Nevada Democratic Convention Report Part 1
Well, I'm going to split this into a few parts, because I'm posting bits and pieces of it from work, and only have a few minutes here and there. This first part is pretty lame, I'll admit it. I posted earlier about the confusion over the vans and when all was said and done, I was in the 5 PM departing van, the last one out of Las Vegas. We had 8 of us in the van. Me, the other driver (Randy), four middle-aged or older black women, the daughter of one of these women, and one mid-40s white woman. Now, why do I point out color here? Well, I found it ironic that the only 2 guys, and the 2 white guys were the van drivers. Plus, the trip up (and back) was like living in an episode of 227. It started out with them passing around the copy of 'Jet.' Then all the "uh-huh" comments (kind of reminded me of the Family Guy episode where they watch "Mmm-hmm." Teh topics of conversation were from how it was hard for one of them to get her PhD because of prejudice to the difference between light skinned and dark skinned women, to Denzel Washington, to Mariah Carey ('Why didn't she get a pre-nup from that boy? He's 11 years younger and is going to leave her for a younger woman'), to the amounts of food one of them brought (sandwiches, hot dogs, chips, cereal, you name it). They were all very nice, and it was fascinating. However, they did not like the way we were driving and there was a lot of back seat driving. Frankly, I thought we did a good job (well, except for one thing). When we're about 50 miles out of town we get a call...apparently there was a 9th person for the van who we left behind because of a communications error. Oops! I was told he was able to arrange other transport to Reno. If were were 10 or 15 miles away, we might have turned around, but we were almost in Indian Springs already.
Randy took the 1st shift and the women kept saying he was nodding off. I didn't see it, and I was beside him, however I was listening to my Zune to keep out some of the chatter. We took a pool for gas (about $15/person) to refill the van and I took over. All went well until Fallon, where there was a sign that said "Turn left here to go to Reno." Well, by consensus, we all decided to ignore the sign and keep following 95, because Randy insisted that's what the map said, and that was also my belief...big mistake. It added 60 miles to a 400+ mile trip and at midnight when I was already dragging. Also, when we were getting onto I-80 from 95 there was a cloverleaf, and lets just say a 12 passenger van doesn't handle like a Camry. I ended up taking the turn a bit fast, and we went into the area between the ramp and the highway. We weren't in any danger, and it was pretty damn scary for a minute. I think I handled it well, and wow...I learned something there. No one was hurt (except one woman who wouldn't drive back with us, claimed me and Randy were both trying to kill her). We finally get to Reno about 1:10 and no one knew where the main hotel was. We ended going past Reno and got directions and had to backtrack 5 or 6 miles. The first load of people got dropped off about 1:30. I took me and 2 other people to our downtown hotel and didn't get settled in until close to 2:00 AM (I didn't fall asleep until closer to 2:30 AM). Now, the good news was that the room kicked some serious butt. Somehow I got upgraded to a "Player's Suite", which I'll take for my $119/night. I was supposed to have a roommate, but he didn't show, which is good because the room only had one bed, and it was on my credit card, so I was taking it. :)
Gotta love the hot tub in the middle of the room.
A nice sized bed, too!
Wait! Where's the TV?
Ah, there it is...its retractable!
Even the bathroom area mostly kicked butt.
After 4 1/2 hours to sleep, it was on to the big convention day...Saturday, that I'll cover in the next post.
Randy took the 1st shift and the women kept saying he was nodding off. I didn't see it, and I was beside him, however I was listening to my Zune to keep out some of the chatter. We took a pool for gas (about $15/person) to refill the van and I took over. All went well until Fallon, where there was a sign that said "Turn left here to go to Reno." Well, by consensus, we all decided to ignore the sign and keep following 95, because Randy insisted that's what the map said, and that was also my belief...big mistake. It added 60 miles to a 400+ mile trip and at midnight when I was already dragging. Also, when we were getting onto I-80 from 95 there was a cloverleaf, and lets just say a 12 passenger van doesn't handle like a Camry. I ended up taking the turn a bit fast, and we went into the area between the ramp and the highway. We weren't in any danger, and it was pretty damn scary for a minute. I think I handled it well, and wow...I learned something there. No one was hurt (except one woman who wouldn't drive back with us, claimed me and Randy were both trying to kill her). We finally get to Reno about 1:10 and no one knew where the main hotel was. We ended going past Reno and got directions and had to backtrack 5 or 6 miles. The first load of people got dropped off about 1:30. I took me and 2 other people to our downtown hotel and didn't get settled in until close to 2:00 AM (I didn't fall asleep until closer to 2:30 AM). Now, the good news was that the room kicked some serious butt. Somehow I got upgraded to a "Player's Suite", which I'll take for my $119/night. I was supposed to have a roommate, but he didn't show, which is good because the room only had one bed, and it was on my credit card, so I was taking it. :)
Gotta love the hot tub in the middle of the room.
A nice sized bed, too!
Wait! Where's the TV?
Ah, there it is...its retractable!
Even the bathroom area mostly kicked butt.
After 4 1/2 hours to sleep, it was on to the big convention day...Saturday, that I'll cover in the next post.