Author: TravelGal

Time for full disclosure: we had inferior motives for our dash into the desert. We were not into gambling, our high school bus trip days of getting drunk away from the parents were long gone, so technically we had no business in Sin City. But the place is famous for something else, apart from gambling – namely, nuptials. Yes, we were going to Las Vegas to get married!

In the best nomadic traditions the wedding chapel was booked on the phone from an airport lounge, the dress bought on eBay, the wedding party assembled on the way, and the marriage license application was filled in during an especially long and boring telephone conference at work. Ok, to be fair, the eBay dress was swapped for an impulse purchase on the day of the wedding, but that only added to the craziness of the moment. We were going to Vegas, and we were going to get married in the best American tradition in a drive-through on motorbikes in the Tunnel of Love of The Little White Wedding Chapel, that had the dubious honor of wedding Michael Jordan, Joan Collins (several times, if I recall correctly) and Britney Spears. And we were about the join the club.

The wedding business, ranking second in Nevada after gambling, but winning over prostitution, is localized to the old Vegas downtown, a bit away from the Strip. Numerous chapels (all operating 24/7), wedding gown & tux rentals, beauticians, and every other imaginable business working on “Cupid call” cater to all sorts of clientele and offer services for all tastes and absence thereof.

Even though the state of Nevada simplifies the whole process to the utmost (online paperwork for 40 bucks, no blood tests, no documents – all at word’s value), you still have to pick up your marriage license at the Vegas Marriage License Bureau in person, with both parties present and armed with IDs. This is where we were heading, having googled the address in advance.

Vegas downtown represented chaos with mild attempts at organization. Around the corner from the Marriage License Bureau a group of women was chatting amicably on the sidewalk. The younger one of the group was holding a newly-born baby up in the air, and pointing to the small-windowed building across the road, was cooing at the top of her lungs “Look at Daddy, look at Daddy!” Our worst suspicions proved true, when we saw “Clark County Detention Center” written in big letters on the gates of the building. Directly across the street, on the side of the Marriage License Bureau building a door, brightly decorated with flickering lights boasted two signs of equal size competing with each other above it: “Bail Bonds” and “A Little Lucky Wedding Chapel”. Only in Vegas!… As my friend Jane said about this unusual symbiosis across the road from city prison “He’s gonna pay that child support one way or the other!“

Inside the Marriage License Bureau a long line of people of varied ages, races and states of intoxication was impatiently waiting for the official permission to get married. The “express lane” for those who filled their applications online was refreshingly empty. Why none of those trapped in the “regular” queue attempted to open an Internet browser on their phones to fill in the bloody application while waiting in line, beats me. Don’t look for logic where you did not put it… Followed by unfriendly gazes from the wrong side of the queue we proudly proceeded to the window through the “express lane”, where a cheerful girl issued our marriage license within a matter of minutes, and congratulated us on the upcoming event. It all seemed to be happening quite fast!…

With a view of the soon to happen event, we did not come to Sin City alone, but managed to drag everybody we knew on this side of the ocean along. The forthcoming 4th of July and the long weekend played into our hands. Fletch & Jane were the only people who knew about our plans all along, all others were surprised with the news upon our arrival at their respectively welcoming homes, and all signed up.

The wedding gang started to assemble on the evening of the 2nd:

• Nic & I made our way back to Vegas through the desert, parted with the car and picked up the bikes some time in the afternoon.
• Seany and Cindy flew in also in the afternoon, arriving at the hotel in style in a bright red Mustang convertible rented for the occasion.
• Nika and Andy drove from LA, even though Nika had a plane to catch early on the morning of the 4th, i.e “the morning after”.
• Jane and Fletch flew from New York late at night with our Munich friend Thomas in tow, who just happened to be spending the weekend with them.
• Olga and Sean who kept saying they won’t be able to make it, did do so by the afternoon of the 3rd. They drove all the way from San Francisco (!!!), turning into the chapel’s driveway ten minutes before the ceremony, and in addition to the thrill of having one of my oldest childhood friends at the wedding, added to the unforgettable memories of the ceremony with a bit of unplanned drama.

The Treasure Island (one of the oldest hotels on the Strip that has definitely seen better days) was accidentally chosen as the center of operations for the following two days. One by one, all arrivals checked in and by some magnetic force gravitated to the bar, where everyone started drinking heavily right away, swapping jokes and horsing around as if they all knew each other their whole lives. The following day was quickly shaping into an absolute blast!

Speaking of old friends – even if not everybody in the party knew each other, some of them were introduced before. Nika, Jane and Fletch all met in Munich, when they all lived there. Jane and Fletch met Andy on one of their trips to London, and even went to one of the performances Andy directed and Nika acted in. Thomas and Cindy were old friends from Munich, and worked Irish pubs together back in the day, when Cindy met Seany. Jane & Fletch met Thomas in Munich at Oktoberfest when visiting after they moved back to the States. I truly believe that all good people in this world should know each other, and will never tire of introducing them to one another!…

The Big Day started with brunch in a fancy restaurant (breakfast was out of the question for obvious reasons – the “get together” evening stretched well into the early hours of the next morning). When everybody woke up, we timely remembered that we had a professional in our midst: our friend Thomas not only worked in gastronomy, supplying the best restaurants with Munich with delicacies, but was a true food connoisseur and aficionado on his own time. He already had a couple of places pinned down for further exploration, and since one of them happened to be within walking distance from our base of operations, the decision was made: we were going to Sushi Samba!

Here I have to make a quick detour and explain something to the audience: while Vegas hotels are all relatively cheap, everything else in Sin City is definitely not. You save on the hotel fare, but they are going to get your money one way or the other: you pay double for everything else, starting from water (logical in the desert, isn’t it?…) to food and entertainment. Besides, most people do go there on a “once-in-a-lifetime” trip, and are fully consented to spending stupid money in Sin City.

This way, we fit in with the mainstream crowd quite well: it was our wedding day, after all, so being stingy was not in the plans. Good so, for Sushi Samba definitely did not belong in the budget variety of lunch/dining establishments. We allowed ourselves to be persuaded into the sampling menu and fully enjoyed it – everything brought onto the table was exquisite! After a lazy 2-hour brunch, we waddled back to the hotel to get ready for The Event.

The chapel was booked for 5 in the afternoon, and even quick dashes from one refrigerated hotel/casino to another in +40C heat called for regular showers in-between. Having spent the previous two weeks on a bike alternating between two pairs of jeans and four T-shirts, there was no way in hell I would be wearing a regular biker outfit for the wedding! Besides, part of the lure of the whole thing was a chance to ride through Vegas in a dress. My last-minute purchase was a black and white (of course!) number with a bow around the waist, and a full skirt with a petticoat long enough to cover my knees, but short enough not to get tangled in the wheels or the engine of the bike – perfect!

I was running between the shower, mirror and hairdryer when I received a cryptic text message from Olga, nonchalantly asking for the address of the chapel. Up until that moment, I was sure that neither she nor Sean would be able to make it. I called back asking what the hell, and was informed that they were driving like maniacs and expected to be in Vegas by 5. I could not have wished for a better surprise!!!

By quarter past four the main group assembled in the parking garage, and moved in the direction of The Little White Wedding Chapel. Seany, Cindy and Thomas led the group in style in a red Mustang convertible. Nic and I followed the car on our bikes, Jane and Fletch were riding right behind us, in solidarity on rented Harleys. Nika and Andy closed this unusual procession in their car with “A Highway to Hell” blasting out of the speakers. The beginning could not have been more perfect!

At the chapel, the four girls locked themselves in the bathroom (one for all), trying to fix the damage made to our appearances by heat, wind and helmets, while the boys passed the time kicking tires of the big pink Cadillac parked at the entrance. Ten minutes before five a nondescript rental car rushed into the chapel’s driveway, brakes screeching, and changing on the way into party clothes, Olga and Sean rushed out to join the gang. The party was finally complete, and the wedding could get started!

Here I again take a bit of a time off, and will continue the epic wedding story in the next installment. Cheap trick, I know, but there simply were too many emotions, impressions and memories to squeeze them all into one chapter! With this in mind – to be continued…

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Ok, I have to admit – riding into the desert on air cooled bikes in midday heat was definitely NOT the smartest move on our part. In our defense – the initially planned early start was delayed by the opening of a trash metal club the night before, and we rolled out of LA much later than intended.

We suspected that it would be hot in the desert. Probably even very hot. But just like it’s almost impossible to pack for a beach vacation in the middle of a snowstorm, our brains did not quite got around the whole heat thing.
Normally, on a bike, even in hot weather, you still count in the wind-chill factor. Guess what?… In the desert there is no such thing – only the heat wave factor, which together with the swelter of the sun from the cloudless sky and the heat of the melting tarmac makes you feel like a hot dog on a roaster.

While I kept exceptionally fond memories of the Mojave Desert from the visit of only three years before, even I had to admit that the stretch between LA and Vegas was downright ugly. There was nothing there but the highway. The few random gas stations on the way did not add much charm to the place. Riding through the desert in the vicinity of Death Valley with its average July temperatures of +46C (~116F) was a challenge not for the feeble-hearted. We stopped whenever we could (not that there was an abundance of places anyway), drinking Gatorade and water by the gallon, as well as pouring the latter fluid all over us, and still by the time we reached Vegas I almost collapsed in the driveway of the first hotel on the Strip, as close to the heat stroke as I hopefully would ever be in my life. Thank you, two unknown guys in a golf cart, who stopped and gave me little bottles of cold water, and a pack of ice! Had it not been for them, I may not be having the pleasure of writing these lines… Nic towed my bike to the nearby staff parking, and I was sitting panting in the shade of some meager shrubs by the road, thinking how the hell I got into this mess. While ice and water helped with the initial dizziness, and I soon stopped seeing double, the ride to Vegas made us seriously re-consider our further moves.

The original plan was to continue into the desert on the bikes, stay for the night in Alamo, Nevada, spend the next day exploring the wacky UFO sights of Rachel and Area 51 and return to Vegas passing by the Hoover Dam for a longer stay two nights later. After our close and personal encounter with the desert heat, all of this was out of the question. It was simply too hot to ride… Exhausted and heat-stricken as we were, we weren’t ready to throw in the towel just yet. Two luckily spotted passers buy in Harley T-shirts gave us directions to the nearest dealer who happened to be just around the corner. We dragged our sorry asses and bikes there, and supported by free coffee in an air-conditioned atmosphere resuscitated and regrouped.

Not ready to discard a full day of carefully planned alternative sight-seeing, we decided to sacrifice on the riding. The bikes were left resting at the Vegas Harley dealer’s – thank you, guys – the Harley code of honor did work, and “riders in distress” (aka stupid idiots who thought they would be OK riding into the desert in mid-summer heat) were helped. The rental car equipped with GPS and air conditioning was booked and picked up at the airport around the corner from Harley, our rucksacks were thrown in, and smug and proud of our crisis management skills we were back on the road!

From inside the air-conditioned vehicle the desert looked tame and pretty. Following the instructions of the GPS lady and snapping photos on the way, we reached the Windmill Ridge – our destination for the night. I fondly remembered the place with its beautiful super-comfort cabins and the out-of-this-world steaks from the last visit to Nevada, and insisted we stopped there again. The Windmill Ridge did not disappoint – both, the cabins and the steaks were as fantastic as I remembered them, and I can wholeheartedly vouch that the state of Nevada is worth visiting just for that!

The next day we drove along Extraterrestrial Highway, noticing with surprise how most road-signs indicating the free range area and low flying aircraft were punctured with bullet-holes. This included the couple of those famously adjusted to the specifics of the area, where the cow was complemented with UFO flying over it. Entertainment in the desert must be rather basic and scarce…

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We stopped at the Little A’Le’Inn for a drink, a chat with the owner, and an obligatory tour of the gift shop, and took about a hundred pictures with the meager but epic sights of Rachel, thoroughly enjoying ourselves. The place was like a time-capsule: returning there three years after my first visit, I had a total de ja vue of having left it in exactly the same state only yesterday! I won’t repeat here my first-time impressions from Rachel of three years ago – those who somehow managed to miss them, are welcome to refresh their memories here: Mad Christmas Trip – Rachel, Nevada.

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Three years later, I was glad to confirm that the general level of craziness did not go down even a notch. The only unfortunate change to the neighborhood was the disappearance of the Black Mailbox (again, the curious-minded can read about this artifact here:
Mad Christmas Trip – Rachel, Nevada.

The owner of the Little A’Le’Inn confirmed to us that, alas, Black Mailbox there was no more!… Apparently, even after the replacement of the original box with an industrial-size and -strength construction, mail heists continued. Mr. Medlin said “Screw this shit!” (or something along those lines), plucked the box out, and re-routed his mail to the nearby Alamo, where his granddaughter now picks it up every day when going to school. Sad, but inevitable… One more legendary landmark succumbed to the bulldozer of time. We still commemorated the occasion by taking photos at the now empty spot where Black Mailbox used to be.

The next day, before returning the car and our rested in the luxury of air-conditioning asses to Vegas, we had one more sight on the agenda – the Hoover Dam. Built in the 30-ies of the 20th century, the Dam is one of the seven modern civil engineering wonders of the United States, and quite rightly so. Even today, it looks incredibly impressive, and considering the technology of 80 years ago, one cannot but wonder how the heck they built the thing, especially in the limited time they had for the job. Blocking the estuary of the Colorado River at Lake Mead, the Dam is huge – definitely too big to fit into a photo – and supplies electrical power to the whole states of Nevada and Arizona, as well as Southern California.

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With the Bypass Bridge connecting Nevada and Arizona above it and numerous electric wire towers sticking out of both banks of the river, the whole construction looks impressively futuristic. The incredible green waters of the lake and the Colorado River sets off the color scheme of the area, with the carmine red of the mountains, ochre yellow of the Dam buildings, and the unbelievably blue desert sky. No wonder that millions of people visit the Hoover Dam every year – it is a magnificent sight! And yes, I am aware of the whole eco system of Lake Mead and surrounding area being shot to shit, but from the engineering point of view, the Hoover Dam is still a wonder.