Road to the WSOP, Part 10: Vegas, Baby!

On Wednesday morning we drove down the mesa and set off into the Arizona desert bound for Flagstaff.  The way this road switchbacks through the canyons is really something and makes for some extraordinary views:

Though long, hot, and largely devoid of human settlement, the drive through the desert was much less tedious than the plains we crossed east of the Rockies. It may seem empty and featureless at first, but there’s actually quite a lot of texture and character to the desert:

Much of the drive is actually through a Navajo reservation, and unable to find anywhere shady to pull off the road, we ended up eating lunch in the parking lot of a Burger King on the reservation. There was actually a small museum inside of the BK with memorabilia related to the Navajo Code Talkers who served in WWII, curated by the son of a Code Talker. We didn’t actually buy anything there, but there was a steady stream of tour buses discharging passengers into the shop, so it seemed like they were doing OK.

As we ate our lunch, a dog stood in an adjacent parking lot eating an ice cream off of the ground. He didn’t have a collar and his owner, if any, was nowhere in sight. He never did anything remotely aggressive, and yet his presence was disturbing to me and many of the other passers through (Emily thought he was cute and felt sorry for him). I guess I just saw no reason why he shouldn’t be feral, and I didn’t want to risk provoking him. He represented some sort of fundamental, unregulated wildness that I always feel hovering in the air when I’m in the desert. There was actually another stray dog wandering the parking lot of a Navajo gas station where we stopped an hour later.

We ate dinner at an – actually, it was the, as in the only – Indian (as in the continent of India) restaurant in Flagstaff. As we were finishing up our meal, the owner came over to ask how everything was. Then he asked where we were from, where we were going etc. He got very excited when I mentioned poker and asked me what my trick was for winning, and also whether I ever lost.

I told him of course, and my “trick” was not getting upset about losing. Plenty of people can play cards, I told him, but it’s much harder to continue playing your best when frustrating things happen.

“I understand completely,” he assured me. I could tell he was restraining himself from asking about the most I’d ever lost. Instead, he asked if I had a favorite Indian restaurant in Las Vegas.

“I can’t say I’ve been to many. I really like Indian food, I just haven’t done much in Vegas other than play poker. There was an Indian place at the Rio, where they hold the World Series of Poker, that was my favorite place to eat in that casino. But it closed last year.”

“Yes, Gaylord. I know it. It closed?”

“Seemed to be. It wasn’t open during the WSOP last year.”

“Yes, yes, I know the owner. He always eats here on his way to Las Vegas. I do not think Gaylord is closed.” That was an encouraging bit of news!

The next morning Emily dropped me off at Budget Rent-a-Car, where I caught the last day of a special where you could rent a car in Flagstaff and return it in Vegas for less than $20, a service that usually costs about $100. I guess they’re trying to get cars to Vegas for the summer. I said goodbye to her and took off on my own for the last leg of my journey.

The drive started off beautifully, along I-40 through the Kaibab National Forest. I grew up near the eastern terminus of I-40. To me it was always a neighborhood road, and not a very pleasant one at that. It felt strange to be driving through a beautiful forest on the other side of the continent on a road that I knew so well in such a different context.

Soon the road descended – Flagstaff sits at about 7000 feet above sea level – into the desert and got a lot less scenic. I’d been in such a hurry to escape the congestion of Flagstaff that I hadn’t gotten anything to eat for lunch, and now it was too late. Once again, I could see for miles, and there was no sign of human settlement in sight.

At last I passed a highway sign for “Picadilly Circus Pizza and Subs”. It didn’t seem like I was going to do any better than that, so I exited the highway. The place was closed, as was most of the town of Ash Fork, but I spotted some signs for a “Welcome Center and Route 66 Museum”. They pointed down a gravel road, which was suspicious, but the welcome center signs did look official. I was intrigued, and I needed to use the bathroom.

Mine wasn’t the only car in the parking lot, so that was a good sign. I opened the door to the building, and when the hostess turned to greet me, then man she’d been talking to took the opportunity to make for the door. That was a bad sign. Wary of being drawn into conversation with an attention-starved state employee (or worse, volunteer) I quickly inquired about the bathroom. When I emerged, she was seated at a desk and made no attempt to engage me, so I wandered the museum, which was weird and wonderful.

It wasn’t so much about Route 66 as it was about the town of Ash Fork during the “Route 66 era”, though I guess lying along that road probably is about all Ash Form ever had going for it. Anyway there were a bunch of artifacts from that era recreations, some in miniature and others life-sized and creepy. The largest such scene depicted several poker players around a table, but somehow the pictures I took of that disappeared. Here’s the one that survived:

I ended up getting lunch at a truck stop Subway. I timed it well, because just as I was leaving a busload of German tourists was forming a line out the door.

As I descended from Flagstaff and entered the Nevada desert, I watched the temperature outside steadily climb from a comfortable 80 degrees to a scorching 99 when I finally reached Las Vegas, though at least according to the car it thankfully never cracked triple digits.

My first destination in Las Vegas was the Budget Rent-a-Car at McCarran International Airport, where I returned the car from Flagstaff. Then I caught a cab to a neighborhood Enterprise location, where the rates were cheaper than either any airport car rental or the car I’d brought with me. There, I picked up the car that I’ll have for the next three weeks. Finally, I met the owner of the condo where I’d be staying and picked up the keys. I was “home”.