driving through the rockies, thinking about vegas

This morning as we drove through tunnels blasted in the mountain and past Heartland Express semis {from Iowa City: how is it possible that they are everywhere we go?} and up to 11,000 feet in the Rockies, I was thinking about Vegas.

This is the wrong thing to be thinking about when you're driving past the Colorado River, but my other thought was: That river formed the Grand Canyon? Please, it's like a stream. That thing has nothing on the Mighty Mississippi.

{I was just tempted to call it the Mighty Mississip, a shortening nickname of laziness, as if by growing up next to it, I earned the right to call it something else.}

So it was either disparage the Colorado River or think about Vegas. And I'd rather think ill of Vegas than think ill of anything that is not Vegas. You may have noticed, but Oesa and I have very similar thoughts on that town, or as I like to call it: Vegas and Gomorrah.

As I said the other night, as we fought our way through the crowd coming out of the Celine Dion concert {my heart will go on} at Caeser's Palace, "My problem with Vegas is that it's a struggle to go anywhere. I just don't like fighting."

This is a very pacifist-sounding way of saying: I just don't like having all these people around me all the time.

But saying it that way makes me sound anti-social, and I'm not that. I do like people. I simply don't like so many of them around me, all so happy to be able to drink on the street and smoke indoors. Take that, laws that try to force us to be healthy!

I wrote a poem about Vegas today as a way to channel my hate. Hate always makes for good poetry; my English degree taught me that.

And you can read my hate-inspired poem of Vegas here. To entice you further to click on that link, I'll insert the beginning of the poem below. It'll be like a cliffhanger in a thriller novel, and you'll be compelled to turn the page, figuratively speaking, of course.

Like a plague sent as punishment,
it is raining in Las Vegas.

On the Luxor, raindrops slide down
the glass pyramid,
Nile rivulets marking riches and excess
Pharaoh himself would covet.

Farther down the Strip,

Ooh, cliffhanger. Read the rest.