Tag: Smashed Pig

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

We were able to sleep in a little, but because our bodies were still on east coast time, it wasn’t too late when we got up. We were just planning to spend one day in town.

We texted some friends who’d moved to Las Vegas during the summer to see if they were free for lunch. We also wanted to visit the Mob Museum and see a show. I’d been to Vegas back in March with some girlfriends and we’d done the museum and seen the Cirque du Soleil show Love, based on Beatles’ music. It was really good, and I knew David would enjoy it, so I booked the tickets.

I worked for a couple of hours and then we took an Uber to meet Larry and Bertha for lunch. We didn’t want to hassle with parking and the lunch place was walking distance to the Mob Museum. We had a great lunch and a great time catching up with friends. Dave and I shared the Smashed Cubano sandwich at the Smashed Pig GastroPub. I keep a list in my phone of interesting restaurants I hear about, either on TV shows like Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, or in the AAA Via Magazine. I often forget to consult those notes, but that’s a different matter. Occasionally, I find when I go back and read them, that I accidentally visited a place and that’s what happened with the Smashed Pig. A few days later, I opened the Restaurant Notes to add something, glanced through the Vegas list and there was the Smashed Pig! I’m glad someone had recommended it and even gladder Larry suggested it!

We had one moment of panic when Jeff, the other driver/tour guide we’d taken over from called David because the hotel had called him to say, “Hey, you checked out, but your trailer is still here. What’s up?” Long story short, Jeff and Katia had reserved our room. When we checked in, we thought they’d reserved two nights for us, but they hadn’t. And when I called the hotel to say we needed a second night, the clerk said they were full and couldn’t accommodate us. I really did panic. We were twenty minutes away, by Uber. We weren’t packed. I’d left my laptop out. But the clerk was implacable. I asked to speak to someone else. He said they’d tell us the same thing. There was nothing he could do, they were overbooked, and we had to leave. Finally, he put me on hold and someone else picked up. I explained the situation and this guy was all, “Sure, no problem. Yeah, we’re overbooked, but there will be no shows.” Whew! After my heart rate returned to normal, we resumed our lovely visit and lunch.

After lunch, we walked the few blocks to the museum. We spent several hours and didn’t see it all. They have many fascinating displays, starting with a lineup you can go into. There’s a timeline of organized crime in this country, beginning with immigrants who brought it (and feuds) from their countries of origin. The picture to the right is from a flow chart/mind mapping kind of display showing all the “industries” organized crime touches and in what ways. I took this picture of the section showing drugs, since that’s what we’re interested in just now. By 4:45, we knew we’d have to make a second visit some other day to see the rest of the museum.

We took an Uber back to our hotel, had a quick bite at their free Happy Hour of drinks and snacks, then Ubered to the Mirage for our show. It was as great as I remembered, except for the woman sitting to my right. She kept taking her phone out and texting. The light was distracting me and I kept having to put a hand up to my face to block her. Other than that, we had a great time. We Ubered back to the hotel and were able to get to sleep at a decent hour.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

California, here we come! We weren’t in a huge hurry to leave since we were only headed to Bakersfield, about four and a half hours away. We had an event scheduled in Monterey for Friday, so we planned to take two days to get there.

At breakfast at the hotel, there was a women’s sports team also there. Given their ages, and uniforms, I deduced they were the Air Force Academy Women’s Tennis team. Since one of our granddaughters has expressed an interest in attending there, I asked some of the young women if they had any advice I could pass on. They said just to be a well-rounded student. There’s a summer program she can apply to for the summer of her junior year. They were very nice and encouraging.

Then we packed up and prepared to hit the road. As we hooked everything up, David noticed that the plug from the trailer to the truck that connects the lights was all worn away on one side. It had fallen out of the truck and been dragged on the roadway. But he got it to fit back into the receptacle, so we headed out.

Two of the random things we saw: A limo with suitcases bulging from its trunk on the freeway in Vegas and goats in the back of a pick-up, just inside California.

Getting out of Las Vegas itself turned out to be a bit tricky. The streets would merge without warning and we’d find ourself in the wrong lane. We can’t exactly sneak into a small space between cars. At a red light, we were waiting a ways back in our (wrong) lane, with the turning indicator on, when a very sweet woman in a white SUV in the lane next to us motioned us to come ahead. We did and rolled down the window. She said the roads were really confusing and she’d wait for us to go in front of her. Thank God for her, because in another block, she pulled up on the other side, rolled her window down and said if we were wanting the freeway, we’d need to be in the other lane in one more block and she’d hang back for us again. She was a definite answer to a prayer we didn’t know we needed to pray.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. Although it was no fun when we made our first California stop for gas! Ouch!

We made it to Bakersfield at about 5:00. I’d arranged, through the kindness of our niece (picking up the accumulated mail at our house) and Taryn (driving it to Bakersfield) to get our mail and as a bonus we got to see our daughter and granddaughter. We went to dinner at In ‘n Out, had a good visit, and then swapped bags. I took the thirty pounds of mail and gave her the ten pounds of various papers, souvenirs, magnets, and stuff that I didn’t want to cart around the west coast.

All in all, a good day!

Thursday, October 24, 2019

At breakfast, as I checked email, we got a message that our event in Monterey for tomorrow had fallen through. Which gave us a dilemma … to be continued.