What happens in Vegas ....

Well, after a night in an hotel at Heathrow, hoping for a good night's sleep before the epic flight to Los Angeles with a bus ride to Vegas after, it turns out that sleep is highly overrated and I apparently don't need so much.  Whilst I lay trying to get some sleep listening to Becky snore, I went though the maternal 'ahh, poor little Becky with her nasty cold' through 'shame her cold makes her breathe so noisily whilst asleep' to 'my God, she's more like her father than I thought' and finally, 'if I put a pillow over her head, will I still go to the airport in the morning and just carry on on my own or would I have to go home'! Fortunately she stopped for a while and in the relative quietness, whilst laying there waiting for sleep to finally take me, I just kept thinking of all the things I should have done before leaving home and the things that might go wrong on the way - you'd think that would have been enough to send me off but no, so I probably got an hour or maybe two before getting up and getting going all over again with the big bus in the sky!

The flight was pretty good as flights that long go and I had the middle seat next to some random guy who spoke not and fiddled with his phone most of the way, but miracle of miracles, he was a man who didn't need to get out past us once - not often you find a male with a big enough bladder to just sit still for that long or one who can just sit still for that long - well I was impressed!

Arrival at LAX was uneventful and we made it through to a taxi in good time, but it was slightly worrying when the taxi driver had no idea where we wanted to go and had never heard of the bus company we were travelling with - surely they're a big company like the world famous Greyhound Bus - I booked it online and everything. As we travelled down Maple Avenue and it got seedier, I started to worry but when we pulled up outside the "office" those worries disappeared ... Panic set in!

The bus did arrive to our relief but it had probably seen better days, the driver probably hadn't but must have been 103 years old! I wasn't sure he could still see but he sat in the drivers seat and the bus moved so it must all be ok.  Tiredness set in quickly and sleep kept us both quiet so the voice from the back of the coach asking the driver if he was ok woke us up and made us wonder what was happening.  Dozing again, we were unaware of the swerving on the busy freeway although a couple of times the sudden braking threw us, literally!  We had one last pick-up before leaving the outskirts of LA and just before this stop there were more questions from the back (we thought we were nearing Vegas but we'd only been going for an hour and a half), then the concerned passenger from the back came up the coach again to ask the driver if was ok, "No, don't turn round and look at me, I just wanna know if you're feeling ok, you're swerving all over the road".  Well we made the stop to pick up a couple more passengers - they must've wondered what was happening as they tried to get on the bus.  The driver and some passengers got off the bus and the driver was given a good talking to by half the passengers, one of which spoke to a couple of cops (who were at the shopping center getting their fill of donuts) who then got involved, questioned the driver, breathalysed him, found out he was diabetic (as well as being on the older side) and called a paramedic, which in the US means Fire Department, and then an ambulance arrived as well - all those flashing lights woke us up good and proper and we sat and listened to all the Hispanics and tried to work out what was happening.

End result: new driver sent out by the company, delay of a couple of hours, extreme lack of food and sleep resulting in wild thoughts about just getting off the bus in the Desert and going home!  Fortunately, the new driver arrived and seemed quite capable, we drove on into the night and arrived in Vegas about two and a half hours later than planned.  We found Planet Hollywood - our hotel - but no reception area to check-in, just a lot of noisy drunken smokers (or so it seemed) - oh I wanted to go home then but Becky braved the crowds and eventually found registration where we were quickly dealt with and awarded a free upgrade for our trouble - we must have looked rough by then!