Trip Home Continued and Other Interesting Stuff!

Ok, so my last post and this post are overrunning each other. I didn’t get to complete the narrative of the trip, but there wasn’t much more to tell. We almost didn’t see Bodie; there was a “Road Closed” sign in the way, but the local ranger said we could drive around, then we arrive an hour before closing (and yes, there are people there to enforce that) plus it snowed. Honey wants to go back for a weekend trip. The weather was so crappy at Mono Lake we didn’t stop. It was about then that we did a funds check and realized we had enough cash for two tanks of gas; we were closing in on empty during that discussion, and decided we should quit screwing around and go home if we actually wanted to reach home without being stranded. We rolled in about midnight Thursday night and very gratefully crawled into our bed, despite the large amount of catnip our cats had left in it for us. By the way, those cats are still mad at us but haven’t eaten any charger cables yet, which is there usual method of revenge.

Last Saturday we went to the Backyard BBQ Tour and the Boulder City Art Festival. The B-BBQ-T was in the parking lot of the Galleria Mall in Henderson. The announcer for the half pipe kept saying “This isn’t Vegas, this is Hendo, Bro” which has been stuck in my head ever since. It was free and had plenty of free parking. We arrived just in time for the Moto X demonstration to start. Honey was ready and armed with camera in hand; he got some great stuff that hopefully will be ready when I’m done with this post. I’m being held up from publishing due to my slacking photo department – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Anyway, there were booths for shoes and skate-wear all with lines about 30 people deep, one Del Taco stand which I’m sure made a killing since no other food was readily visible, and a stage for local bands to perform. The madness ran from noon to 7pm but I think we stayed maybe 2 hours or less. The Moto X is what Honey really wanted to see, and the skateboarders were slow warming up. Plus it was moving rapidly towards the characteristically sweltering heat of Vegas plus too many bodies pressed together.

The Boulder City Art Festival has either taken a severe decline in popularity and participation or we confused it with a bigger, badder show in May. Probably the later. At first we though we were in the wrong place – there were no classic cars or booths to be seen – the park that is usually covered (for the show in May) wasn’t that crowded. When we did find it (with no trouble parking I might add) we wandered through in an hour. There wasn’t even any decent fair food to be had, and that’s saying a lot! There were probably 6 or 7 photographers with booths; all except two were selling similar landscapes, usually for too much money. I’m still amazed nobody looked at the competition and said ‘maybe I should be different’. The most interesting one, aside from the ocean photog who’s at every fair anywhere, was a high school student. I can’t remember which high school; it started with a ‘C’. Anyway, she was the most refreshing.

Sunday we planned to stay home, maybe continue the organizing attempt at the tornado-stricken den we call a room, but Honey got a voicemail around 9am asking if we wanted to go shoot Mexican wrestling in Primm that afternoon. So we did that instead. And in a phrase, they’re all crazy. Lucha Libre fans make the fans of WWF and E look like pussies. There were 5- and 6-year old kids chanting “Asshole, asshole” at the referee! Wrestlers are diving out of the ring at opponents and a very hard concrete floor. The barrier fences were not much help. We went in with The Vegas Tourist, Sazzy and Honey got to stand at the barriers; I got a seat on the floor in the front row. Oh yeah, and it was free, which was awesome cuz I read my ticket later and the seat I occupied cost $55 bucks. It was a good two hours long, there were a couple of female fighters, and everyone put on a good show albeit unorganized. The DJ was terrible most of the event. LeAnn Rhymes sang the national anthem via CD. Every photojournalist in the room took pictures of the kid two seats from me because he was wearing a lucha libre mask. Grandmothers were swearing at the ref, who was swearing back. “F*** your mother!” was thrown around quite a bit. I learned all this later of course because I don’t speak Spanish. I’m pretty sure Honey pissed off the photog from the Las Vegas Sun/Review Journal. They’re notoriously rude and self-important, and Honey is indifferent or outright antagonistic towards those people. You get the picture. I think mostly Honey was just in the guys way, getting shots he wanted and not yielding when expected. Honey doesn’t yield very well. And if he thinks you’re an ass, he doesn’t yield at all. Anyway, a good time was had by all.