TriumphAnt

Spring break this year was an occasion for another family vacation to parts strange and unknown. This year, we traveled to the southwest United States, and its canyon and desert country to view some of the world’s great signature sites of natural wonder – the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley among them, and a signature site of most unnatural wonder – the Las Vegas strip.

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The next few posts will use this year’s Spring break family trip as their launch pad. But being me, of course, rest assured I will trundle off onto digressionary paths as they occur. Because the trip also occasioned not a few musings – on things like, for example, the nature of US patriotism vs its form in Canada, if it exists at all up here, and why exterior house paint seems to be so far beyond the budget of the ordinary Navajo homeowner.

The acquisition of a wonderful map of “Indian country” will also trigger a few musings about political correctness. As will the consumption of a bottle of “Polygamy Porter”, and the purchase of a t-shirt commemorating same in Utah, home of the Mormons.

So with those caveats firmly in place, read on at your peril. For heare there be dragonnes; abandon hope all ye who enter here; proceed at your own risk; I’d turn back if I were you…

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Spring Break 2005: Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, back to Las Vegas and the Cirque de Soleil’s show, Ka.

So… 1. First of many (Seven of nine… tertiary adjunct of uni-matrix zero-one… oh, never mind.)

Here’s to you, Horace Greeley! You said go; we went.

“Together we will go our way, together we will leave some day.
Together your hand in my hand, together we will make the plans.
Together we will fly so high, together tell our friends goodbye.
Together we will start life new, together this is what we'll do.
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
Together we will love the beach, together we will learn and teach.
Together change our pace of life, together we will work and strive.
I love you, I know you love me; I want you happy and carefree.
So that's why I have no protest when you say you want to go west.
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
I know that there are many ways to live there in the sun or shade.
Together we will find a place to settle down and live with the space
without the busy pace back east, the hustling, rustling of the feet,
I know I'm ready to leave too, so this is what we're going to do,
Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we'll do.
Go west...” (repeat and fade)

-- “Go West”, by The Village People (Horace Greeley was the Indian Chief)

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Our trip began with an overnight in Las Vegas, whose airport was the most convenient point of arrival for our planned weeklong driving tour.

Getting there involved flying via Air Canada to Chicago, then changing to a really stupid bit of marketing by United Airlines called simply “Ted”. Not “Air Ted” or “Ted Airlines”, just “Ted”. They could have opted for “Uni”, and declared themselves to be flying in tribute to Unity Valkyrie Mitford (Ms Mitford – “Baa-baa” to her family and reportedly either conceived in Swastika, Ontario or born in Swastika, Alaska [?] depending on which meticulously accurate internet-based biography you buy into – is noted for 1. being a wealthy and attractive English woman who, before the Second World War, had way too much time on her hands and was romantically linked to that famous Bavarian playboy, Adolf Hitler; 2. having shot herself in the head about the same time her alleged boyfriend invaded Poland, but who only succeeded in simultaneously wounding and depressing herself. You’ll just have to Google her. We have other stories to tell here.)

But no, eschewing the “Uni” in their name, they had to be “Ted”.

The growing practice of naming businesses with casual men’s names is completely lost on me. Ottawa and Winnipeg and Eugene Oregon, to name just three, are all home to radio stations called “Bob-FM” Similarly-named radio stations have apparently sprouted like fungus across the continent. Atlanta has “Dave-FM”, New York – “Jack-FM”. And of course there’s “Spike-TV”.

But “Ted”? It’s actually painted in huge blue letters on the side of the aircraft! Somehow, boarding an airline named “Ted” doesn’t do a whole lot for me. I want a little more formality from someone about to lift me 40 or 50,000 feet into the air, launch me most of the way across the continent and bring me back down safely. It recalls an old Steve Martin comment from his long-ago days as a stand-up comic when he asked, “Where would you put your money, into ‘Security First Mortgage and National Trust’, or ‘Fred’s Bank’?”

I much prefer a carrier named confidently with a term like “Trans-Continental”, “Pan-American”, or “Cathay-Pacific” (“Yes, we can actually fly that far!”), than hearing an excessively casual, “Thanks for flying Ted this evening” from someone who then proceeds to deliver the instructions for safely reaching the nearest exit “in the event of an unscheduled landing”, surely one of the most beautiful euphemisms of all time for a process that generally involves unexpectedly and abruptly meeting the ground at about 500 miles per hour.

But I digress.

Because we arrived so late in the day after our two flights totaling about six hours in the air, our sole purpose this night was to claim our rental car, a wonderfully large boat of an automobile called a Kia Amanti, get to our hotel and capture a reasonable night’s sleep. As we departed the airport, I noticed that several US Marines in full desert camouflage were standing at an adjacent luggage carousel, each in turn picking up a locked metal suitcase about the size and shape of an electric guitar carrying case. Quiet memo to self: make no comments about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the (so far) mistake of that little adventure. Those cases didn’t hold electric guitars.

Considering my general fatigue and unfamiliarity with the terrain, coupled with the fact that our hotel was, in fact, the second of two of the same name -- The Embassy Suites -- about a mile apart on an avenue – the only difference being that ours included “and Convention Centre” in its name – we in fact executed only one wrong turn en route and managed to tuck ourselves in rather swiftly at the local time of midnight. (Biologically for us, this was about 3 am.)

Our hotel was actually off that part of the city known as “The Strip” and our window view was of a railroad shunting yard and a pretty placid little run of small businesses, including the “Westward Ho” casino. The latter’s neon sign rendered “Westward” in minuscule lettering, but flashed “Ho” out in letters big enough to be read from several miles distant. When my daughter several times announced that our view included the “Ho Casino”, I had to quietly inculcate in her the significance of the label “Ho” in North American slang. At the same time, I couldn’t help but admire her remarkable ability at capturing an essential Las Vegas element in her two-word description of the centrepiece of our window view.

Up next: Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon.