black pyramid, a Venetian palace or a 200 foot tall copper mirror that reflects the mountains that surround Las Vegas, then that will do.
A walk north up the Strip is a strange affair and is how you might imagine a theme park experience of the Twilight Zone to be. South of Tropicana Avenue you have the Four Seasons, Mandalay Bay, Luxor and Excalibur, which look pretty much as they sound apart from the Four Seasons which has gone in for a white Greco-Spanish hacienda style theme that is unique to Vegas, or more precisely to this one building. Thus within the first half a mile you pass through a Greco-Spanish-Indian-Egyptian-Arthurian landscape that would do credit to the bizarrest of dreams.
The more modern of these buildings contain more than just vague clues or token flourishes to suggest their respective themes, they are the full monty, the real deal, they are full blown pyramids, sphinxes - or sphinxi as they would say here - and turreted castles.
Things are equally as discombobulated north of Tropicana. My hotel for example, New York New York, recreates the Manhattan skyline with 12 one third scale skyscrapers, a 150 ft Statue of Liberty, a 300 ft Brooklyn Bridge and, of course my favorite, a Coney Island style rollercoaster.
Next door is Monte Carlo, a slightly older style hotel casino which, as with many hotel casinos of its period, crams all of the themed architecture into the street frontage, lower floors and pool areas. The Monte Carlo Hotel Casino was "modeled after the Place du Casino in Monte Carlo", with its striking neo classical roman arches, towering corinthian columns and lavish friezes.
Which is strange really considering that the last time I was in Monte Carlo the Place du Casino was awash with Baroque and French Renaissance architecture, with not a jot of the old neo classical roman, corinthian columned, lavish frieze stuff in sight. Perhaps they're referring to the parallel universe version of Place du Casino.
From highbrow the Strip then goes lowbrow with another slightly older hotel casino, The Boardwalk, a relatively plain building fronted by a spaghetti junction of funfair rides and amusement arcades. Nothing too strange here - Skegness meets Coney Island with a large chunk of Centrepoint.
What is strange but yet so Vegas, is the contrast between Skeggy/Coney/Centrepoint and Bellagio. Bellagio is the dogs bollocks of a hotel casino and has a five diamond rating from the AAA (in English that's AA Five Star, only here stars and two A's don't cut the mustard).
Where do you start with Bellagio? Perhaps with the PR blurb. "Bellagio was inspired by the beautiful villages of Europe and captures the romantic symbolism and classical imagery of Italian architecture; It represents the softer side of the human soul." Hmmmm, clearly why it hosts the quarter finals of the World K1 Ultimate Fighting Championships. This aside..."With its Tuscan architecture and mediterranean style, Bellagio is aimed to impress everyone, both the well traveled and the not so well traveled, without being pretentious." And that would be pretentious as in "marked by an extravagant outward show; ostentatious and/or making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction"?
Entering via the Porte Cochere (covered entrance to you and I) you are immediately struck by the coffer (ornamental ceiling panel to you and I) 18 feet above you, filled with the most extraordinary glass sculpture, a chandelier called Fiori di Como (flowers of Lake Como to you and I).
"Bellagio," they say, "must address its guests' higher sensibilities"...err, OK. And I guess that their understanding that "transfixing or compelling environmental experiences cannot occur without conflict", means that this "overwhelmingly attractive and delicious place" is a "successful competitor to London, Rome or Paris". Clearly.
Basically it's a big fancy hotel. Actually, big is not really adequate in the case of the Bellagio. It's monstrous, a leviathan amongst hotels, a city with a reception desk.
It has 3933 rooms of which the top room rate is $6,000. It has 100,000 sq ft of casino space, 100,000 sq ft of retail space, 125,000 sq ft of meeting space, a 13,500 sq ft botanical garden conservatory and 90,000 ft of greenhouses where they grow plants for display. It has an 8 acre manmade lake with 1,000 fountain jets, 5 swimming pools, a 65,000 sq ft salon and spa, 14 restaurants, 7 bars, 1 nightclub, 2 wedding chapels, a fine art gallery and a 1,600 seat theatre with a permanent Cirque du Soleil show. Oh, and it cost $1.6 billion to build and has 8,000 employees.
Across the road is Bally's hotel casino, a "spacious, classy wonder", marked by "elegant style and timeless glamour", which has a titty bar.
Bally's sits aside Paris, which although artificial is at least accurate - my favorite touch being the classic French black slate mansard roof line that sits atop its 50 floors. A stroll along its street frontage takes you from French Renaissance town houses to grand 1st Empire civic buildings, past baroque fountains and Art Nouveau metro station entrances. One moment Montmartre the next Place du Concorde. Add to this a half scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, a third size replica of the Arc de Triomphe and a life size Montgolfier balloon and you have, err...a bunch of French façades in the middle a desert. Nice!
South of Paris is Aladdin, a byzantinesque structure which is all Ali Baba, Sinbad and Aladdin bundled into one with a few minarets thrown in for good measure.
And lastly in this middle section of the Strip is the mother of all entertainment complexes, the MGM Grand. Having described the Bellagio as a city with a reception desk, I guess the Grand would be a capital city with a reception desk...a 17,000 seat arena, a 740 seat and 340 seat theatre, a 22,000 sq ft night club, 170,000 sq ft of casino space including 3,000 slot machines, 500,000 sq ft of meeting space...blah, blah, blah. Oh, and 5,000 rooms and a 5,000 sq ft lion preserve with lions directly descended from Leo, the original MGM lion.
This may well be the largest hotel in the world, but the trouble with the MGM Grand is, whilst most of the other properties on the Strip went to more than a little expense to visually excite and tease the imagination of potential guests, MGM, for some reason, decided that a big black shinny, neon green lit building would suffice. But then I guess if all you have to go on thematically is a roaring lion, then a 80 ft high, 50 ton bronze lion in front of a big black shinny, neon green lit building is about as good as it gets.
The next section of the strip, north of Flamingo Avenue, is split into three distinct camps - the old, the re-modeled and the new hotel casinos.
The old, such as Bourbon Street and Barbary Coast, have few rooms, rely heavily on passing trade and are marked out by their intricate flashing light displays, illuminating the Strip like huge glowing UFO's. They are just a building with a name and they have one other thing in common, their days are numbered. If you're not taking a visitor's accommodation dollars, dinning dollars, gambling dollars and leisure dollars, then you're not maximising dollar earnings per square foot. And if you don't, someone else will. This is not an overly sentimental city. Old gives way to new in a way that few Europeans could comprehend. They simply blow up the old, literally, and start again.
Then there are the remodeled, such as Flamingo, Imperial Palace, Hurrah's, New Frontier - previously called Frontier strangely enough and once owned by Howard Hughes - and Caesars Palace, which although extremely famous has been swamped by some of the newer hotel casinos on the block. These are neither quaint throwbacks to another Vegas era nor stunning flights of entertainment fantasy, and as such do not merit another word - probably a bit harsh in the case of Caesars, but they have Celine Dion on there and she plays with my head.
Of the new, or relatively new, the Venetian is the stand-out lookee-likee on this block. Complete with a Grand Canal and gondola rides, their very own Campanile Tower and Doge's Palace, a mini Guggenheim Museum and a Madame Tussaud's, this, I guess, is the cultural heart of Las Vegas. I particularly liked the Grand Canal Shoppes and the wonderful streetmosphere created by the shoppertainment. You can shoppe all day here and be shoppertained by an exquisite cast of Carnivale Characters and Street Performers.
Opposite the Venetian is the Mirage, which although not themed to the hilt, is notable as the first of the modern multi tasking, multi money-raking, mega mmmm...hotels. This is where the hotel casino became a resort. Where the name of the game became providing everything a guest could possibly need, under one roof.
Sitting in its shadow and an annex to the Mirage is Treasure Island - now called "TI" to appeal to a more mature market - which features a street front lake complete with pirate ship, singing pirates, skimpily dressed singing sirens trying to lure said singing pirates to their doom, fire, explosions, crashing masts, big splashes and flashing lights...with shows four times a night. They also have a casino.
From Desert Inn Road north west towards the older Downtown district, hotel casinos give way motels offering more visceral forms of entertainment. Of the few large hotel casinos in this direction only the Circus Circus and Stratosphere stand out. Circus Circus because it was the malevolent wonderland in Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and also one of the main backdrops for "Diamonds are Forever. Stratosphere because it has a 1,149 ft tower with a rollercoaster on top.
And what's all this jostling for share of eye all about? Claiming a slice of the $4.8 billion spent every year on gambling on the Strip, that's what. And that doesn't include dollars spent on accommodation, food, entertainment, trips to hospital, medication, etc. This figure is all the more staggering when you consider that around 60% of it is spent on slot machines...slot machines! That's over $2.4 billion a year spent on slot machines...slot machines! That's more than the combined gross domestic product of Liberia, Gambia, Djibouti, Burundi and Sierra Leone...spent on slot machines.
And what does this say about the average Vegas visitor? Not a lot really apart from the fact that they spend a lot of money on gambling? These same people however, would in some places be considered sinners. In some places they would be imprisoned and possibly even flogged. In places in America they could be fined.
Some would have them down as addicts or deluded individuals trying in vein to escape a life of grind. Wasteful, irresponsible, louche, idiotic. Gamblers really do run the gauntlet, and for what? The chance to lose money. The slots here pay out anything between 80% and 90%. So for every $100 to spend, you are likely to get $80 or perhaps $90 back. And the fun of it...sitting alone on a stool pressing a button. Strange behavior indeed.
Despite these odds I am a confirmed gambler and have two London casino memberships and a bunch of nearly-but-not-quite stories to prove it. I gamble with my friends. I ride a motorcycle and thus constantly gamble with my life. But for some inexplicable reason, during my entire stay in Las Vegas, I didn't put a one single quarter in a slot. Nor did I sit down and play at a table.
Why? I'm not sure. It wasn't because I was intimidated by sitting at a table with 7 strangers and losing my stack within three hands - I've done that often enough to be comfortable with it. It wasn't the whole casino mystique that renders some first time visitors incapable of joining a table due to fear of the unknown, fear of looking a fool or some other inexplicable fear. My medication wasn't of the hallucinogenic variety that could have turned slot machines into screaming, three eyed monsters from planet Tharg.
So why did my dollars stay in my pocket? I guess it was possibly something to do with the sheer scale of the operation that put me off. This was a cattle market. Actually this was a milking shed with guests fed drinks to keep them happy whilst the machines and tables milked them dry. And they didn't mind - just like cattle they kept coming back day after day.
In reality, I didn't get much of an opportunity to try my luck tucked away in my room. My Vegas was through my bedroom window, and having idled away a few minutes one afternoon comparing the tourist guide map with my view, one thing struck me...where was London?
They had a New York, a Paris, a Venice, a Monte Carlo and an early Rome, but no London. A London would be great. They could have a London Eye, replicas of the Tower of London, Big Ben and Nelson column. The hotel could be a scaled up Buckingham Palace or with a slight cheat, Windsor Castle.
Guests could be charged twice as much as elsewhere and conveyed around the complex in overcrowded and overheated tunnels. They could be charged an admission fee every time they went to the most popular central areas and they could be sold cheap nasty souvenirs by eastern Europeans dressed in authentic tatty clothes. What's more if they started planning it now it could be ready in time for the next London Olympics in 2012, err, or perhaps 2024...2032 possibly.
The other thing I noticed during my two days enforced bed rest was the sheer folly behind the call from nutritionist and other similar "ists", who clearly don't live in the real world, that we should all consume a minimum of two litres of water a day. Don't these people realise how much this makes you pee? I was averaging just over four liters of fluid per day but was spending 15 minutes of every hour peeing.
If the working population of Britain were to consume two litres of water a day, the amount of time in loo would see a return to productivity levels not seen since the early seventies. Even if I had wanted to, there was no way I could have set foot outside of my hotel room without the aid of a colostomy bag or 4 serfs and a sedan chair with built in commode.
Another problem with lying in bed for two days is the toll it seems to take on my back. Despite a seemingly well sprung bed, things just seemed to seize up and ache. This was particularly frustrating given that on my departure from Vegas I needed to make up for lost time and put in a few days knocking out some serious mileage - 500 miles a day on a bike can bring on a touch of back ache, the last thing you want to do is start out with one.
The solution...a massage
It didn't really dawn on me until I opened the Yellow Pages, just how difficult it was going to be to find somewhere to have a massage...just a massage! Most of the massage parlor ads had that look that tells you that the masseurs are trained to please, rather than trained at any local seat of learning.
I was looking for ads that listed a wide range of different types of massage techniques and therapies, mentioned a few professional qualifications and association and were devoid of images of scantily clad employees.
There were perilously few that met my critera and those that did weren't open at the weekend...and this was the weekend. Plan b was to select the largest place I could find - on the basis that large equals legit' - and hope that they knew a thing or two about pain relief rather than just relief.
On the way into Las Vegas there are a series of roadside posters, huge roadside posters each standing on big tubular steel legs and each with a solar panel perched on top like some malevolent bird of prey. They start about a 100 miles out and increase in frequency the closer you get to the city. By the time you hit the outskirts of Vegas they are a few hundred yards apart and form part of a Tron'esque landscape where, controlled by the approaching user, the Yellow Pages are brought up on LED screens lining the digital pathway.
This is very effective advertising and for one simple reason; there is nothing else to look at. The road to Vegas runs flat and straight across orange desert scrub. It turns occasionally and in places it rises and falls but almost imperceptibly - and that's it. These things stand out a mile, or three, and their messages become etched on your interest starved and overheated mind extremely easily.
And on one of the posters I had passed on my ride into the city, had been an ad for a health and massage spa. A spa advertising on these roadside billboards, alongside the major hotels and shows, must be big, and of course thus legitimate, and what's more they were open weekends.
Having found their number in the Yellow Pages under "Health & Beauty - Spas", yet another encouraging sign, I made an appointment for later on that afternoon. If I could get my back sorted I would be in perfect shape to leave the next morning and make some serious inroads into Utah.
The rest of the day was spent slouching around the casino and reading the local newspapers in one of the countless outdoor indoor cafes that surround the main casino floor. That's another feature of these heavily themed hotel casinos, such as New York New York, the outdoor indoor city.
If you're going to create a hotel in the image of a city then you have to offer what a city would offer; an urban landscape with streets full of shops, restaurants, bars and cafes. It's perfect really. It provides an air conditioned shopping environment away from the searing 100F+ temperatures outside, it keeps guests occupied whilst not gambling, and most importantly, it ensures guests spend their leisure dollars inside the hotel. It's pure Disney, but it works.
On the downside, it means you go on holiday and never see the sun, you spend 24 hours-a-day breathing in reconditioned air that others have breathed out and you become oblivious to the passing of time - the sun never rises nor sets in a casino and you will never ever see a clock. I was even told that oxygen is pumped into casinos in the early hours of the morning to stop guests getting tired and going to bed. This was cutting edge consumer manipulation on a grand and impressive scale and I was glad that I had spotted it early.
As my 5 O'clock appointment neared I made my way out to the multi story car park to collect my bike. It was hot, far too hot. You could feel the intensity of the sun the second you walked out of the shade and the heat from the black asphalt underfoot worked its way through your shoes the moment you stood still. After two days in a cool air-conditioned environment I had forgotten all about the oven outside and had made the mistake of wearing long sleeves instead of short and jeans instead of shorts. Fortunately the trip to the spa looked short and at least this clothing cover would save me from the traditional English sun burn.
The spa was on one of those roads that goes on for miles and has building numbers running into five figures. This should make finding places easy, however, on this particular road virtually none of the buildings had numbers. These huge roads are undoubtedly good for finding your way around, however, if you are unused to them, you can find yourself on a road you recognise but miles from your intended destination and in a neighbourhood you have never heard of.
Take Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles for example. This is a hellishly long road that runs for over 20 miles from Downtown, west to the Pacific Ocean near Malibu - not that this is the best or quickest way to get to Malibu from Downtown, far from it. These kinds of roads are a good example of the adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and the long road novice would do well to avoid them. The problem is they have this insidious way of exploiting your lack of knowledge of any other easier, less congested routes, and force you to endure their every stoplight strewn, roadwork infested, overcrowded mile.
Fortunately, on this occasion I had done a little on-line homework and was armed with exact longitude and latitude references...plus the name of the nearest cross street. The road ran at right angles to the strip, west over i15 and towards the low rise sprawl I had seen from my first bedroom window. This was the Vegas back-lot where the behind-the-scenes people and the bit actors lived. This was the kind of street you don't expect to find in a parallel universe like Vegas, it was far too normal. This kind of street was the equivalent of seeing Mickey Mouse in the staff canteen at Disney World, kicking back and smoking a well earned cigarette - it spoilt the illusion.
And what was the point of supermarkets when there were more restaurants than there were people. What was the point of tool hire shops when the only tools you needed were an electric toothbrush and a razor. And what possible need could there be in Vegas for plumbing supplies?
As I rode, the neighborhood changed. High rent gave way to low and the pristine black top asphalt road that looked so smart on the Strip, gave way to an old, pockmarked, faded version that bore the roadwork scars of time. This was not exactly the neighborhood where you are likely to find a smart health spa, but then this was Vegas and anything was possible in Vegas.
Finally, I found myself approaching the cross street I was searching for and the parcel of land where the on-line map had placed a neat red star. However, where the modest but stylish spa should have stood was a parade of shops, and in the middle of the parade was a, err, massage parlor...with, ummm, blacked out windows.
Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't the thought of being pampered my wide eyed, nubile Thai girls that was the problem, it was the sound knowledge that if they were, the chances of me leaving this place with my back worse than it was when I arrived, were high.
Added to this concern was the slightly unsettling memory of the last full body massage I had received at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. It was a tense affair by virtue of the shirtless, unusually hairy and extraordinarily tall indian gentleman who had delivered it.
Putting my clearly ridiculous concerns aside, I parked the bike in a bay in front of the shop / parlor and dismounted. The parade, or to be more precise mini mall, as any small cluster of shops with a 40 foot lollipop-like roadside sign is called, comprised four shops. Besides the parlor there was a nail bar, a computer repair shop stacked full of obsolete computers that presumably owners had failed to collect once they had worked out it was cheaper to buy a new one, and a unit that had been vacant for years, which, from a quick glance around the neighborhood, was a local disease that showed no signs of being cured.
The sign above the door read "New Siam - Massage Acupressure Therapies". The first of these two techniques I understood, but the third was a little ambiguous and covered an enormous cast of possibilities. This last one was clearly code for more prurient treatments and was presumably only fully understood by regular, hardened massage parlor aficionados.
The reception area was about the size of a family estate car and contained three office style chairs a small rickety bamboo coffee table covered in cheap Las Vegas accommodation guides, and an extremely dusty plastic Ficus plant which had at some stage been broken and subsequently repaired with a splint made of two wooden rulers. On the walls were a couple of old framed photographs of the Strip and a fire certificate from the local Fire Department.
No reception desk complete with smiling receptionist, No restful, tinkling music with whale sound and crashing waves. No glossy health and beauty magazines or ornamental water feature. This was "cheap" rather than "chic" minimalism but it worked for them if they could afford to advertise with the big boys along i15. In reality all of that fancy stuff was no more than dressing really and although it gave the impression of quality and professionalism, in reality it did little more than to push up the charges...or fees as they would say.
As long as the massage was good then the rest was of little consequence. In many respects it is better to go to a basic massage parlor because there, a poor massage will meet your expectations and a good one will exceed them. At a fancy spa, a good massage will meet your expectations but a poor one will fall below them. Places like this are also great for small talk. People are interested to hear when you go to a cheap place and received great service, but their eyes will glaze over when you mention you went to an expensive place and received great service - which is why people always have to say it was "ammmazing". On balance I was at the right place; I would leave either happy or very happy.
A loud electronic "bing bong" had announced my arrival but no one had appeared. I sat alone in the tiny reception area, now quite glad that the windows were blacked out. After a couple of minutes a small girl, who I assumed to be Thai, popped her head out from in between the two sheets which acted as a doorway to the rear of the shop / parlor / salon / spa.
"Anwoo?"
"Hello"
"Come, come"
An arm appeared and waved for me to follow.
"yo come he befo?"
"Sorry?"
"Befo, yo come he?"
"Oh, no. Me no come he befo"
"Ohhh, OK"
We were walking down a dimly lit corridor between two rows of cubicles where the only light appeared to be coming from the windows at the front of the shop / parlor / spa. The cubicle partitions stopped a few feet short of the ceiling allowing light to pass down the room, and although private, each cubicle afforded about the same level of privacy as a public toilet, where muted straining and awkward half coughs are easily heard. The only sound here, however, was an almost imperceptible occasional low male murmur punctuated my a little Thai titter, or a brief Thai exchange between masseuses.
Although cool and clearly air conditioned, the perfumed oil scented air was at the same time a little dank, and not altogether unlike a cool but humid evening in a tropical climate...such as Thailand.
Each cubicle had a sheet suspended across it's narrow doorway and there was no visible means of telling who or what was within. Half way down the corridor my guide pulled back a sheet door and waved for me to enter, "come, come". I ducked down to enter under her outstretched arm that held the sheet aside. The inside of the cubicle was barren apart from a towel covered table and a stool with the tool of the trade - a large plastic bottle of oil. Why I expected to find more I'm not sure, This was after all, all that was required.
Grinning broadly, my guide, who was clearly also my masseur, bade me prepare.
"off, off" she said with a mock gesture of removing a top over her head.
"I stripped down to my boxer shorts and stood there with my arms extended as if to say " is this OK". Clearly it was not.
"off, off" she repeated - this time with a slightly wider grin - as she handed me a towel.
I slid my boxers down with one hand a placed the still folder towel over my groin with the other. Then, without further direction, slid onto the bench front side up, leaving the folded towel now perched on top of my groin. My masseur moved to the side of the bench, unfolded the towel and draped it over me.
"Turn ower plis"
I turned as she held the towel and rearranged it over my backside.
"You hut anwere?"
"I, sorry?"
"You hut anwere? She touched the lower, middle and top of my back. "Here, here, here?"
"Ah, no, just stiff and it aches a lot".
"OK."
"And I'm very sensitive"
"Senstwiv?"
Yes, sensitive, ticklish"
"Ah, ticwish" she tittered.
My sensitivity, or ticwishness, was the reason why I so rarely had massages. If not fully relaxed a massage will have the opposite effect to that intended, and I will end up solid as a rock. Fortunately, after a few days in bed and with the prospect of my journey ahead, I was relaxed and desensitised.
The massage began with a liberal squirt of oil and a few long hard movements up and down my back. It then proceeded to focus in turn on the major muscle groups, neck, head, etc, etc.
Up to this point proceedings had taken place in near silence, apart from the occasional grunt as my masseur found and applied ferocious pressure to a knotted muscle. At some stage background music was turned on and the silence was filled by a distant Thai ensemble plinking and plonking their way through some traditional Thai elevator music.
Feeling that I should know a little more about my very pretty Thai torturer, I struck up conversation.
"What Is Your Name" I said, in that halting over enunciated way you do when talking to someone who speaks a different language.
"Sunee"
"OK. And how long have you been in Las Vegas, Sunee"
"for year"
"Four years, OK. Do you like it here?
"It OK."
"It's very hot here"
"hmm, vewy hot"
"Where did you come from originally?"
"Thailand"
"It's very hot there too."
"yea, vewy hot"
"And humid"
"wha?"
"err, humid...moist...damp, err hot and wet...wet heat..."
"oh, yea, OK"...titter.
It's strange how when faced by a perceived language barrier, conversation tends to stick to inane things. For all I knew, Sunee could have had a degree in English language from the University of Bangkok and here was I talking to her like a child. I'm sure from Sunee's point of view all men, when naked and confronted by a pretty girl, start talking total gibberish for totally different reasons...which they probably do.
Perhaps to stop my scintillating conversation or perhaps because she had finish my back, I'm not sure, I was instructed to turn over. My hands and arms were first to suffer Sunee's powerful attention. I was amazed at how someone so petite could have such a vice like grip and also how someone who looked so gentle could exact such pain. Years of practice I guess - at least that's what some of my married friends say of their wives.
Next came head, face, chest and then a jump to my feet. Now these are particularly sensitive so I warned her off and she moved to my ankles, calves and thighs.
That was about it and it had been a great massage. So, based on my original criteria, Sunee had exceeded my expectations and thus I was very happy.
"Thank you Sunee, that was great."
"you a wewcome Anwoo"
"It's a shame I have to leave tomorrow, otherwise I would come back for another"
"ow, stay, stay. Com back" she tittered.
And that's when she popped the question.
"woud you wike a happy ending?"
"Yes, why not"
And it was then that I discovered what "happy ending" meant in Thai...and most other languages.
I left very, very happy.
The radio alarm clock burst into life at 8:00am the next morning with an untuned barrage of static. I was refreshed and relaxed and had finished my prescribed course of antibiotics. Fortunately my other medication seemed to be keeping the agoraphobia in check and I was not feeling the slightest bit of anxiety or, at the other end of the scale, any manic urges to run screaming through the streets to the local airport and demand immediate emergency air evacuation back to the UK under heavy sedation.
I was aware, however, that Las Vegas was within a fast half day ride of Los Angeles, and my American surrogate home, and thus the feelings of isolation that normally pushed me into the fear zone were unlikely here. The first true test of my new found freedom from phobia would come in the middle of the night, somewhere up in the Rockies in a one horse town, hundreds of miles from an airport and days away from LA. This thought was a constant, if unwelcome, companion that hovered in the background and spoke when I least needed to hear it.
My departure from Los Angeles had been a bit of a false start, with my journey stumbling in the opening few yards, hitting the first hurdle and going down hard. I was now back in the starting blocks and under starters orders and, barring being shot by the starting gun, would be on the road again in a matter hours.
But first the essentials, the three S's - shit, shower, shave, or in this case, as I had adopted the outlaw biker stubble look and wasn't shaving, the two S's. I was in a hurry and had allocated five minutes to these two S's.
Upon entering the bathroom I was immediately aware that there was something hideously wrong. To my knowledge there was, at that particular point in time, only one person in the bathroom. So, by a process of elimination, or lack thereof, the bright red skinned individual in the mirror could only have been me.
This was not red in a "couple of minutes in the sun" kind or way. This was red in a "fell asleep in the sun for ten hours without sun cream" kind of way. Only this wasn't sunburn, because, apart from the fact I'd been in bed for most of the past three days, the only bits I'd exposed to the sun since leaving LA, were my forearms, my face and my neck. This was an all over affair and featured slightly bumpy skin like goosebumps, that could only have been one thing - an allergic reaction.
But to what? I hadn't been swimming. I'd been using the same soap for a few days and and hadn't noticed anything before now. And as far as I was aware I didn't have any food allergies.
I turned to inspect my back which was as red as the front, however, at the top the redness became a little streaky, like fingers of red running down from the nape of my neck. The kind of streaky red, finger-like marks you would expect to get if you had had a massage and your skin had reacted to the massage oil.
This explained the virtually 100% coverage and the fact that I was red in places where the sun normally didn't normally get a look in.
Although shocking to behold, I consoled myself that at least it wasn't life threatening, it wouldn't necessitate hospitalisation and the worst that could happen would be that I would require another regimen of some new form of medication. I would perhaps also have to avoid aggravating it by exposing it to the sun, which, with the aid of a long sleeved t-shirt and my normal riding jeans, would not be a problem on the bike. I looked a little weird though, but then who didn't in this town. I now had my very own unique caste colour that set me aside from the orange of Siegfried and Roy and other entertainment hoy poloy. I was red and therefore very important...or perhaps just another sunburnt British tourist.
I made my way down to to the check-out counter in reception only to find a tiny percentage of the hotel's 2,400 guest in the queue in front of me - that would be a few hundred then. I stood in line for about 10 minutes, during which time the queue moved about five feet.
It's at times like this that you really appreciate the kind of bad service we get in Britain. Although annoying in the extreme, at least your standard poe faced, monosyllabic British receptionist doesn't waste time with pleasantries. I could lip read the receptionist at the front of my queue going through the standard, "how are you today", "did you enjoy your stay", "was there anything wrong with your room", "is there anything else I can help you with today", "thank you for staying at the New York, New York, I hope you come again", "Have a nice day", "you are welcome", "you are welcome", "you are very welcome". I was in two minds as to whether to call the head of customer relations on the white house phone, and suggest that during times of peak demand at the front desk, they employ the "British Check-out Standard", that being, "Hello...........Goodbye".
This would save them at least two to three minutes per guest, which, in a queue for 20 people, would speed things up for the poor bastard at the back by at least 40 minutes - a saving that would do more for customer relations than their existing long winded, rhetorical check out procedure.
I couldn't wait any longer - the road was calling to me. Thinking around the problem, I decided to head back up to my room and use the automated check-out on the interactive TV system.
Ten minutes later I was sitting in my room and had negotiated my way through the screen prompts to the penultimate page of the billing system. Two more button pushes and the bill would be charged to my credit card and I would be free. I pushed the button once to bring up the grand total...and I was immediately aware that there was something hideously wrong.
The total read $1,268. It's easy to look at bills like this and see them in £ Sterling, in which case they are going to look expensive. But I had converted this particular bill the instant it came up on the screen, and it was hideously wrong in Sterling as well as Dollars. It equated to approximately £190 per night. By my reckoning it should have been nearer £90 per night, or a four night total in Dollars of $640, plus a bit of tax.
The bill was nearly double what I had expected and I felt like a bit of good old fashioned English agro coming on.
There is nothing quite like standing in front of a huge queue of impatient people and in a loud and deeply sarcastic manner demanding to see the owner, or at the very least the general manager, of an errant establishment. An outright refusal to lower your voice and a proclamation that you are not moving from the spot until your demands have been met, are an essential part of this experience. You do, however, have to be sure of your facts, because a climb-down in front of a huge queue of impatient people is a deeply humiliating experience...or so I am told.
I had checked in on a rate of $139 per night for two nights. I had extended this rate for a third night and then on my fourth, had downgraded to a smaller and thus cheaper room. These were the facts, of which I was sure, but they clearly didn't add up.
Unfortunately, a command performance of "Outraged customer at the front of the queue", means actually standing and waiting in the queue to get to the front, and as I had discovered earlier, this meant a long wait - but now it would be worth it.
It was half an hour before I eventually reached the front of the queue and was confronted by the receptionist who was to be my co-star. She was pretty, as everyone who worked front-of-house in Vegas appeared to be, and her name was Karyne, which I took to mean Karen.
"Good morning Karyne"
"Good morning Sir. How are you this morning?"
"Very well thank you Karyne"
"And how can I help you?"
"I would like to check out please"
"OK, and your room number?"
"1829"
"Thank you"
I avoided the chance to turn the tables and say "You're welcome", just in case she responded with a "thank you", and we ended up stuck for hours in some endless loop.
"Now the problem is Karyne, I had a look at the bill on the TV system in the room, and it's clearly wrong"
"OK, let me have a look at that Sir"
After a minute or so a computer printer wirred into life next to her.
"Here is your bill Mr Keen, and it appears to be fine"
She placed the bill on the counter so I could check it myself.
"Could you take a look and tell me where you think it's incorrect"
I looked down at the bill and started to go through it.
Ah, OK, yes there were a couple of meals I'd forgotten. And sure, I'd made a couple of long distance phone calls, but still, double what I was expecting? The two elements that stuck out immediately were the phone calls and the last night of accommodation.
"Karyne, could you check the phone log for me and give me the rate per minute?
"Let me take a look at that for you Sir."
I had made about three calls on the night of my hospitalization, to friends who I thought might be able to help with a quick long distance diagnosis of my condition. None could, but it had been reassuring to know that someone back in the UK was aware of my last known position and would be able to track down my remains and personal effects in the event that things turned really ugly and all contact was lost.
"Here we are Sir. You made three calls with a combined total of 47 minutes, which at $5 per minute totals $235.
47 minutes was probably about right and it was pointless arguing that $5 per minute was excessive, because humans are born with the knowledge that hotel phone rates are excessive, printed in their DNA. It's a fact that no one can deny knowledge of.
"Yup, that looks fine. What I really wanted to look at is this last night room charge. I was in a room at $139 per night and down graded to a smaller room to save money. It says here that my last night was $369. That's not really a downgrade is it Karyne. Do you think I could speak to the manager."
I had her now. There was no escaping my simple and obvious logic."
"Let me take a look at that for you Sir."
She was altogether too coolfor my liking. There was not a hint that my questions were creating even the slightest chink in her shinny, smily suit of confidence armor. I was the one getting nervous and I was wondering whether my request for the manager had been perhaps a little premature. The "could I speak to the manager" statement was normally deployed when the opponent was reeling in the face of my clinical dissection and unarguable evaluation of the problem, and was looking to throw in the towel. At this point the option to defer to a higher power is an easy out, and is normally seized upon. In reality, managers and heads of department are rarely available, and if they are, are more likely to send the hapless receptionist back to face the customer with an instruction to use their initiative and discretion to sort the problem out - this generally results in a discount or removal of the disputed charge. I had used this knowledge on countless occasions and had received discounts on everything from floaters in the loo, through to excessively noisy mattresses.
However, Karyne had not marched off to see a superior, she was deeply engrossed in her computer terminal. Eventually she turned to me and placed a pen on the bill next to the $369 charge.
"Unfortunately your fourth night was a Saturday night and even though you downgraded, due to the demand for rooms last night, the rate for your new room was as shown here, $369. She smiled.
"What do you mean due to demand. What has demand got to do with anything? My voice was now beginning to boom.
"None of our rooms have set rates. The rate depends on the night of the week and how busy we are. We were extremely busy last night because of the big fight at the MGM Grand, and what with it being a Saturday as well, your room was $369.
"Well it was nice of your reservations people to tell me that when I spoke to them" I was half turned to the people in the queue behind me and my volume was set to 11. " And another thing, the only reason I was here for a fourth night, and a third night come to think of it, was because I got food poisoning from your Italian restaurant here in the hotel and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance in the middle of the night. I was on a drip for 5 hours you know and was projectile vomiting all over the place".
Karyne was looking nervous now and so were the people in the queue behind me. Some even had the foot-in-dog-shit look that I had seen on the faces of my ambulance crew. Were they shocked by my bright red face and neck or by my story? I had no idea.
This time Karyne abandoned her computer terminal and headed for the back office. Success!
Minutes later she appeared again, this time with the composed look of someone with a solution.
"Mr Keen. I have been authorised to reduce the rate on your final night and also, as a gesture of goodwill, remove all phone charges. Would that be OK with you?"
"That would be very nice, Thank you Karyne"
"You're Welcome"
Order restored, and my voice down to its normal level of around 5, I signed the credit card receipt and said my farewell.
Thank you Karyne. I'm sorry if I was a little heated there, it's been a harrowing few days"
"I understand entirely Sir." And then the preprogramming kicked in. "I hope you enjoyed your stay here at New York New York and have a pleasant journey home."
It was incredible how my earlier revelations had failed to engender a change to Karyne's farewell. I wondered whether, if the hotel was ripped apart in an earthquake, Karyne would be found stumbling around in the rubble issuing fond corporate farewells to the surviving guests, like some dutiful Stepford wife. Bizare...but then this was Vegas.
"Thank you"
"You're welcome"
"Thank you"
"You're welcome"
I gave up and made my way across the casino floor at speed, just in case Karyne blew a fuse and came after my like a pretty version of Yul Brynner in a Vegas version of Westworld.
I made my way out to the front of the hotel and proceeded towards were my bike was parked in the car park that adjoined the hotel. I was traveling light, but even so, I had with me a large backpack, a hard plastic egg-shaped top-box much like a Samsonite case, my bike helmet, a heavily armored bike jacket and two 2 litre bottles of water to ward off dehydration. Although the spot were I had parked the bike was not exactly far, with all of this clobber and after two days on a liquid diet, I was struggling with the weight.
The solution was to take the heaviest item, the big black egg-shaped top-box, and leave it tucked behind the base of the large palm tree growing just off to the side of the walkway. Then, once I had picked up the bike, I would come back and reclaim it. Lighter, I carried on into the car park.
In keeping with the scale of the hotel and to accommodate both guests and day visitors, the car park was a huge multi-story complex that appeared nearly as large as the hotel itself. After a fairly good impersonation of a lab rat finding its way around a maze for the first time, I located the bike and loaded up what luggage I had.
Next came pre-ride preparations: ear plugs in - check, map folded to show the next few hundred miles and placed in magnetic tank pouch - check, camera and mini tripod secured in easy-to-access location - check, visor clean - check, water accessible and secure - check, lightweight riding gloves selected and on - check.
Due to my little allergic rash, I added a few additional points: t-shirt sleeves secured in down position by pieces of cord from hotel curtains - check, additional long sleeved t-shirt tied around neck in scarf fashion - check, red and white print handkerchief secured around face in stagecoach hold-up style - check.
Viewing myself in the bike's wing mirror it was clear that I had succeeded in covering all but the top half of my face above the bridge of my nose, and with my full-face helmet on and with it's rather menacing silver mirrored visor shut, I had achieved total sun block. Granted, this was a strange look in 100F + heat amongst a population wearing as little as possible, but hey, who would notice another strange person in a strange city like this.
Fully protected, I pulled out of the car park into the vicious sun and made the half mile circuit around the hotel the a spot nearest to where I had left my top-box. I climbed off the bike and, without removing my helmet, walked back up the walkway towards the Palm tree.
On rounding the corner of the hotel next to the Palm tree I was immediately aware that there was something hideously wrong. Standing in a circle around my Palm tree were three hotel security guards, two policemen and two men in suits with stern expressions - one of whom I noticed had a small curly plastic wire running from beneath his shirt collar and up to his right ear. This one was either profoundly deaf and had an extremely high powered hearing aid, or he was one of those secret security types that ran around talking into their sleeves.
My top-box was clearly the centre of their attention, which meant that I was soon to be the centre of their attention. This bore the classic hallmarks of a 'suspicious baggage security alert' and, if I didn't handle the next few minutes carefully, I might see my wash bag, clothes and more importantly, my medication disappear up in smoke in a controlled explosion.
All seven men had their backs to me and were deep in conversation. I had learnt to never approach heavily armed and extremely nervous policemen many years before, after being involved in a particularly nasty bit of civil unrest in Berkeley up near San Francisco. It had involved three days of rioting, large numbers of riot police, the National Guard and a liberal sprinkling of CS gas, rubber bullets and baton charges. One night, armed with my camera and a complete lack of understanding of the seriousness of my predicament, I had ventured forth onto the streets of Berkeley and joined a group of students walking towards the epicentre of the trouble in People's Park. About 20 yards from the park gates we were surrounded on three sides by riot police who proceeded to charge us. I made my escape by diving for cover over a hedge and into the relative safety of a front garden.
However, having decide that my adventure was ill advised, I had to make my way back to the apartment through the riot police who had just charged us and, facing away from me, who had formed a line blocking the end of the street they had just stormed down. I would thus have to come up behind them and ask to be let through. No one seemed to notice as I approached their rear - possibly due to the cacophony of noise coming from the few thousand chanting students opposing them, the police helicopter circling above, the occasional shattering of a high velocity beer bottle and the constant bull horn requests for the crowd to cease and disperse. In retrospect, it should have come as no surprise when the policeman who I tapped on the shoulder turned around, jabbed me in the stomach with his baton, pushed me to the floor with his shield and shouted, "stay down" as if I were 100 yards away.
I was not taking any chances here in Las Vegas, despite the lack of a riot. I was about 12 feet away and well out of baton range.
"Can I help?” I ventured.
They all turned, virtually in unison, like a choreographed singing group like the Drifters, or, dressed as they were, the Village People, and it wouldn't have surprised me at all if they had burst into song, "Young man, is this your box here, I said young man you had better be clear, I said young man we can sense your fear, Don't you lie to us you weirdo...We love to beat on Mo...tor...bike...riders, we love to beat on Mo...tor...bike...riders...."
Instead, the larger of the two police officers simply said, "Please remove your helmet Sir"
I obeyed immediately, as I do when anyone with a large ugly firearm strapped to his or her waist asks me to do something.
"Sir, please remove the rest of your headgear". The inflection in his voice was the one cops use when they're standing behind their police cars for cover - it's message implicit, "do as we say or we will hurt you."
As I removed the red and white print handkerchief - similar in many respects to a Ghutra, or Arab headdress - from my heavily stubbled face and the t-shirt from around my neck, both of which in turn revealed a larger and larger expanse of angry red skin, I wondered where the attitude had come from all of a sudden.
I was British and thus totally trustworthy...plus we were allies. Surely during security or terrorist alerts the police would be on the look-out for suspicious characters, Johnnie foreigners possibly; unusual looking types; loners, possibly with Arab associations; people who stood out from the crowd.
"Has this object got anything to do with you Sir?" He pointed towards my top-box, which lay unopened exactly where I had left it.
"Yes, it's my top-box" I said in my best English accented English, hoping this would act as a kind of Masonic handshake and pull the situation back from Defcon 1 some more agreeable Defcon.
"Your top-box?"
"Yes, it's the box that sits on top of the rack on my bike. It's a piece of luggage". As I spoke, and to make my story seem somehow more believable, I mimed how the box sat on the bike. I needed some help here because although it looked like a top-box to me, to your average Las Vegas cop, a large, black, egg-shaped box with a bright red reflector/warning strip and no obvious handle, is going to look more like a standard issue Al Qaeda Atom bomb, than an aerodynamically superb, Italian designed piece of motorcycle luggage.
"Could you explain what it's it doing in its current position.”? I though he was going to give me the exact longitude and latitude, but he didn't.
"It's extremely heavy you see, so I left it there, out of the way, whilst I picked up my motorbike and rode back around". This was obvious enough and totally believable...to me that is.
"And why didn't you leave it in the hotel lobby with the concierge as other guests do?
I wasn't ready for this and had no answer other than the truth.
"I hadn't thought about that"
Clearly I wasn't doing too well and as a result no one seemed to be relaxing.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
He walked towards me with an outstretched arm, guiding me away from the tree and towards a police car that was parked in front of the hotel lobby. As we moved away the hotel security guards began to unroll blue and white-stripped barrier tape with the words "Police Line" printed repeatedly along its length. They were cordoning off my top-box and I was being lead off to the Vegas version of Guantanamo Bay.
"Can I see some identification" Worryingly he had dropped the "Sir".
I patted my pockets to check for my wallet "No, sorry, it's in my wallet which is on my bike"
"You left your wallet on your bike?"
"Err, yes, it's in a bag though"
"You have another unattended bag in the vicinity?"
I was the one getting nervous now, as I realised that everything I said was reinforcing his view that I was a very real threat to homeland security.
"Err, yes. I left it there whilst I picked up the top-box"
"The one you left hidden behind the Palm tree, or another one you've left somewhere else?" His mind was clearly spinning out of control now.
"No, the one by the Plan tree. There is only one."
He opened the rear door of the police car and motioned for me to get in. With the door firmly shut he reached up to his chest pocket for his radio.
"Mike, you there, over?"
An electronic squawk came back "still here, over"
"Could you check the end of the path towards the car park for a motorcycle with a bag on it somewhere. It'll be on the corner in the red zone"
I wasn't sure about parking on a corner, but the red zone was a real no-no. I hadn't spotted it when I'd stopped, but if it true, they would have the break they were looking for...I would be a confirmed felon.
He leaned down to the slightly open window next to me. "Registration"
"It doesn't have one yet. It's..." He wasn't waiting for more of my perceived obfuscation.
"Make and colour?"
"Suzuki, blue"
"Mike, it's a blue Suzuki. No tags, over"
"Roger that"
The situation was getting a little crazy now, and if not diffused quickly would lead to the appearance of numerous scoop thirsty network news crews with prerequisite support helicopters, to say nothing of the possible arrival of all manner of heavily armed law enforcement officers, hot to participate directly in the war on terror and salivating at the thought of a clean shot.
I waited in silence. With the engine, and thus air conditioning, off, sitting on black plastic seats in a predominantly black car, on fresh black tarmac in 100F+ temperatures, is neither pleasant nor advisable. In this position it's easy to imagine how a dog feels as it slowly bakes to death in a shopping centre car park...or Korean fast food joint. In fact, in the rear of an American police car, with its high security metal cage blocking all means of escape, it's quite easy to actually imagine being a dog. Hopefully, my treatment would be better.
20 millilitres of sweat later the radio came back to life and a conversation as to whether or not to cordon off my bike ensued. Having decided against a second cordon, presumably based on the realisation that the red no parking zone at the rear of the New York New York Hotel was an unlikely terrorist target, I was released from the dog oven and lead back to the red zone where my bike was parked. Then, once my driving license and temporary registration documents had been thoroughly scrutinised, studied, examined and stared at very hard, and having demonstrated that my bag and bike where what they appeared to be, a bag and a bike and not a mobile rocket launcher, I was led back to the top-box cordon...which by now had attracted a small group of Japanese tourists.
It's strange, but where ever something is 'going down', you will find the ubiquitous group of Japanese tourists hovering in the background - a fact not lost on many Hollywood action movie directors. Strange also how perverse people are when faced by the prospect of being torn to shreds and deposited in a random splatter across the side of a hotel - logic says run, but most simply pull out a camera and phone a friend.
The cordon around the Palm tree was a little half hearted given the lack of objects in the vicinity around which to tie the barrier tape. There was the Palm tree itself, to the left a frail looking six foot sapling and to the right a thick clump of Agapanthus plants that were not sturdy enough to tie to, so the tape had been tangled around their bases a few times. This created a slightly sad and extremely low-slung triangular cordon that, given my top-box was on the far side of the Palm tree, did not actually embrace the object for which it was created.
As we arrived at the barrier tape, which at this point was about 6 inches off the ground, Mike - as a refer to him here but did not there - requested that I open the top-box. We stepped over the barrier tape and into the triangle leaving the remaining security detail, Japanese tourists and a new group who appeared to be hotel porters on a cigarette break, behind us.
As I knelt down in front of the top-box with the key in my hand, a thought suddenly shot through my mind accompanied by a sudden flush of blood to my face. It was the same breed of irrational last minute thought that screams through your mind when you're pulled over in a car by the police, or when younger, when your mum walks into your bedroom, 'Christ, is my insurance current', or 'Christ, did I hide those Playboys '. You're 99% certain that your fear is unfounded, but there is always that nagging doubt. On this occasion I was 99.9% certain that there was nothing incriminating inside the top-box, however there was still that .01% doubt.
With the contents massively compressed the lid sprang open to reveal my waterproofs sitting neatly on top. Fine. No problems.
"Please remove that top layer", said Mike with still no sign of a Sir.
I complied and lifted the waterproofs aside. Sitting there now was a neat line of easy-to-access pharmaceuticals nestling on a freshly laundered pair of hospital issue, 'do not remove' cotton trousers. This was not so fine.
"Is that your medication, Sir?" Hurrah, a Sir at last.
"Oh yes" and I explained.
"And the medical pants?"
"They were given to me by the hospital because I was admitted without any", which sounded strange out loud, but Mike didn't bat an eyelid.
"And you will be returning them?" which was more of an instruction than a question.
"Of course, I was on my way out there before all of this...err, happened" I lied.
Leaning over and with billy club in hand, Mike cautiously prodded the mound that my medication sat on. It gave under pressure, as clothing should. He turned to the others and shouted the all clear, before tuning back to me and launching into an exhaustive list of do's and anti-terrorism don'ts delivered with the countenance of a stern schoolteacher.
I was off the hook, save for a citation for parking in a red zone, which frankly was a major result given the circumstances. The barrier tape was removed, the crowd drifted away, disappointed no doubt by the absence of an explosion, and the uniforms and hearing aids moved on leaving me repacking my top-box in the dirt.
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