Vegas 2004 - Thursday!

(if you want to read what I have so far about last year's con, go to the July 10th posting...it's still a work in progress but mentions my first encounter with Wil Wheaton)

Thursday

Going away for even 4 days makes me nervous. I was just trying to think of the right “nervous as a….” phrase, can’t really come up with one. It’s almost like a type of stage fright, instead of “will I remember my lines,” it’s like “will I remember everything I need to do, everything I need to take?” Add to it that Erin is leaving on a 4 day trip to Chicago to see her honey Cameron graduate from his bootcamp at Great Lakes Naval Station. She’s staying with his parents tonight so they can get to the graduation ceremony nice and early. Jim and Deborah picked her up at the airport and dropped her at the hotel, they’re such dears.

Anyhoo, my anxiety actually started last night…Erin needed a cell phone for the trip. I had just upgraded my old Motorola Star Tac and had it available so I thought I’d just get a new # and re-activate the old phone to that and voila she’d be set. HA! Getting the new # and new service was, of course, easy. Heck they just got me committed to a year contract at an extra $30 per month, they should make it easy. Anyway, now lets activate the phone.

You’d think my phone was a pre-historic dinosaur for all the comments the customer service gal made. After an hour of trying we think the damn thing is programmed but it still isn’t activated. She tells me to plug it into the charger and let it sit for a bit since the network has been slow all day. It’s late so I don’t check it till about 10pm. Still not activated. I call customer svce again. Call back tomorrow. Tomorrow at 2 Erin gets on a plane. That’s cutting it close. Ok. So the next morning I start trying again. Finally the 5th person I talk to tells me the software is too old and incompatable with the network. Right. Why didn’t person 1, 2, 3, or 4 know that? *sigh*

Ok, go to the Sprint store and get the software upgraded. It’s 10:30 when I get there. Again they look at the phone like it’s a cheesy old relic and say they’ll try, come back in about half an hour. I go next door to Borders and spend my birthday gift card on some books and then back to Sprint.

She’s upgraded the software. Now activate. She can’t figure out if she’s done it right or not. It's that dern pesky antique hardware...maybe it will take maybe it won't. Now I have to wait and see if it activates, it can take a while. I sit, I'm ot leaving the store without a working phone. It’s after 11. I want to leave for the airport by 12:30 at the latest. Ok, I have to give Erin a WORKING phone. I say, whatever, sell me the cheapest one you have. That would be $150. Sheesh! Whatever. There’s a 14 day return I’ll just bring it back. No, wait, someone says, you can exchange the phone for $100 credit since it wouldn’t take the upgrade. Well, gee thanks! Glad someone there knows what the f*** they’re doing. I have to leave my old Star Tac with them, not a problem, they can give it a proper place in the museum of obsolescent telecom equipment or bury it for all I care.

Ya know, when I got the Star Tac 4 or 5 years ago it was just being replaced with a newer model. I got it fairly cheap and took Sprint service with it and I've been a loyal customer. I liked the matte black and flip phone style...reminded me of a Star Trek communicator. My old phone kept dialing last number dialed in my purse whenever I accidentally leaned against it as the buttons were exposed. A couple of times it’s dialed Glenn at 4 am and that did not make him happy.

Anyway it worked just fine and it always pisses me off that a perfectly sound piece of equipment has to be discarded because of corporate greed. Oh well, back to the saga of getting Erin a working cell phone.

They allegedly activate the phone but I try and can’t call it, this makes me nervous. I don’t want to walk out of the store until I can prove to myself it works. The network is slow, could be hours. It’s getting late and I have to get food for the kids on the way home. Ok I guess I’ll just have to pray to the technology gods that the damn thing will activate sometime before Erin needs it.

Fast forward to the San Jose Airport. We’re in line waiting to get Erin’s ticket and I decide to try the phone. It rings!!! Yay!! Now in a much more relaxed state of mind we get Erin’s ticket and get her thru security. We sit down at the gate and wait. We’re plenty early and I now have only one more thing to fret about and that’s getting myself packed and ready for our flight out at 10 pm.

Fast forward back to San Jose Airport. It’s about 9:00 when we finally get there from long term parking. This experience was much calmer than last year’s experience at SF airport. Anyway, ticketing is the same confusion as always. Computers hate my last name and it’s always a challenge to find out how they input it. Anyhoo we get our luggage checked and head over for the gate. Security is a breeze. I may never travel from SFO again.

Flying American is a different story. We board in good time, the flight gets off on time. The stewardess comes by with drinks. I say I want coffee. This is not so much for the drink as for the aroma. Someone near me has forgotten deodorant for the last decade and is trying to mask the smell with a vanilla cologne. The combination is nauseating. The stewardess unlatches my tray for me and lets it drop. This means that I’m unprepared and the thing hits my knee. Hard. I should have realized that this was just a foreshadowing of things to come. Also the coffee doesn't appear to have any aroma at all. Either it was brewed a week ago and nuked or it's just some special airline brand that has no aroma. Damn. I breathe in and out of my napkin for the rest of the trip.

There is a small boy behind us. He's ok from the time we take off till we land. Unfortunately, as I will explain, we're on the ground for a while after landing. He does not behave now that we're on the ground. The problem is that we're gonna be stuck here for a while. I get a peek at his mom. I see the problem immediately, she's dressed like a 17 year old looking for a hot date with a guy who can buy her drinks. I expect that she's not much of a role model. It's possible that the nauseating aroma is a combo of her perfume and the sweat of the guy she's travelling with. He looks like someone who works out a lot instead of working too much. They belong in the San Remo hotel, which, btw, I will tell you more about later.

We land in Vegas early and I’m thinking this is great! Well we taxi in and come to a stop. The pilot tells us that because we’re early the previous flight hasn’t yet left the gate and we’ll be waiting a bit. About a half hour later we’re still waiting. Now the pilot tells us that we’ll be waiting a bit longer because the previous flight has had some maintenance problems. People on this flight are starting to get a bit upset as they have connections and are now in great peril of missing them. Maybe this isn't American Airline's fault...but I'm not happy with them right after taking 4 hrs to make a 2 hr flight.

After nearly 2 hours we finally get to the terminal. This is only step one. We have to walk across to the tram and then ride to the main terminal. The people with connections have missed them. This is not a very happy crowd. We get to the baggage area. Only one carousel is operational. There are 3 flights of luggage up on the screen, ours isn’t one of them. It was easily another hour before our luggage shows up. Possibly this is Las Vegas Airport's fault. I still have a sore spot on my knee. I'll continue to blame American. We finally get a cab and head over to the San Remo hotel. Never heard of it? Me either, but I still booked us there for 4 nights.

Why did I choose the San Remo? We usually stay at the Las Vegas Hilton where all the Star Trek themed stuff is and since we’re here in part for the ST Con it also would make sense to stay there. Ah, but the Hilton is about a mile from the Strip. This year we thought we’d stay on or near the Strip. I go to numerous travel sites and on Travelocity I find we can get 4 nights plus airfare for a bit over $600 at the San Remo which is right behind the Tropicana and across from the MGM so it’s practically on the Strip. The new monorail starts at the MGM so we’re in a pretty good location for an unbeatable price…at least that’s what I think. I look at the San Remo website, Travelocity gives it 3 out of 5 stars and the user comments are fair. The little flash video of the rooms make them look passable. I book the package. This means that they charge me, I can’t change the booking after arrival and there are no refunds after arrival. In a movie there would be ominous music playing. In my brain no such luck.

The San Remo. It doesn’t look promising from the outside and once we’re in it’s not much better. Run down, shabby, these are all polite euphemisms that think to myself as we enter the lobby. There’s a live band in the corner. The singer is struggling with staying on pitch. The ominous music would have gotten louder and picked up tempo.

I get to the one guy at the check in desk. He finds my reservation (finally) and gives us room 104. Ok, first floor, saves time riding elevators. We head back thru the casino (tiny and full of very worrisome looking people – the high rollers wear Mervyn’s instead of WalMart). Here’s the room. We go in. Two double beds with about one foot of clearance. Glenn goes into the bathroom…hmm, there’s a cruddy tub and a roach on the wall. I call the desk and tell them we have to get a better room. Ok they say. I mention the roach. No comment.

Back at the desk they apologise that the room isn’t what we want. I get a new key. We are now in 1001. Up the elevator. Guess where the room is? To the left an beside the elevator…practically behind it. The walls outside the room are filthy and the plastic thingies they put on the corners of walls to try and keep them damage free are broken. So is the plastic on the elevator button. These are all not good signs. Oh, and by the way, it’s about 2 am. We’re very tired.

We get in the room. Well, it has a king sized bed. The airconditioning cranked up full blast cools the room from 100 degrees to about 80. There is a console on the wall that supports a table and has two 3 drawer chests under it. One of the drawers is missing. The wallpaper is dirty and coming loose. We don’t want to stay here. I call Hilton Honors reservations. No rooms at the Hilton. They have sister properties, would I like to move to one of them? We’re just too tired to think so we decide to go to sleep and decide in the morning. Pull down the cover and there are 3 flat pillows about 18 inches by 24 inches. I give Glenn the extra and fold mine in half. Exhaustion takes over and we sleep.

Posted by Dawno at July 31, 2004 10:00 AM