Home, home againI like to be here when I can

And when I come home cold and tiredIt’s good to warm my bones beside the fire...

...Home again, home again, diggety dig.

I haven’t had a lot of time on Clark Creek lately. First we went on our annual camping trip, then I went to a conference in Indianapolis and the next week went to another in Las Vegas. . Now I'm very much ready to go home, work in my garden, sleep in my bed, eat our normal food and have the quiet pleasures of home.

I don’t have very much to say about Indiana. The conference was a good one. I learned a ton I can take back to work, but it was otherwise not all that pleasant of an experience. There wasn’t a gym, pool, microwave, refrigerator, or other amenities expected in a big conference center hotel (are you teary-eyed and emotional yet?). I mostly ran long runs and read a lot in my room. It was my first brush with Midwesterners in their element. I think they scare me.

Vegas was a different story altogether. First of all, I got to take the fam on this trip, so it was like a mini-vacation –our first trip to Sin City. Again, the conference was worth attending. Everything is bigger in Vegas (hotels, buffet dinners, casinos of course, and the conventions are huge). The Hilton Vegas conference center was completely full for Infocomm ’05 – that is 68 football fields worth of exhibit halls and almost 1000 vendors and participants. Educomm, a relatively tiny offshoot of Infocomm was what I was there for. We learned quite a bit about the fusion of audiovisual and information technology in relation to classroom and lab setup.

I also wandered over into the Infocomm vendor area one time and got lost, literally. Infocomm is a gathering for anyone interested in selling or buying audiovisual equipment – that includes reader boards for convenience stores, displays for malls and clothing boutiques, bars, casinos, banks, etc. etc. Think for a moment about how many signs you see in a day. I’m used to computer and I.T. conference vendor halls. They generally try to entice the comparatively meek and geeky crowd of attendees with tee shirts, free software, coffee cups, etc. I wasn’t ready for vendors who cater to the athletic and adult entertainment industries. I made some really good contacts with people who sell interactive whiteboards, classroom performances systems, etc. and then I wandered into a hall where women in bikinis and skimpy lingerie were handing out beers to potential customers. I didn’t have one as it was 10 AM. Trying to get out of there, I got lost and in wandering from hall to hall, looking for an exit to the outside, I started to feel a little of the surreal disorientation captured so well in H.S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing. After a while you start to ask yourself, “Having I passed that display of A/V cables or does one display of cabling look pretty much like another?”

Generally I was back to our room by no later than 4:30 or so and we had several hours to go exploring before the kiddo tuckered out. Brit repeatedly reported how much she enjoyed having the day to play in the pool, wander around, or just sit quietly and quilt – a vacation without an agenda.

As I said, this was my first time to Vegas and I realize now that most of my impressions of the town were built on brat pack movies, Casino and Leaving Las Vegas. I don’t get much of a thrill from gambling so I never knew why I’d want to come here. As we got ready to hit the strip on our first in evening with sun block on our noses, in oversized shorts, floral print shirts and tennis shoes. With the kid on my back and a camera around my neck, I felt like the ultimate absurd tourist. When we got out on the street, though, I soon realized that everyone comes to Vegas – a sea of humanity including the short, tall, thin, fat, old and young of every race, ethnicity, and nationality. Vegas is a celebration of Americana. Here you can find themes from all over our national culture and history as well as other parts of the world re-packaged for convenient and mass consumption. There is the Eiffel Tower, pyramids, New York and even the Grand Canyon. Why take a trip to the actual canyon nearby when instead you could go shopping in a Grand Canyon themed shopping mall?



Mother and Son and MGM's Shark Reef


Click here for more photos from the set

Notes from Vegas:
1. The buffet as Caesar’s Palace recently won an award for best buffet and from what we saw, they deserved it, even at the 26 buck a head price. There was good fresh food from all over in one place – Middle Eastern, Mexican, American, Dessert, Asian, Seafood, and more. Yum!

2. If you an aquarium enthusiast or have a toddler fascinated by fish (Nemo!) or both, go to the Shark Reef aquarium at Mandalay Bay. They have a great exhibit and your little guy will go nuts, or at least ours did.

3. The monorail is great and takes you close to anywhere for pocket change. We stayed in a little old time share place one block off the strip. We got a pool right outside our door, a full kitchen, separate living room and back bedroom for 89 bucks a night and it took me 5 minutes by monorail to get from our hotel to the convention center

4. Anyone who tells you Vegas has gone family style is lying. It is still very much about the boozing, schmoozing, gambling, and adult diversions. Any place where they line up beside the sidewalk and handeverone from eight years old to eighty graphic photo cards with phone numbers for “strippers to you” is not truly a family town. What it is is a big place ground for adults with just enough stuff to keep the kids occupied. If you want family style entertainment, go to Anaheim.

5. We’ll definitely be back when the weather is cold and rainy at home and sunny dry heat in Vegas. Gambling is king and pays all the bills in that town. If you want a quiet place to lay by the pool, go a block off the strip.

posted by Scott in Washington at 8:34 AM |