Our last day on the road!
View from our hotel room Thursday morning:
Unfortunately, we weren't able to swim in the pool. Maybe next time. :)
Shea, ready to leave:
After checking out of the hotel and loading the car, we walked down the Strip a little more. We walked through Harrah's and went back to The Forum Shops to experience the spiral escalator that Tara had told us so much about. It was really cool.
I seriously lost sleep trying to figure out how this thing works. I knew that escalators recycle their stairs, so to speak, but for some reason, it wasn't making sense to me on a curve. I kept thinking that once the stairs rolled over, they'd be curving in the opposite direction and couldn't possibly be going down the same curve underneath the "active" stairs. But after awhile, it started making more sense. Googling the topic revealed even more complexities that I hadn't even thought of... like the fact that the outside of the steps needs to move faster than the inside of the steps... and the inside/outside handrails move at different rates too. Wow. Here are some links if you're curious now too:
More casino pics:
We had lunch at this fancy-looking Chipotle on the Strip. Yeah yeah, we came all the way to Vegas and had Chipotle. So what? We had a craving.
Then we hopped in the car for the FINAL leg of our journey. I drove the entire way from Las Vegas to LA (a little over 4 hours). It wasn't a bad drive at all... just borrrrrring.
We were so excited that we were getting close to our destination, that we got a little giddy and had an impromptu dance party to David Bisbal's "Ave Maria". Sleepy Michelle missed out on the fun.
Can I buy a vowel, please?
According to Wikipedia, some crazy dude named Curtis Howe Springer named this area Zzyzx in 1944, saying it was the last word in the English language. He completely made up the word and its pronunciation (zei-zix), so it's interesting that he could just throw some random letters together and declare it a word in the English language. What's even more surprising is that it worked.
Have you heard of this guy before? This is great... I guess Springer was a self-proclaimed physician and Methodist minister, but in reality, was neither. He was a radio evangelist though. People would send him money for hair loss cures, cancer cures, etc. and in return, the "medicine" he'd send them was basically vegetable juice. In Zzyzx, Springer built a hotel, church, spa, radio studio, a random castle, and an airstrip he called "Zyport". Haha. I love it.
In the end, turns out the Zzyzx land never even belonged to Springer in the first place and in 1974, he was found guilty of squatting on federal land AND making false claims about his products.
Insane.
So, like I said, the drive from Vegas to LA was pretty boring. Lots of desert. We went through Arizona for a little bit! It was even more deserty and boring. And there was construction the whole way through Arizona so that was no fun. Once we got to LA, though, there was lots of traffic! I thought it was fun to drive in LA, but I don't think I'd want to do it every day.
We made it to Shea's dad's house in Altadena around 4:00pm. We talked with Shea's dad and snacked and moved all of Shea's belongings from the car into the house. Then we showered, got ready, cooked dinner with Shea's dad, and chatted more.
Our friend Brian was not even remotely aware that Michelle was with us. He had no idea that she was part of the 40-hour cross-country drive. It was our gigantic surprise.
Brian and his boyfriend Cory were coming over for dinner that night but got stuck in a wildfire-related traffic jam for what seemed like forever. This really drove up our anticipation but also gave us more time to devise our plan.
One of my favorite memories of Brian is him, at a John Carroll SUPB (Student Union Programming Board) summer retreat, when we had to present posters about ourselves. Everyone's was pretty typical... pictures of family, friends, and themselves as little kids, magazine cut-outs of favorite foods and music groups, and lists of hobbies. But Brian took a completely different approach, "I separated my poster into four categories: likes, dislikes, pet peeves, and phobias."
I'm not sure whether "closed shower curtains" fell under pet peeves or phobias, but that's when I learned that he does not like them. And with this knowledge, our plan emerged.
So, Brian and Cory finally arrived and after Shea and I said our excited hello's and suffocated Brian with hugs (we hadn't seen him in over a year), Shea offered to give a tour of her dad's house before dinner. The living room, the kitchen, the TV room, the bedrooms... the... bathroom.
We were planning on staying in there for an uncomfortably long time, but all we had to do was comment on the cool glass sink, and Brian was already noticing the green shower tile next to the closed curtain. He pulled the shower curtain back a little bit to admire it, which caused Shea and I to start laughing and Michelle even let out a little squeak from behind the curtain. Of course, this prompted Brian to pull the curtain back further and reveal... Michelle!
Our surprise was a great success and Brian said he was very impressed that we kept such a huge secret form him. It was so nice for the four of us to finally be reunited again!
Me, Michelle, Cory, Brian, and Shea right after the surprise:
We ate dinner with Shea's dad and then talked and talked and talked even after Shea's dad turned in for the night. It was so great to catch up, to rehash old memories, and to just be silly. Many memories and bottles of wine later, it was time for bed. What a fun day. :)
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