And In Conclusion...
I awoke at 7:30AM. Despite the early hour, it was the most sleep I’d had in a week. I don’t remember falling asleep that night, nor do I remember much about it other than that it was restless. I felt better than the night before so I didn’t dwell on it at all.
I looked around the room and saw that it was a mess. I never really unpacked, but sort of just dumped everything in the room. I’d run in and out fairly quickly over the course of the weekend and by now things were pretty much strewn all over. My flight was at 1:30PM and I’d planned to leave the hotel at 11:30AM to get to the airport in time for security and what have you. So I had a few hours to figure out what to do. I decided to pack first. That took about an hour and then I went ahead and bathed in the hydro-flaying machine they called a shower.
At about 10ish, I called around to see if anyone else was awake. They were. So I popped over to Devin and Mike’s room. Everyone else was leaving on later flights so I was the only with a bit of a time crunch.
While conversing with the guys, Mike was packing up his clothes. At one point he pulled out the outfit that he’d been wearing when he was ground upon by Fudge’ems. (Go to the Dominos web site.) I don’t think Devin and Justin had seen the tainted clothing before and we all had another good laugh about the whole thing. We even took pictures of the outfit to preserve the moment for posterity.
By now it was time to go. The guys headed off to grab some food and I headed off to grab a cab to the airport. Duane was kind enough to carry my suitcase down the stairs for me since my knee was still pretty shot. The wait for the elevators was horrible. Farewell guys.
I had an uneventful ride to the airport and check in was quick. I had an hour or so to wander around the airport. That got old after about 15 minutes. I went back to the gate and found out that my plane was delayed and oversold. They were trying to find people to take a late flight out and get a free ticket for doing so. Duane was on that schedule as well, but was going to try to get an earlier flight. I tried to reach him to see if he was going to still be in Vegas all day and if so, I’d grab the late flight out. By the time I caught up with him, they were only offering flights the next day and I decided that I just wanted to go home after all. After a few hours of waiting around our plane finally arrived. It was packed and angry. No one is ever in a good mood returning from Las Vegas. They’re either mad that they lost money or won money and don’t want to leave.
I had my customary window seat and spent the majority of the time staring out the window. I did watch the film “Over the Hedge”. Decent enough. Certainly better than Mission Impossible III.
I’ve found that I don’t like traveling alone. The long periods of silence were very strange for me.
By the time I got home it was close to midnight local time.
My wife and dog were very happy to see me. They listened attentively as I told them the tale that I just told you.