Pretty in Pastels

It's been a week since I last posted. Time really, really does fly when you're having as much fun as I am. I have absolutely NO trouble getting to sleep these days; I can even fall asleep when my feet are cold, which was never true before. I'm not yet in the rythm of going to bed early and getting up early--I'm not usually in bed much before midnight, and once this week it was 2 a.m., so it's VERY hard to hop out of bed all bright and cheerful at 7 a.m. But I'm still working on it. Thank heavens the office is happy to have me there later in the afternoon in case stuff comes up and an editor is needed. Most everyone else is in there by 7:30 or 8, and they're on their way home around 5 p.m. But I stay (happily) until 6 or 6:30, and everyone's happy.

I got my first REAL report to edit on Wednesday. It's only 350 pages (the big ones can run over 1,000) but it's certainly big compared to the 15-20 pagers I've been working on. It's quite a challenge: the author is Chinese, although he's quite an exuberant and energetic fellow and I hear him talking all day long. His name is Fred and I like him. I think he likes me, too. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees me coming at him down the corridor and say, "Hi Pat-sy!" He emphasizes both syllables of my (new) name as if he were trying it out. I love to hear him say it.

I'm compiling a list of questions to go over with him. He's quite attached to what he's written, so every change of any import at all is a big thing with him, so I'm going to have, as Ricky R. used to say, "a lotta 'splainin' to do, Patsy!" I've spent 2-1/2 days on it so far, with another 3-4 to go. But today, just before I left, one of the checkers came to tell me there's a higher-priority document that needs to be ready for review by the end of next week, so I'm leaving Fred for a bit (and believe me, I'll have a hard time 'splainin' that to him, too), and tackling Mike (hmmm, interesting image!). I'm really in the thick of things now--feels as though I've worked there for months instead of just three weeks.

Okay, you're probably wondering why the title. It's because of my drive to work. There are several extraordinary things about my drive to work. The first has nothing to do with colors, pastel or otherwise. It has to do with speed. So far, I've driven to work 15 mornings (and home most of those evenings), and with two exceptions, I've driven the 23 or so miles to work in about 30 minutes. Amazing! Why, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked, 'cause I'm gonna tell you.

I drive to work on the 215. That's how they talk about the main highways in this town. It's the 15, the 95, the 515, and the 215. The 15 pretty much divides the city, running diagonally from the southwest (my side of town) to the northeast. It parallels the Strip--and it is like I-35 and MoPac in the mornings: a parking lot. Thank heavens I don't have to deal with it. Coming home at night I get on it at exit 34, stay in the righthand lane, and get off at exit 33, and that's never a problem. When I get off it, I'm pretty much home, which is really nice.

The other major highways, I think, are similarly mobbed--at least, from what I can tell from the local traffic reports. But I avoid those, too, except for the 215, which I get on from the south end of the strip/Las Vegas Boulevard, which is the next street over from this RV park. My entrance to the 215 is at the same place as the entrance to the 15, which is directly under the traffic pattern for McCarren Airport. So here I am in the morning, driving east DIRECTLY into the sun for about a block, then turning north onto the Strip and driving for about four or five LONG blocks. Along this stretch of the strip is--NOTHING. Amazingly, much of this part of my trip is nothing but vacant lots, acres and acres of them, just sitting there, waiting (I assume) for someone to build a casino on them.

It's not ALL vacant, of course: there are lots of little stores lining the airport side of the road, and at one point there's the Las Vegas Outlet Mall, which is huge and may attract some of you to come visit me who aren't at all attracted by the casinos. Yes, people, there's an outlet mall within a mile or two of where I live. So come on down!

Anyway, I am now driving north on the Strip with McCarren on my right. And it--the airport--is RIGHT THERE. In fact, if I were to continue down the Strip, as I have done on weekends, past the famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign (which, my brother tells me, has been moved several times, because they keep building Las Vegas out in my direction), I'd pass a long stretch of tall black iron fence through which you can see the helicopters and private jets that are part of the Executive Park section of the airport parked right next to the fence. And the private jets come in right over the Strip, sometimes low enough that you think they're going to roll across the top of the car! Beyond them are the landing strips for McCarren, and sometimes, when the wind is right, the big jets come in over the Strip, too, looking for all the world as if they were going to crash into the big casinos that start RIGHT THERE, with Mandalay Bay the first one in line. That right there is an amazing early morning sight: a jet passing by the 15th or 16th floor (it seems) of Mandalay Bay Casino. If I haven't fully woken up yet, I do when I see one of those jets coming in.

Anyway, when I turn onto the on-ramp for the 215, I'm traveling right alongside all the people who have to take the 15 to get to work. And do I feel sorry for them! I sail down my long on-ramp alongside streams of cars that are slowing down and coming to a stop in order to try and insert themselves into the three packed lanes of traffic also trying to go north at a snail's pace. But (except for the two mornings when there were accidents on the 215) I can just sail onto MY highway.

As I said, that is one of the two things that is absolutely mind-boggling about my morning commute. I'm on that road between 8 and 8:30, which in any city is rush hour--and I have caught myself doing 80. On my way to work during "rush hour"!!! Amazing! Unbelievable! Astonishing! The 215, about 2 miles after I get on it, becomes the Bruce Woodberry Belt, and bless ole' Bruce's heart, I don't think anyone in Vegas has heard of it, because it's so UNcrowded. I love it.

The other thing I love is that, for the 20-30 minutes I'm on it, I am treated every morning to the most fabulous pastel views! Lovely vistas. I think this is true from most of the highways, but I think it's especially true of the BW Belt, the 215. The first thing that makes me catch my breath is the huge expanse of flat ground that stretches to the mountains, about 25 miles away. Las Vegas (as I think I said) means "the meadows," and it is literally a huge meadow of one-story dwellings and businesses. For pretty much 360 degrees, I could turn (if I weren't driving a car) and see "meadows" populated with low structures right up to the mountains, which suddenly jut out of the ground on all sides of this giant meadow. At night, if you can get above it just a little ways, which is easy to do on one of the highways, it's flat land for miles with a carpet of twinkling lights uniformly laid down on it.

But not all of the buildings are one story. I take the 215 north, then west, then north again, until I'm up in the Summerlin area, which is where my office is. I turn east at the Summerlin parkway, to the second exit, which is mine, and now I'm facing back into the heart of the city, and this morning, as is true most mornings, it was memorable. There was still a light bit of mist across the valley, sort of as in the days when people cooked over open fires and the smoke would kind of hang over the villages. And jutting above the film of mist are all the casinos, like 20 Gullivers in a land of Lilliputians. And beyond the misty meadows are the ever-present mountains.

So every morning, to get from my motor home to Summerlin in northwest Las Vegas, I have to drive around 23 miles heading straight into and along the most beautiful of the mountains (in my humble opinion). It wasn't until this, my third weekx, that I realized that, when I first get onto the 215 and look north towards my ultimate destination, there is only one building more than two stories tall, and it's the new Red Rock Casino, with a hotel about 15 stories tall. So it rises head and shoulders above everything else you can see. It is so amazing to me to look over there and see the place, 20 miles away, that I'm aiming for and to almost be able to trace where I'll be going--and then just sail along that road with nothing to impede me. It is some experience.

Oh yes, and the "Pretty in Pastels" title? Well, that is it in a nutshell. There is that whole beautiful view, that whole drive, and it's all done in the most gorgeous pastels. Pink, pale blue (a brighter blue in the sky, which is usually cloudless), light brown, sandstone, salmon, peach, and some actual red rock (dusty brick red) that I assume gave the Casino (and that whole area) its name. And along the highway, beyond its extra-wide shoulders, are stone fences (noise-proofing fences, I'd guess) with just a row of roofs peeking over them, with the roofs picking up both the jagged outlines of the mountains AND their colors.

My words don't begin to do it justice. I WILL TAKE SOME PICTURES, I promise. It'll be hard to get it in that early morning light (just as it's hard to get ME into early morning light). But I'll try.

Sorry, this posting is no shorter--it may even be longer--than the others. But I just wish I could convey the beauty that helps me to start off my day every day. Come and see me if you can't yet picture it.

Off to bed with me. I'm asleep at the wheel here. More next time on Las Vegas in the daytime.