Wednesday, January 23, 2013

End to Las Vegas trip not as planned.



Location, at Home, CA

My trip to Las Vegas didn’t end as I had planned.

On Sunday Jan 13 we had planned to fuel our vehicles and buy groceries for our trek to Quartzsite. However, I woke up Sunday morning feeling light headed and dizzy. This continued throughout the day and I was only able to remain on my feet about 30 sec before I needed to sit or lay down.

In midafternoon I called Jeff to come and disconnect my water hose so it wouldn’t freeze overnight. He saw that I was not doing well and the result was the paramedics came and hauled me off to the nearest hospital which was North Vista in North Las Vegas.

I remained in the emergency room for 12 hours before a bed was available at 2:30 in the morning. A test showed I was bleeding internally. I had a CT scan that night, an Endoscopy the next morning, an electrocardiogram and a colonoscopy on Tuesday. All were normal. Later on Tuesday afternoon my blood count was low so I was given a unit of blood and later the count was again taken and showed normal. I was discharged just before 10 PM.

I actually spent a fairly restful night on Tuesday and the next morning I decided I would drive home with the RV. I filled the truck with fuel and got the rig ready to travel. When I was ready, I walked over to my friend Dick’s RV and he asked me to change my mind about driving. By then I realized I would not be able to drive so wheels had already been put in motion by Dick to have Jack drive up from Bouse, AZ and drive my RV down there on Thursday.

John and Connie drove Jack to Las Vegas and returned to Bouse all on Wednesday, an 8 hour round trip.

On Thursday we made an uneventful trip to Bouse while Clyda drove from home with the car to Bouse.

We decided to wait until Saturday to drive home with the car because of traffic on MLK weekend. It was almost as bad on Saturday. It is a seven and a half hour drive and Clyda did all the driving.

On Monday I had a follow up appointment with my doctor which included lab tests. All of the test came back normal or near normal. My doctor suggested I go back to Arizona and get on with life.

So, on Saturday we will fly to Phoenix and Jack and Judy will pick us up in Goodyear.

We plan to go to Casa Grande and attend the gourd festival on Feb 1-3. After that, we have no plans but will spend some more time in Arizona.

How do you put into words all the thanks to everyone who went out of their way to help me? All the guys who went to CES in Las Vegas and stayed an extra two days while I was in the hospital. They also made the arrangements for Jack to drive my RV to Bouse.

To Dick, Clint, and Jeff for changing their plans and hanging around. To John and Connie for the eight hour round trip to Las Vegas to bring Jack to drive my RV. To Jack and Judy for letting me once again recuperate at their Bouse abode. It’s becoming a habit.

To all of them, thank you.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Location, Las Vegas, NV

The Consumer Electronics Show here in Las Vegas is history for 2013. Today was the final day of what was reputed to be the largest show ever by floor space sold. Was it the largest attendance ever? I don’t know but there were about 150,000 people here.

The show is spread over three main sites. The Las Vegas Convention Center, the Venetian Expo Center, and the Las Vegas Hotel (LVH)

It is a mind boggling experience to attend this show as the vendor booths for the larger companies are something to see. No little 10x10 booths here but huge, spare no expense spaces with multimedia presentations, plus carpeting, and show girls in skimpy dress.

 Sony's very large display with images projected on a circular screen.
How about a 110 inch TV screen?
Talk about a low-rider. Look at that speaker in the bed.
Here is a gyroscope stabilized wheel. It goes 10 MPH.

Of course, not all displays are so ostentatious as many are “mom and pop” entrepreneurs trying to find that venture capital to bring their product to market. They come from all over the world as do many attendees. A large contingent comes from China and other Asian counties, each with their small sample of products to display.

There are auto companies both foreign and domestic, a huge audio section which includes car stereos on steroids. All the major electronic manufactures with such companies as Panasonic, Samsung, LG Electronics, Intel, Toshiba, and Sony who had by far the largest display.

Outside of the show is an army of busses, drivers, caterers, cleaning people, and on and on who make all of this possible. Getting around this part of Las Vegas is a nightmare during the show. Parking near the convention center is $40 a day. Because it is cheaper and far easier for us, we take a bus from Circus-Circus casino to and from the show.

Because we have been doing this for many years we have developed a routine which has served us well. We drive from the RV Park to Circus-Circus at 8:30 AM and catch a bus direct to the show. At 3:30 PM we again catch a bus back to Circus-Circus and take our car back to the RV Park.

From 9:00 AM when the doors open until 3:30 PM when we leave is about all we can stand as our feet, legs and hips have had it for the day. Two Aleve helps us get ready for the next day.


Did I see anything really spectacular at this years show? Not really. This year was all about connectivity in the computing world. Your car connected to your house, to your music, to the TV, to the “Cloud”.

In this respect Ford announced a marketing agreement with Whirlpool. Some wag in the crowd suggested that Ford was going to put a wash machine in every car. Not so! They will however address the connecting of home devices through your car so as to control things like dishwashers and wash machines to turn on in low electric usage part of the day.

It is all about “being green” and saving energy.

Of course there is the collecting of what we call “swag” as in the days of pirates. Another words, what is someone giving away that we can get for free. It becomes a game and each night during “cocktail hour” we display our “swag” and determine who had the best collection for that day. All in great fun of course but with an ulterior motive. By so displaying our “swag” we get to tell where we found it so the rest of the group can check it out the next day if they happened to miss it.