Coming Home

Last night we thought about going to watch some professional skiers compete followed by a concert and fireworks, but decided to be practical and stay at the rental house to do laundry, pack our mountains of stuff into our platoon of luggage, and finish off as much of our food and alcohol as possible. We had a buffet and an open bar kinda night.
We all agreed today that the people we were yesterday made the smart choice.

By midnight I was the last soldier standing and had finally killed the jug of Jim Beam while blogging (minus a flask or two in suitcases):



The girls were worried that we wouldn't be able to fit everything and everyone in the rental SUV, but with decades of experience cramming band gear into cars, trucks, and trailers I managed it on the first try:

It helped that one member of our party flew out a day early, but I brought a bunch of bungee cords just in case we needed to lash some of our crap to the ski rack on top.


Took this (and the previous two + a bunch of others posted in this series) with my Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate phone in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Carson City Nevada:

Might be the first cellphone pic I get printed.

When the light is good it takes decent 5MP photos with selectable autofocus points, but I've been looking forward to the improvements in the Galaxy S3 that we were going to get in May when our 2-years are up.
Sadly, one member of our party has a brand new S3 and it quit sending or receiving calls and texts.
I rooted around in it (seeing as how I'm in the cellphone biz now) and couldn 't find any incorrect settings, and the phone insisted that it was connected and working. Basically a camera and gameboy now.
Googled a bit and discovered that this is a widespread issue that probably isn't Verizon's fault and that Samsung isn't being helpful at all. Possibly a shit-ton of lemons, and also lots of complaints that reception indoors is terrible. Another member of our group has the same phone and it was fine.
Avoid the S3 until this is resolved.


My readers have all travelled and know how it is--we had to be out of the rental house by a certain time, and return the rental Tahoe at another time, then make our flights on Southwest's schedule.
Ended up spending several hours camped in the outside corner table of a restaurant in the Reno airport eating cheese fries with bacon.
Resisted at Harrah's Casino in Lake Tahoe, so this was the first and last time I played a slot machine.
Just a dumb way to burn $10.
IF I ever go to a casino again it'll have to be blackjack.
As a younger man I always did well betting horses at Saratoga in August, but that was probably just luck.



Flying into Las Vegas from Reno I pulled out Sylvia's Sony T70 camera to try and get some stuff that was better than my phone could produce:


Through the gritty and foggy window it was pretty bland but photoshop can handle such things.

The Las Vegas Strip looks like the northside of Loop 410 around Broadway from up here:



Sylvia still needed a "Sunset" pic to complete a scavenger hunt photo thing proposed by a coworker, so I worked hard to get this one of the plane behind us as we taxied to takeoff position for the final Las Vegas to San Antonio flight:


With mountains surrounding us all week it was hard to get what most Texans consider a sunset photo.



Mountains--Hell Yeah!