What Happens in Vegas ...

... doesn't necessarily stay in Vegas, especially when things don't happen like the Hangover movies. Having a few days off from work, I was finally able to make it to Sin City, thanks to a timely invitation from my Uncle and Aunt, which coincided with a visit by a cousin from Canada whom I haven't seen since 1989. Wait...I've been off all day every day since the first week of October 2013 so any time is a good time for me! Unemployment does have its advantages in the form of being available to go anywhere albeit on someone else's dime. You know I don't get out much and since this is my first time to make it to Las Vegas, which is a reasonable progression after having gone to Pechanga in early January, I just had to share it with you. I'm sorry that I'll have to defy the oft quoted TV ad slogan "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. First things first. No, I don't mean the gambling but how I got the invitation. My uncle and aunt won a raffle for a 2 day/2 night stay at Wyndham Grand Desert Resort which is a time share, and my Uncle decided to take advantage of it while my Canadian cousin was in town with his son. The roster included Uncle Oscar, Auntie Ditas, Uncle Ed, Auntie Beth, cousin Harold, a.k.a. Jojo, his son Paolo, and I. We were a group who communicated in English, Tagalog, and Tausug, and sometimes a combination of all three at once, and not to forget Paolo who also speaks a little French.

Barstow Rest Stop

We departed Cerritos about 9:00 a.m. Sunday and pretty soon we hit our first rest stop...a mile away from home to have breakfast at McDonalds. Then we settled in the van and the real road trip began. In a couple of hours, we arrived at the next rest stop which was Barstow, where we saw a lot of people also on their way to Nevada or going back home after a weekend of sin and debauchery. Jojo bought some souvenirs and Auntie Ditas bought a funny t-shirt which said: RETIRED -  NO PHONE, NO ADDRESS, NO BUSINESS,NO MONEY, TOO OLD TO STEAL, TOO LAZY TO WORK. Wow, kinda sounds like me! We also contributed $2.00 each to buy lottery tickets perchance to win big in the Mega Millions or Super Lotto. It was the last opportunity to play the lottery in California before we crossed over to Nevada.

Pretty soon we were on the road again surrounded by desert, but in a little while we could see Las Vegas in the distance. The van exited the freeway upon reaching the city and we began looking for our hotel. Uncle Oscar likes to fly off the seat of his pants so he didn't exactly get definitive directions and to add to that, the GPS he had wasn't working well. Cousin Jojo managed to get it up and running and in a few short blocks we made it to the hotel. While Uncle Oscar and Auntie Ditas checked in, I turned on my tablet PC to look for a wi-fi connection. There was one but I couldn't connect. We were later able to do so after asking for the password. The Wyndham Grand Desert resort comprised of 3 buildings and we drove a few hundred feet away to find ours, then went up to our room on the 12th floor. Our living room quarters had 2 rooms but I immediately had first dibs on the living room couch. We settled in and hung around the room, then had a late lunch/early dinner.

Outside Bellagio

Bellagio Lobby

Then it was time to finally cruise the famous Las Vegas Strip. Down the street we went, made a u-turn and proceeded the opposite way, until we reached the Bellagio and parked there. We entered the building, took a few pictures in the lobby, then went outside to watch the dancing fountains. Afterwards we went to the casino where things became more interesting. As I said before after our Pechanga trip with the same group minus the Canadians, I am not a gambler, but it's nice to try playing the slots and video poker especially now that I know what to expect, having been oriented by my Uncle and his daughter to the games while in Pechanga. We went our separate ways sitting at our own machines of choice. I first played penny slots but was having no luck, so I switched from one machine to the next. I stayed put at one which was making me lose lesser, and pretty soon was joined at the next machine by a very attractive young woman. I acknowledged her presence but we didn't talk and just kept on playing. She left shortly and Uncle Ed came by and told me she might have been a hooker looking for a customer. Due to my naivete, I never even thought about that possibility even though I knew that hookers abound the city, Nevada being a state with legalized prostitution. My question is: why a possible hooker would be scouting me on the slot machine or perhaps it was a slut machine, and not only that but why she would do that to someone playing penny slots instead of someone playing bigger stakes, thus possibly having more moolah to spend, even perhaps for her services. It defies logic, thus the reason why there is a doubt that she was really a lady of the night. And if she was, then I'm flattered that she even thought of me as a possible "john". After an hour or so of gambling, we returned to the hotel minus the very attractive young woman.

The next morning, I was up bright and early ready to explore the strip with cousin Jojo. Unfortunately he had a trying night because Paolo was coughing so he was catching up on sleep. I bid Auntie Ditas goodbye and told her I would be back in about an hour. I started jogging towards the strip and reached it in about 6 minutes, so I estimated to distance from the hotel to be about 6/10ths of a mile (I later found out via car GPS that it was 1/2 mile, so close enough). I turned left from Harmon Street and jogged all the way to Mandalay Bay then turned back. Little did I know until I checked the map while writing this blog that I had reached the end of the strip on that side. That made for a 40 minute turnaround which was not bad for someone who doesn't run anymore. I actually tacked on another 5 minutes at the end.

We had breakfast upon my return then went looking for a Filipino grocery store at another part of the city to buy food. We searched for the store on the GPS and failed to find it, so we resorted to a paper map and made it there. After shopping, we again relied on the GPS to guide us back to the hotel and this is where another misadventure happened. The GPS sent us down the street where the University of Nevada - Las Vegas was located which happened to have a lot of traffic, then proceeded to send us to Duke Ellington Way. When we turned left on that street, we ended up right smack-dab in front of... wait for it... HOOTERS! The GPS with the female voice must have had a male mind! Not that the men in the van minded it too much, but the situation was too funny. Hotel...Hooters...at least four letters matched. What a hoot! At least the GPS didn't take us here: http://www.chickenranchbrothel.com/ (beware: adults only link), which Google says is only about an hour away from Las Vegas. Maybe I should check that device to make sure it didn't miss by a letter: HPS (Hooters Positioning System). Anyway, we made it back to the hotel after recognizing a street without the benefit of the GPS. Aunties Ditas and Beth stayed behind with Paolo, while the guys headed for Hooters, well actually the Las Vegas Outlet Mall, but on the drive there and back, we again passed Hooters. We scouted the mall, went back to the hotel to have lunch of freshly cooked tinola soup, then all of us went back to the Outlet Mall so Jojo could shop for pasalubong (gifts) to bring back to Canada.

After all the shopping, we drove back to the Las Vegas Strip and went to Hooters, no, I meant Harrah's Casino. No time to waste as Auntie Ditas had been itching all day to hit the slot machines where she apparently had a history of doing quite well in that particular casino. We claimed our own machines while Jojo went searching for the baccarat tables which he also played the previous night at the Bellagio with much luck. More on that later. I took a few spins at slots betting quarters but was having no luck so I switched to video poker in which I did better. After a bet of a dollar made it all the way up to $15, I walked away because as Kenny Rogers said "you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em". I went exploring inside the casino then went outside where I saw the minions from the movie Despicable Me. Paolo happened to have seen them the night before and was asking about them. I looked for Jojo to tell him about it and saw him at a baccarat table, but I let him be, not wanting to spoil his luck. When I saw him again later, I told him about the minions and he was able to take photos of Paolo with them (for tips of course), thus making the kid's  trip memorable (in addition to finding a black car from the movie CARS which he wanted to have so much, in the Disney Store at the outlet mall). I played more poker and subsequently gave $5 back to the casino. By the time we left Harrah's that evening , no misguided hooker had seated herself beside me. Maybe the one from the night before passed it along to her social network (Assbook), that I wasn't a potential customer. Back at the hotel, we had a late dinner of kulma, rice, and toast.

Gambling at Harrah's Casino

Early next morning, Jojo and I made our way to the compact hotel gym. We both mounted treadmills but mine didn't work so I settled for the recumbent bike. After 20 minutes I found a working treadmill and did another 30 minutes there. Wow, that's 2 days in a row of running! Then it was back to the room to shower, change, and check out, but not before learning some sad news that a relative had passed away suddenly the night before. So with utter disbelief and heavy hearts, we headed back to L.A. and after a brief stop at Whiskey Pete's for a last chance at winning (or losing for that matter),where I bet a whole dollar on slots instead of the usual penny but no dice as usual, we were back in Cerritos about 3:30 p.m. Thus ended three wonderful first time days in Sin City. No riches in winnings, but brought back some wealth of experience.

Final gambling stop at Whiskey Pete's

Since this is too long already: EPILOGUE TO FOLLOW.

As promised, here is the second part of this post: http://aboutlifeandrunning.blogspot.com/2014/03/las-vegas-random-notes.html.

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Tom Tom and Magellan Differences

Ok, this has been stored in my flash drive for almost two months now and I haven’t posted it because there were other things to talk about. Just keep in mind that these are older products and not even last year’s models.

I hinted at this purchase briefly in my post about Black Friday shopping. Well, I happened to order a refurbished Tom Tom XXL GPS which has a bigger screen than my old Magellan Roadmate (5 inches as opposed to 3.5 inches). Why I ordered it when I hardly used the old one, I can’t really justify other than wanting a bigger screen and the cost was too good to pass up. There was also no sales tax plus free shipping.

When the product arrived, I set it up, downloaded the latest updates, then tried it on my way to work. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t announcing the street names the way the old Magellan did. It was actually better to read the text directions because you can see which street is the next turn. The problem with that is you have to divert your eyes off the road briefly to read the directions. Of course, the device would still say turn left or right at the next street and announces how many yards to go before the turn. The Magellan would give a 2 mile and 1 mile warning, announce the upcoming street name at which to turn, then makes dinging sound when you reach it. Well, at first try, I was disappointed with the Tom Tom because of this lack of street name announcements. Wow, did I make a mistake in buying this? Maybe I’ll discover better functions later.

Upon further review and after fiddling around with the settings, I found out that I had programmed the device to use human voice for directions rather than a computer voice. That was the difference, the human voice only gave turn by turn directions without announcing the street names while the computer voice, which was a bigger file, announced the street names. That takes care of that problem.

One difference I noticed is that the keypad for the Tom Tom is in QWERTY format while the Magellan is A to Z format. Maybe the newer Magellans are now QWERTY, I don’t know. Another difference between the two: when I divert from the suggested route, the Magellan announces “recalculating route” while the Tom Tom just shows this in text on the screen. There is another advantage that the Tom Tom has. It doesn’t need a separate mounting bracket because it already has a foldable one at the back. You just unfold it then attach it to the mounting disk on the dashboard. I still have to take it through its paces of course but as far as first impressions, I think it was a good buy. Anyone wanna buy the Magellan Roadmate? 

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A Very Mini Reunion With an Assist From GPS

A friend from New York is visiting the L.A. area this week to see her daughter, grandson, ex hubby, and some friends. She comes from the same small town in the Philippines as I do and I hung out briefly with her close friend while we were in high school. We haven’t seen each other since 1973 when we were seniors in high school, and with the troubles that were going on in our town (my brother's account of what happened then: http://larrydlp.blogspot.com/2009/08/last-days-in-jolo.html and http://larrydlp.blogspot.com/2009/08/last-days-in-jolo-2.html), a lot of us never returned after moving on to other cities for college. We just reconnected in the past year in, what else – Facebook, as I have with a bunch of others from Jolo. My friend messaged me last week saying she will be in the neighborhood and invited me to meet with her. When she arrived in L.A. she called me and we arranged to meet at her hotel. I tried looking for interesting places to take her in the vicinity and the nearest one I could find was Playa Del Rey. I was thinking we would have lunch there then take a walk near the beach. When I was looking this up on the internet, the sun was shining brightly. The next day when I was supposed to meet my friend, the weather had suddenly turned gloomy. No matter, as long as it didn’t rain, we could still do what I planned.

 First I checked out Google maps to find a route from my home to her hotel. Eighteen miles away, not bad. Then I remembered that I had a rarely used GPS device in my car (I’ve used it a couple of times and in one of them I was given a circuitous route to my destination). Before I left home, I entered the hotel’s address on the device then set off for my destination. Listening to the prompts from the GPS, it was giving me a different route from the one Google maps gave me. I decided to follow Google and see the difference between the two. I had to take a couple of detours due to a fire and some kind of police activity and this is when the GPS device became useful because of its recalculations. I eventually made it safely to my destination.

So I went up to my friend’s room and knocked on the door. When she opened it, we gave each other a hug, then I saw a little boy with her. It was her 2 year old grandson. The first thing I noticed about him was his hair – short on the top and sides and about an 8 inch tail on the back! Funny parents! Anyway, my friend and I were excited to see each other after so long and couldn’t wait to catch up. There was a hitch to my plan of going to Playa Del Rey. We couldn’t drive anywhere because we didn’t have a child safety restraint seat for the boy to use in the car, so we had to improvise. I asked the boy if I could hide him in the trunk while we were driving. Just kidding! Ok, slight change of plans. I looked out the window and saw a strip mall with a couple of small eateries - a burger joint with outside seating and a Mexican restaurant. So we went downstairs and walked across a couple of intersections to get to the Mexican place. It was small but it looked clean and decent so we decided to have lunch there. My friend ordered a burrito and I ordered the chicken plate. The kid? Well, all he wanted were some balls from the vending machine, a Spongebob Squarepants sticker, and a small pack of M&M’s, most of which he spilled on the floor. What do you expect? He’s 2!

Lacking alternatives, with nothing to see or do in the immediate area after lunch, we headed back to the hotel for more catching up on what has been happening in our lives for the past 30 some years. It turns out we went to college in different cities, then she moved to the U.S. to be with her husband in 1987 (I came earlier in 1980 to run a marathon). There were more stories about other friends, relationships, chismis, and what the future may hold. I shall not go into details because most were personal topics and not for public consumption. In any case it was a catch up conversation which lasted about 6 hours before we parted company. Her daughter picked her up with the grandson to meet another town mate for dinner in another city. But first we had a requisite picture taken which we couldn’t do earlier because we lacked a photographer. Do you think the two year old would have been able to do it? Nah… On my way home, I decided to follow the GPS instructions instead of reversing course with the Google maps route. It turns out the GPS gave me a more direct route to and from my destination.

Hard for me to believe that I had a very enjoyable long conversation with my friend. I hadn’t had that kind of tete-a-tete with anybody in a long time, me being so private and isolative. Thanks, Leonie, for a wonderful talk and thanks to GPS for making it possible for me to meet with you again after so many decades. Apologies that I couldn’t take you to a classier establishment to have lunch. Perhaps next time. Oh, it was interesting to become a substitute daddy for a few hours too! For some reason the kid gravitated towards me and even fell asleep in my arms. Will this daddy thing rub off on me? Heck NO!

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The GPS Runaround

After running near Belmont Shore yesterday, I had time to kill so I set my GPS to guide me back home even though I knew how to get there. In the past, the device always told me to turn left at the first intersection instead of right as I’ve known my route home. So I was curious to see where the GPS would take me. This is how it went: from Marina Drive, left on Second Street, right on Park Street, right on E. Anaheim Street, left on Pacific Coast Highway, around the Traffic Circle, exit right on Lakewood Boulevard, then enter the 405 Freeway. So after a series of rights and lefts at numerous streets which even took me to the traffic circle, a place that I’ve tried to avoid in the past, the GPS finally showed me the freeway entrance. If I followed the route I was familiar with, it would have taken one right turn and one left turn to get to the same freeway.

Well, to sum up, the GPS gave me a runaround through the streets of Long Beach. If you followed its directions and weren’t a local, you’d probably get confused. I found it a waste of time, a waste of fuel, but also at the same time, mildly amusing. That goes to tell you that you cannot rely solely on the GPS to get proper directions. Check Googlemaps, Mapquest, or even your trusty old Thomas Guide first or as a back up.

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My Second GPS Experience

About three weeks ago I wrote about my first automobile GPS experience, which wasn’t a good one. I have since returned the device to the manufacturer and they sent me a replacement last week. It was also refurbished like the first one and it even included an SD memory card which the previous owner probably forgot to remove. But first, let me tell you an error I made while returning the original unit. I misunderstood the verbal instructions given to me by customer service and instead of keeping the mounting device (the parts used to attach the unit to the car’s dashboard), I sent it back as well. So when I received the replacement unit, I didn’t have anything to attach it to my car with. It was back to exchanging emails with customer service and I was told that they would send me back the parts but I would have to pay Fedex for the shipment. What other choice did it have? Buying a new set of parts would have cost more than the shipment price, so I agreed to the terms of the company. A few days later and $10.00 poorer, I received the parts and was finally able to mount the GPS unit on my car. That didn’t stop me from trying to use the device beforehand though. I charged the battery, upgraded the software, set the device in the cup holder and off I went driving to and from work with it. Surprisingly, even though the unit was a couple of feet below the windshield, it detected the GPS satellites very well. I then programmed my home and a couple of other addresses into the unit, and on Saturday morning, took it through its paces again. I input the location where I was meeting a friend for a run, and later where the family had the surprise birthday for my aunt. This time the GPS unit hummed along and performed perfectly, and didn’t have the problem of it turning on and off unexpectedly like the first one. So now, despite having to pay for shipping back the first one and for getting back the missing parts, I’m quite happy with this second GPS experience. With the free SD memory card, I ended up breaking even. It’s a keeper! (***Read the original post here: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2010/02/my-first-gps-experience.html)

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My First GPS Experience

Now I’m not a GPS virgin at all since I’ve used GPS devices for running for so many years but this was my first experience with a driving GPS for the car. I recently ordered a refurbished GPS on the internet and it arrived last week. It was fairly priced and I thought it was a good way for me to get acquainted with the technology while not having to spend more money for a new device. After installing the mounting equipment on the car, updating the software, and charging the battery, I got a chance to take it through its paces last Saturday morning. I plugged in a course to Joe’s Crab Shack where I was supposed to meet some people to run with. The device told me to drive down a block over to Long Beach Boulevard to enter the freeway, instead of my usual route of driving down Atlantic Avenue and accessing the 405 freeway from there. That was one point against the device. Then it told me to enter the freeway on the left side of the street. If I didn’t know any better, I might have crossed over to the wrong side of the street and hit something. Two points against the GPS. Upon entering the freeway, the device turned itself off and I had to turn it back on again. This happened quite frequently during the course of the day to and from my destination, so that makes it strike three. On my way back home it again gave me the wrong side of the street for the freeway entrance again. As far as identifying street names and intersections for me to turn to, the device worked quite well.

I was really excited on buying my first GPS and wanted to find out how it worked, but I’m terribly disappointed that it didn’t function as it was supposed to. Now I’m faced with having to return it to the manufacturer for repair or replacement instead of a refund from where I bought it from originally. I’ve used several refurbished products before (like this netbook I’m typing on) and they worked quite well. This particular one did not. I like the technology itself so I hope that the company replaces it with something that works. There might still be a GPS device in my future.

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