Las Vegas was, as always, a blast. We stayed at the Paris and had a room with a hallway. Great place, nice rooms, good eats. The flight out was however, horrible. Do you remember Pigpen from Peanuts?

Apparently he is alive and well in real life, weighing in at around 450 lbs and hasn’t showered in quite some time. He sat behind us, taking up two entire seats on a sold out flight. I’m curious if they actually made him pay for two seats. To say the man stank would be too kind. An aroma that equal parts rank stale urine and some sort of fecal matter (pigs or chickens perhaps) emanated from the man in great clouds whenever he moved. The lady next to us pulled out her perfume at one point and started spaying the cabin space around her. At one point Pigpen wondered up to the first class lavatory and was told he couldn’t use it. As he walked back all the people in first class looked around with shocked expressions on their faces as they tried to figure out what smelled so bad. The last 30 minutes of the flight he felt compelled to move a great deal so I literally buried my face in my book using the smell of paper to mask the horrid odor coming from him. How is it that people can achieve such a state of existence? Equally interesting is how everyone on the plane around him managed to not say a single word to this man or complain to the flight crew. I’ve seen people be rude over the simplest thing. But here was the proverbial pink elephant in the middle of the room, and nobody said a word, except to each other. Simply amazing. The flight back wasn’t much fun either, Traci and I were in middle seats in different rows on a red eye. Not very easy to get comfortable with two strangers intruding on either side of you.

Vegas itself was a great time however. This was the first time my uncle had been out there and the first time for my aunt and cousin for about 15 years. It was a blast seeing their reaction to the sheer excesses of Las Vegas. We all had a great time. The Aladdin has 1 mile of covered shopping with the fake blue sky and in one part it rains complete with thunderstorm. Somewhere in that maze we found Hilo Hatte, Hawaii’s largest island wear shop. We shopped there when we were in Hawaii and were surprised to see they had branched out onto the mainland. Dan is always saying that nobody makes shirts big enough for him, well, Hilo Hatte does.

On our way through the stratosphere Traci discovered Breathe O2, an Oxygen Bar. I had to try this out.

I had a shot of “POWER” and then 15 minutes of scented oxygen. I followed it up with a Red Bull. The rest of the day I felt like I was on Ephedrine. Oh the Q-Zar memories. I was quite wired until 1a.m. Curious as to how much of the effect was due to O2 and how much do to other substances, I had a Red Bull the next day. It didn’t have the same effect at all. So it’s either a combination of the things or O2 really makes that much of a difference. Have to try it again next time I’m out there, unless Columbus gets L.A. trendy enough to open an oxygen bar….highly doubtful.