Las Vegas is some town. I got propositioned and my car got a ticket.

 

But before I get to all that, I got a chance to play in a Texas Hold’em tournament: No-limit with a $42 entry fee and about 150 players. Unfortunately, I was at a table with some real pros and it was quite cutthroat. I tightened my game and only played quality hands. At least that was the plan. The problem was no quality cards. But I did make it 90 minutes into the tournament and into the second round. When I finally got a decent hand (pair of Queens), two people went all-in. Last to act, I also went all-in... against a pair of sevens and a pair of eights. The sevens hit a set on the flop and I didn’t find a third queen. But it was a good experience and I got out cheap.

 

I caught up with Doug and his friends at the Flamingo for a quick bite to eat and afterwards we took a short walk on the strip. Walking back to the elevators, a lovely lady wearing a business suit asked why I was retiring so early. I told her I was on this cross-country trip and had to leave early in the morning. I was a little tired. When she suggested a massage, it clicked why she was hanging out near the hotel tower elevators. I politely declined and packed for the next leg.

 

The next morning I checked out early and drove down to the Lotus dealership to get an oil change mid-trip. After the change and inspection, the tech took the car out for a shake-down drive. About 30 minutes passed; he didn’t return. It wasn’t until another 15 minutes that he came back. He had gotten a ticket in my car from an undercover cop for making a rolling right on red. So my car wound up getting into more trouble in Vegas than I did. For all I know it probably got a “massage” in the parking garage too. ;)

 

The drive from Las Vegas to L.A. was supposed to be a short stint. JoshS from EliseTalk graciously volunteered to put me up for a couple of nights despite the impromptu notice. It was supposed to take about 3.5 hours. It wound up being about 5.5 hours due to traffic. Traffic was held up by a truck that had broken down in the middle of 4 lanes of traffic. I surprised that no one was motivated to push the truck out of the way. Heck, in two hours I could have disassembled it and moved it by myself. By the time I found Josh’s house, I was completely beat.

 

 

Josh, his friend, and myself went out to see a Friday night movie. If you’re a fan of British parody “Shaun of the Dead” I’d recommend going to see “Hot Fuzz”. While rather long and predictable, they were quite efficient in exploiting every joke in the movie.

 

The next morning I went further into L.A. for a weekly Saturday morning informal car show. Since my car had more than 4000 miles of accumulated crud, I didn’t want it to spoil the show so I parked over on the side. We still fielded a few questions about the cars.

 

I finally got some time Saturday afternoon to clean off the grime in time for a drive in the canyons tomorrow morning...

 

Factoid: The Elise/Exige chassis is sourced from Hydro in Denmark. It is formed from aluminum extrusions that are bonded with aviation epoxy. The premise is if you bond two areas of a surface it is much stronger than a spot or line weld. And there’s just something nostalgic telling folks that the car is hand assembled with a bit of glue. The Elise chassis has a total weight of 150 lbs! (The car weighs about 1950-1975 lbs., one secret why a large engine is not required.)