Green

 

 Uh, do you think the picture is a shot from a car window in Hawaii, or the desert outside Las Vegas?  I'm sure you're thinking Hawaii.  Everybody who's traveled it knows the land around the road to Las Vegas is all different shades of brown.  Maybe usually, but not this year.  Yes, that bright green hillside is the side of the road in Nipton, which is right outside Vegas.  

I took a couple of days  off from zooming through the writing of  KNOT A GAME.  The deadline looms, but I'm making progress, so a couple of days to to to Las Vegas for a merchandise convention seemed okay.

I haven't been in Las Vegas since probably a year before the pandemic shut down started.  I don't drink as alcohol makes me feel uncomfortable and the only gambling I did was video poker and it became boring.  By now the fake canals at the Venetian have ceased to be exciting.  The fake indoor street at Caesar's Palace doesn't seem amazing.  Most of my trips to Vegas have been connected to someone in the family's business as was this one.

I did walk the convention floor and wow, was there a lot of stuff.  The selection was overwhelming and I was glad that I didn't have to pick what to buy to resell.  

The convention center is huge and it takes 25 minutes to walk from one end to the other.  A solution to all that walking is that Elon Musk has used his Boring Company to build what they're calling a tunnel under the convention center.  Teslas with drivers take people through the so-called tunnel and instead of a 25 minute walk, it's a 2 minute ride.  Musk has plans to have the tunnels running all over beneath Las Vegas.  We stayed at Resorts World that just started offering rides by what is called the Las Vegas Loop to the convention center.

So faced with a walk in over one hundred degree temperatures, I agreed to take the Loop. I was assured that it was quick and not scary. We took a step escalator down to the station and there was a line of Teslas waiting for customers.  I hadn't done any research on the Loop and didn't know that the tunnels were actually 12 foot in diameter concrete tubes or that the tunnels were 40 feet below the ground.  Or that there wasn't room to walk around the cars to get out in an emergency.

I expected it to be claustrophobic and pretty much closed my eyes as soon as the car entered the tunnel and started going down.  I opened my eyes a few times and saw a bright white very close to us inside of a tube.  I didn't realize that the only illumination was from the headlights of the car.  The ride was short and with my eyes closed and deep breaths, I was fine.

I used the one that went under the convention center as we were leaving rather than deal with the tedious walk back to where we'd started.  This time it was a bat wing car and I was still looking for the seat belt by the time we reached our destination.  I also took the Loop to get back to the hotel. Creeping tubes won out over beating sun.  It was only afterwards that I began to wonder about the safety features since Elon Musk is determined to build tunnels all over under Vegas with the hopes of doing it in other cities.

The short rides were okay, but I'll be staying above ground for anything longer after what I read.  The best I could find out about safety issues were that if there was a fire in one of the batteries, a ventilation system would blow the smoke out of the tunnel.  There were no details about emergency escape routes other than the cars could back out of the tunnel.  That's fine if there's one car and it works, but what happens if the car behind you malfunctions and can't move.  Ditto about the one in front of you.  I read where first responders can't get in the tunnels to make a rescue and would have to be just outside.

As for all that green on the side of the road.  It's due to all the monsoon moisture that has been sending deluges to the desert.  We lucked out and didn't hit any rain, but one day on the other side of when went and we could have been caught in a downpour. Lake Mead is already up two feet from the rain and Arizona gotten enough rain to end their drought.  Crazy.