Sweet Jaysus, what a night. We meant to leave Vegas Sunday morning and drive through to San Diego, leaving around 10 and arriving by 4 pm. About twenty miles north of the NEC/CA State line some poor bastard flipped his SUV over the divider landing in the southbound side of the interstate and killing himself and sending his girlfriend to the hospital. Blam.

Every Sunday, even without this complication, the traffic out of Vegas heading toward LA is denser than buffalo spoor. The Nevada Highway Patrol locked down two of the three lanes to investigate and clean up. The traffic backed up thicker and thicker and further and further. By the time we reached Whiskey Pete's near Perris, you couldn't get on or off, and we were a little low on gas. We exited into Whiskey Pete's casino and hotel and service station complex by crawling down the shoulder, and we were stuck there. A couple of hours later, we thought it might be better to crawl than do nothing, so we started out of the parking lot, but we never made it. We moved three feet in an hour inching our way toward the exit. Finally we gave up in disgust and ducked into a parking spot and retreated intot he casino, which as anyone who has been in one of these hellholes knows, is a nightmare of flashing lights, bells, zombified slave souls and bizarre neon.

After several hours sipping coffee and checking the scene, the parking lot had not changed at all, it was solid metal. Rumors flew--a body had been found, a crime scene investigation was ongoing, etc., etc., but no=-one knew the whole story and no-one had any idea when things would clear. We threw up our hands and booked a room, and retreated up tot he 16th floor from where we could see the endless stretch of cares crawling south on the 15, and not moving at all in the parking lot of Whiskey Pete's. We shut down, watched TV, slept for a couple of hours.

Finally at ten at night the southbound side began moving at 20 to 30 and the parking lot thinned out. By 11, the parking lot was almost6 cleared and we decided to dodge the inevitable rush hour of Monday morning by driving through the night. Everything went copacetically after that, we cruised into California at 70 and made our way down through Temecula into San Diego by 4 AM with rest stops. I then crashed into my bunk at home and slept like a cold brick for four hours.

The trip to Vegas was for a gathering of old friends, always enjoyuable, but Gawdawlmighty, what a price. :D

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