Day 30

Red Rock Canyon outside Vegas I have been to Vegas several times in the past. Of course each time, I visited the strip and the inside of the casinos. They prevent anyone from going outside, there are no clocks on the walls. The concept of time is discarded. The last time I was in Vegas was for Halloween in '98. I met up with some old friends, and we stayed at the Luxor(that great big pyramid). It just so happened too that this great band was playing at the Thomas & Mack arena. At any rate, tickets were very hard to come by and in fact, I had to buy them from a shady ticket broker that fell through in real costly way. But that was a different time outside the Haul, Patrick Finnegan was there with me, and you'll hear his version later. The point is, I got a bad taste of the strip, and besides I never like to go down the same roads twice. Once something is played-its played·Anyway, back to this particular visit. It was Wednesday, and Ken had a long, long day of teaching. So I called up the dude Dale, who was not working since he had just returned to the states. When he is punching the clock, Dale is a hard-core crane operator, you know those great big cranes that they build skyscrapers with?-, that's what Dale operates. His nickname is "Smooth Operator", he's good with cranes, but he's also good with the women. Plain & simple Dale is cool, so I called him up, and the next thing I know, he's at the helm of the Phalcon and we're headed into the mountains 20 minutes outside of Vegas. It was a sweet day. A bit windy, but a real sunshine daydream. We went to Red Rock Canyon, which I am certain that if you asked folks on the strip where it was, they would have no idea. It's this really cool geological spot full of red rocks and gypsum. There are no real designated areas to hike, and hiking is at your own risk. According to Dale, this was his playground. So we drove in, and he was telling me all sorts of stories about his wild days in the 70's. Great stuff. We parked the Phalcon and climbed up this killer rock formation ascending over dangerous, sharp jagged rock and eventually reaching the peak to see Vegas in the valley in the distance. We were at the top of the world·.Later on that night I met up with Mr.B at the Sahara, interesting dude. We went back to his house late night and listened to Jerry Garcia.