The Ministry of Happiness

Wherever you go, go with you all of your heart. ~ Confucius

On the Road: Day 1

Day 1 began with breaking camp in my apartment.

After a bit of a soap opera to get the movers to actually show up, they arrived three days late, I was finally able to get on the road. It took a few hours, after they did their part, to finally pack my car, throw out the things that didn’t fit and toss out the last bits of my apartment that needed to be removed. I dropped off my keys, dropped off my cable/internet equipment, ate a quick lunch and hit the road. Unfortunately, that meant I didn’t get out of town until about 2PM. So I decided my first night’s stop would be Reno. This also meant a quick pop into Cabelas on the way to the hotel. And the big horn sheep sculpture pictured above hits a little differently at night.

As I was driving, listening to ABACAB, I thought I heard an odd tone in the song a couple of times. And then when the music quieted down I realized what it was, the chime that plays when you’ve left your keys in the ignition or fail to put on your seat belt. This started randomly about an hour and a half into the drive. No warning lights, just the audio torture of ding, ding, ding, ding, ding and I started imagining how absolutely insane I would be after listening to this go on for a week. So, since cars are effectively computer chip controlled these days, I pulled over and did what you do with a computer, shut it off, wait a few seconds and rebooted. When I tuned the ignition back on, no tone! You know, until I put it in drive and then ding, ding, ding… I drove down to the next exit and pulled off. My hypothesis was that the load had shifted and pushed on one of the doors, not enough to set off the dash warning but enough to trip the sensor, hence the reason it was only happening when in drive. So I pulled into a parking lot, and open and forcefully closed all the doors and the tailgate. Then, I took a deep breath and started the car, no ding, then the big test, I put it into drive and drove around the lot, no ding, thank god!

I made it to the Silver Legacy a little before 8PM, tired and not ready for humans, checked-in with the automated kiosk and went to my room, which I immediately realized was a smoking room. Marched back down, waited in line for one of the two clerks, one of which immediately went on break. After finally getting to the desk, I got to my room and was excited to finally be there. I went down to the cafe, got a salad and a teriyaki chicken bowl. The salad was awesome and something I being very careful with after learning an important lesson the first time I drove cross-country. The combination of a week in the car, driving all day and eating a lot of burgers and fries, I arrived in California not feeling particularly well. It turned into a pretty scary pain that I was afraid it was appendicitis but turned out to just be my intestines being backed up. So ever since, on every cross-country trip, a salad a day is absolutely a requirement. The teriyaki bowl was great but I made a mistake that seems to be an inherited physical trait on my mom’s side of the family, sometimes food gets stuck. Not sure what the technical name for it is, but if you eat a little too fast, and for me it seems to almost always happen with rice, the food gets lodged just above the stomach and causes you acid/reflux like pain and discomfort and also almost always makes me vomit up bile. So, a few bites in and my food was caught, sometimes I can relax and stretch it out but not this time, happily I didn’t vomit, but got my food boxed and took it to my room for later.

I decided to do a little gambling, wasn’t super in the mood and really wanted to get to bed. So instead of quarter video poker I hit a couple of dollar machines, I figure I’d burn out what I allotted quickly and would leave, two machines didn’t do well and I moved on after dropping about a hundred dollars. I sat down at the third machine and the New York song they’ve use in the NY State marketing ads (Empire State of Mind by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z), started playing and seemed like a good omen, and it was, two spins in I hit four deuces, not with the ace kicker unfortunately but still paid me $600. I decided to move on and hit a couple of quarter machines with the goal of getting back to the room before ten. Once again the third machine and boom, four aces, which paid me another $200, all total ended up winning over $500 and decided it was a nice way to spend my last night in Reno at the Silver Legacy, a place I’ve spent a lot of time while living in California. It’s the sportsbook where I drop my annual NFL bets, it was the place I always stayed the night before going in and the night after coming out of Burning Man. The place holds some really great memories so it was a fitting last night there. I went up to the room, finished my dinner and went to bed, early day on the road tomorrow.

Have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane