June 23rd, 2009
I went to Reno.
Well, I’m just getting back from Reno, Nevada. Got home last night.
Long four days, damn.
We went down for a “gathering” with the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. DITD, a gifted kids support group and financial aid place. The gathering was where all the kids got to meet eachother and stuff like that. I’m one of those kids.
For an organization of smart people they can be pretty God damn retarded. More on that later.
First, my flights down were both CRJ200s. (We went from Missoula, MT to Salt Lake City, UT to Reno, NV)
These planes are the commercial flight industry’s equivalent of a paper airplane. Tiny god damn things, forget about first class. Coach and nothing but. I guess that’s what I get for living in a tiny city like Missoula, but really…? It was a good flight though, once you get past the being-cramped-into-a-tiny-tube-with-screaming-babies factor.
Once we were down we enjoyed the comfort of the Silver Legacy hotel. For 130 dollars a night, this place was a bit of a let-down. As my father will quite bluntly let you know, “There should be a fucking coffee pot,” and there really should of been. An overhead light would of been nice too, as would a minifridge. I wasn’t staying in a motel, but it felt like it. Courtesy internet might of been nice too, but alas, capitalism’s tole on the Biggest Little City In The World is ten bucks for twenty-four hours… For a 1.5 megabit/s connection. That’s pretty damn slow for 310 dollars a month, if I do say so myself.
I lived without good internet, for I thought I had good affordable food. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Food, in Reno, is either McDonalds or Gourmet Gold-Coated Oyster Buffets. We payed 30 bucks for a roast beef sandwich and some chicken stirps. Good serving size but I couldn’t eat half of it and the mentioned lack of a minifridge led to it being spoiled by morning. Depressing.
That first night I found a new appreciation for good pillows. In Nevada, pillows are either sheets of paper or fucking rocks.
(above: pillows)
The following day I went to the Circus Circus hotel’s arcade. The Silver Legacy, the Eldorado, and the Circus Circus are all connected so we just walked around the Rum Billions bar to get there.
Gambling is only illegal for kids if it’s cash-for-cash. I learned that this trip. Most of the games in the arcade were shitty crane-games or those “dump quarters of tray and win” shit. My dad hates those quarter games. He put a quarter in and it did nothing to the tray, but the lady following him put one in and won around 1000 tickets. That’s a lot of tickets. You could get like, 10 dollars worth of junk with that! They had a game of Stacker in there too but I can’t play it worth a crap so I played the Ball Drop game. By my last 5 dollars (I spent 40USD) I was getting 75 tickets per play fairly easily. That’s like, 3 Bob-The-Builder Coin Purses! I walked out of the arcade 40 dollars in debt with 4 bouncey balls, 6 Hot Wheels cars, a couple pillows, and two small pairs of plush dice.
Coincidentally, the pillows I got at the arcade were the best pillows available in all of Nevada. I must of been extremely lucky.
DITD was supposed to pay for our flights and our hotel. They only payed for 2 of the 3 nights we were there, and hadn’t notified us our flight from Salt Lake to Missoula had been cancelled and we would have a 4 hour delay and not get home to 9:30 at night. I’m still a little angsty for waiting in an airport without internet for four hours. My father had the bright idea to go checkout 3 hours before our flight arrived, so I had a 3 hour wait before I got onto the flight out of Reno to Salt Lake too. Luckily, I had a fully-charged iPod Touch (Thanks iPod guy!) and the airport in Reno offered free wifi. I browsed wikipedia to keep myself entertained.
I know it’s sad, but WP:ODD is pretty damn odd.
So after our four hour delay we got on the flight, with a very sober pilot. I know, it suprised me too! We arrived 15 minutes earlier then the scheduled arrival time and I slept well that night on my bed, on a pillow.
A good pillow.
Under a blanket.
A good blanket.
In conclusion, fuck Reno.