LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Apparently I just missed all the fun in Flagstaff. A hailstorm beat me to town — and also beat the mortal shit out of a whole bunch of stuff with giant ice bombs — and after I departed, the flooding commenced. Good times.
I did get a light paddling from Ma Nature, however. After enjoying the traditional java stop at Late for the Train, I hauled ass westward into some of the wettest high-desert weather I’ve ever seen in many a hard road mile in service of the bicycle bidness.
The rain started bucketing down long before I hit Kingman and it didn’t stop until just short of Searchlight, Nevada.
Somewhere in between, outside of Laughlin around Christmas Tree Pass, I saw some poor desert rat tricked out like some sort of Blade Runner Bedouin, pushing a shopping cart full of Christ knows what eastward through the deluge. Welcome to Nevada.
Bugsy Siegal’s Fun House looks a little shabbier since I last visited in 2006. The unemployment rate in the Silver State is pushing 13 percent, and it’s even worse in Vegas; the class war’s body count was shambling zombie fashion along Flamingo and Paradise as I rolled into town.
And there’s not much hope for a speedy return to the good old days, according to Jennifer Robison of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, citing a Brookings Institution report.
She also spoke with a local economist who thinks the report overly pessimistic, but I note that he only expects the unemployment rate to dip once jobless construction workers find gigs elsewhere and flee Sin City like tapped-out gamblers skipping out on their hotel tabs.
If that’s good economic news, you can have it.
Meanwhile, the Strip was hopping last night as the Adventure Cycling crew and I went out for dinner and drinks to get acquainted. The service-industry folks we encountered seemed to be weathering the economic storm with equanimity, but then they still have jobs.
Me too. And on Wednesday I have to get busy. It’s showtime.
Mad Blog Media 
This trip sounds like part of “The Pilgrim’s Journey”!
“Pilgrim’s Progress” – duh!
Bad news all over. From the NY times. I often wonder lately whether ten years out, these will be the good old days. No one uses the D word. Probably for political reasons.
WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it….
Was Adventure Cycling picking up the tab? How’s the bike touring business these days anyway?
Patrick
You seem to be your very own ‘eye of the hurricane’. Do let the fine folks at Adventure Cycling know that the new, mildly gonzo’d bike reviews were just the reason I needed to re-up for two more years.
Have fun and tip heavily ’cause that’s how trickle down economics works. As Khal pointed out we’re headed to a new Guilded Age. Which sucked if you weren’t a Lily or Rockefeller.
I’ve been looking at getting Adventure Cycling sub, and now I have another reason.
Make sure you travel in packs at night out there!