We put on our finest night life duds, hopefully not to crumpled from being jammed into my suitcase with my much more important cycling gear, to our reservation at Mix at the top of THE Hotel which is like a twin of Mandalay Bay or something along those lines. Basically it just tries to be as modern and cool as possible. I guess it works, neat decor and all. It's on the top floor of the hotel so you can see the whole city.
Food and wines were great, I finished off a seafood dinner with a mixed tropical fruit desert (of course the menu made it sound 10 times more intricate than that, but that's basically what it was), and a very good reisling wine. It was so good I'm still having flashbacks.
4 of us went riding today, Tori and I plus Frank Mele and Chris Hooper. 103k all in, went out to the Red Rock loop. Beautiful ride, beautiful day. Less windy and warmer than yesterday, I just did shorts, undershirt and jersey (vs. knee warmers and thermal long sleeved jersey yesterday).
The red rock area was cool. It was a feat of American national park planning how the sites can be viewed "perfectly" from behind the wheel, or with only 10 steps from the parking lot to the lookout.
On the way back we stopped at Bonny Springs Ranch, which was interesting. Loosely speaking, it was a ranch that had somehow avoided economic ruination by becoming a petting zoo, biker hangout, horseback riding stable and oasis in the desert.
We pulled in across the mini train tracks for the kids train, and went over towards the restaurant. I was standing near a coin operated mechanical camel, and when I turned my bike around the wheel hit the camel. The machine started working, and a little girl got her mom to prop her up on it immediately. I guess this was my good deed for the day, as she really, really seemed to like it.
We passed the duck/goose/fish/turtle and anything else pond, sidestepped a rooster, and ducked into the restaurant. To quicly summarize, it was pretty much like Red Green's cabin. The lineup was long, so we went to the bar. The ceiling beams were covered with thousands of dollar bills stuck in place with people's scribbles on them. The light fixtures were broken in half beer or wine bottles with the wires just running through the top. For the guys who needed to relieve themselves, everyone had to do a double take in the bathroom since the urinal was a bathtub. The clientele was half bikers, 4 cyclists, and half toddlers with families. The menus were stuck to the side of empty tequila bottles on each table.
The ride back to town was easy, all downhill and pretty relaxing, even the sort part on a busier road. Motorists seem nice here so far.
Tonight the plan is to eat some Seafood Blue place and see Cirque du Soliel "ka". For Canadians, any Las Vegas trip should pay homage to one our world famous exports. The seafood was good, and like any Cirque I've seen in Las Vegas, it's incredible. I think it was a love story, but really it was like a war between ninjas and pirates or something like that. It's amazing how much investment they can make in a stage when it doesn't need to move every week to a new city. One part of the stage was a rectangle that was probably 10m by 5m that the could move from a flat plane to vertical and any other angle as well (moved on x, y a d z axis). It had pegs that could shoot out of it, so there could be flat battles, angled battles, vertical battles where the actors become horizontal (you're watching them from above essentially, very Matrix like in movements), and other randomly cool stuff.
Picture a crankset spinning in circles. Now picture that as a 10m crankset mounted in the center of the stage, with two hampster wheels mounted to each end. There were two guys in the hampster wheels who by pumping like on a swing could make it go around - fast. Then they'd do flips and such in the wheels as they were weightless across part of the arc. Then they'd climb outside, without safety cables, and do similar. Then one guy got a skipping rope, and would jump rope as it went around. And by jump rope, I mean after the warmup few skips, he'd be airborne for half the arc, say 10 o clock to 5 o clock, and do a 6 rotation double cross skip. Cool. Sure it's a bit of a show ith funny costumes and such. But Cirque is built on a foundation of badass athletes, and that's what I can totally dig.
Word to the wise: if Erik tells you "we're at the top" that means you only have another 1000ft of climbing left...
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