A twenty nine dollar flight. An hour late in the planned time of departure which was good because the highway from Park City had been closed and I was also an hour late in arriving at the airport. I had been moved to the last row of seats and importantly from a middle seat to an aisle. Good times. My philosophy on these short hops is not to pay for anything extra because I already have stuff at both ends and I can sit anywhere for an hour and a half. The plane was practically full and the overhead compartments above the last ten rows or so were full of safety stuff, life-rafts and so forth. Between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas it is pretty unlikely that life-rafts will come into play. But they were there and our flight attendant at the back of the plane had the sole function, during the boarding process, of telling folks not to put their stuff up amongst the life-rafts.
The first fellow, who was seated directly in front of me as events transpired, was in a bad mood because he had some unusual belts with padded boxes attached. Very-bright almost-fluorescent boxes. He wanted to keep these under his legs and the flight attendant told him that he could not. So he fought a little with her but quickly gave up and started to put them amongst the other things in the overhead compartments. Then the flight attendant had to tell him the whole thing about the life-rafts. So with considerable huff he marched quite a bit further forward in the plane until he found a spot for his unusual belts. He returned and sat next to his daughter who was in the middle seat. He was sort of the diminutive professional wrestler type. Maybe 5’6″ or so without the man-bun. Very heavily muscled. A sheared head also except for the man-bun. White but extremely tanned with dark hair. Wearing fancy-sneakers, a tank top and gym shorts. All black. He had much body-coverage with Hawaiian tattoos. Or at least they looked like Hawaiian tattoos to me. Even on his neck.
Then the second fellow arrived. He was almost stomping up the aisle. He was fairly good looking in a tall and middle-aged sort of way. Casually dressed. White with gray blondish hair. He gave the impression that his demeanor may have been effected by the consumption of alcohol earlier in the afternoon. But who knows. The only remaining seat in the back of the plane was a window seat on the other side of the first fellow’s daughter. This second fellow reached the appropriate row of seats and began opening the overhead compartment. While he and the flight attendant had the life-raft conversation, the first fellow and his daughter got up to allow the second fellow to take his seat.
The conversation about the life-rafts took a dramatic turn when the second fellow told the flight attendant that he only had one leg. He threatened to take off his other leg, and hop forward to find a place for his stuff. In other words he would make a scene. The flight attendant didn’t say anything further as he put his stuff up there with the life-rafts and then hurled himself to the window seat. I thought his awkward landing both in the seat and a little bit on the armrest must have been painful. I seem to remember that at this point that he began fiddling with his leg. The first fellow and daughter took their seats as the flight attendants positioned themselves for their standard pre-flight speech. This usually signals that the plane is about to back up and begin taxiing to the runway.
But suddenly the diminutive professional wrestler type jumped out of his seat, turned to the fellow with one leg and screamed, literally screamed. “Stop touching me, I have told you to stop touching me.”
Hmm, I thought, this stuff only happens on YouTube. I hadn’t noticed anyone touching anyone, nor had I heard anyone say anything about touching. But once everyone had been seated I had returned to reading and wasn’t really paying any attention.
As the fellow with one leg responded, declaring both innocence and indignation, our flight attendant, African American and both young and slightly stout, who had been in charge of keeping baggage away from the life-rafts, intervened. She told the fellow who had lept into the the aisle to calm down and take his seat and that the plane couldn’t take off with him on it, if he didn’t calm down.
Then there was much rearranging of people all over the plane directed by two other flight attendants and one of them returned and requested that the diminutive professional wrestler type and his daughter move to new seats about half-way up the plane. There was much expressing of consternation that they were being moved when they were the innocent ones. But that generally went without a hitch.
I turned to the attractive pair of well-dressed Mexican nationals seated in my row and said: “Bienvenidos a Estados Unidos.”
Then our original flight attendant emerged from somewhere and began a somewhat lengthy discourse with the fellow with one leg. She asked him to move and he refused saying that he hadn’t touched anyone. That went on for a while until she told him that the other seat would have more leg-room and that it was at the very front of the plane so that he could disembark more readily. This gave him the impression that he was not being punished but was being provided a situation better suited to his disability. That did the trick. When our flight attendant returned I was directed to sit in the now empty row in front of me.
Then perhaps fifteen minutes later we were finally taking off, perhaps two hours late including the original hour that I knew about when I got on the plane. I didn’t really care. The flight then went without incident. The thing that really strikes me in retrospect was how able the flight attendants were in dealing with all of this. It must happen all of the time.
I was soon in an Uber and headed to our place in the desert outside of Las Vegas to take care of some follow-up stuff related to the installation of new cabinets. Then a few days later my wife and eldest daughter, with both dogs in tow, arrived in the middle of the night having hauled down a bunch of stuff for my daughter’s bedroom and having begun the seven-hour drive only after work.
The next day we had two things on our plate. The first was to check out some venues in Las Vegas for my youngest daughter’s wedding reception early next year. She wasn’t with us but wanted someone to look at them before she made her decision. The second was to attend an Ed Sheeran concert at the new Raider’s stadium also in Las Vegas.
Our day started with more follow-up on the cabinets and then at noon we headed to the first of the reception venues. This one was a large house in a neighborhood of large houses set amidst apartment complexes. This part of the mission had a couple of peculiarities. The first was the people who we arranged to meet weren’t there and when called said that it was no longer available. My daughter speculated that it might have been a scam where they sought deposits from folks who were willing to provide them without having been shown the place.
The second peculiarity involved a scene encountered about a block away from the house. There was a small red suv, an ambulance, two guys associated with the ambulance, a tow truck and tow truck driver, and a police officer or sheriffs deputy and his car. All of the people were standing in a semi-circle in front of the suv. And as we drove past it became apparent that there were three distinct bullet holes in the drivers-side front window.
I would later watch the news to see what had happened but there was no reference there. It could have been my fourth accidental happening upon a murder scene in Las Vegas. The other three, confirmed by the evening news, were a road rage incident where police were tending to the vehicle, and two instances of bodies found that were being tended to by police, after having being dumped. Upon further review of the Clark County online police records this last instance was a case of recovery of a vehicle which had been stolen a month prior and shot up at some point, and probably wasn’t a murder scene at all.
The visits to the other venues, in the arts district and downtown went without excitement except at one ambulances were tending to a group of homeless people down the street. I forgot to mention that it was 104 degrees. Both the arts district and downtown fall into the hip but sketchy category.
This brings us to the Ed Sheeran concert at Allegiant stadium. I should first point out that I am not a fan. I don’t dislike him either. I just put him in the category of pop stars who’s music I don’t seem to notice, or if I do notice I don’t seem to register the song with the artist. I was along for the ride with my wife and eldest daughter.
We parked about six blocks from the stadium in a small business parking lot where we were charged twenty dollars. It was still 104 degrees. So the walk to the stadium was a little painful. Then at the stadium we were directed to a different entrance. Another similar walk at 104 degrees. We walked past a vip entrance where people were ushered rapidly through the gate and into the stadium.
At this point I began to notice all of the ambulances. Some were parked and waiting but many were on the move. Some that were moving made a small bleep-bleep sound, as if saying “pardon me I need you to get out of the way”. The sirens of others were the full blown “I’m coming through, this is an emergency!” sort of blaring. We got to our entrance and a large group of attendees were standing in the sun. From a quick glance it appeared that even though the doors were supposed to have opened at 4:00, it was around 4:30, only one of the twenty five or whatever gates was actually processing people. And this step was only the first of three before actually entering the stadium. A helicopter flew overhead and then circled back, looking down on the lines we were standing in. It was still 104 degrees.
Ambulances had parked alongside our group and ambulance personnel had come into the crowd and left with someone a few times by now. Then a more vigorous commotion ensued not far from us in our large group waiting to enter at our entrance. A very heavy man, who appeared to be quite young had passed out and fallen. They came with a stretcher and it took several of them to get him on the stretcher. His skin had taken on a bluish cast and as I recall he didn’t appear to be moving. I was later told by others that the ambulance personnel had ultimately used defibrillators, but I didn’t see this myself so I don’t know if it was true.
Finally all twenty five or whatever gates had opened and we were processed through that initial stage. Then we waited under a tent for a while and went through a metal detector. Then we joined another large crowd outside of the physical entrance to the presumed coolness inside the stadium. The actual stadium doors were locked. As we waited there people began walking back through the crowd saying that Ed Sheeran had posted on his Instagram account that the concert was cancelled because of mechanical issues inside the stadium.
This was all big news in various newspapers and all of the local television stations. It was mentioned that people were affected by the heat. One local newspaper story said that fairly early on in the afternoon they had been told that twenty people had been treated at the stadium and one had been taken to a hospital. The same story went on to say that they had tried to update those numbers later but weren’t able to do so. Even several days later follow-up and updated stories used the same language. I’ve never seen a final updated tally or confirmation that the numbers provided were total final numbers. So who knows. It seemed to me that folks were dropping like flies and being taken out in ambulances.
As an additional but minor part of the weekend when my daughter was headed back to Salt Lake City on another night, her flight was either three or four hours late in taking off. We were just pleased that it had taken off at all. Leaving Las Vegas and all that sort of thing.
On an entirely different note my new project involves integrating aws with python. This should be fun, or perhaps not. I suspect it will be a while before I reach the promised land on the other side of this. But what a handy way to put python on the web if it works. The hosting solution to beat all other hosting solutions, or maybe not. Updates to follow. If it works well I will be looking at it to handle at least part of my site.
And still on an entirely different note. Adobe has released its plans for Firefly and AI related stuff within the context of Adobe’s many applications. These are all being rolled out now. The planned monetization of the AI functionality within Adobe is not at all clear to me now. My understanding is to expect a large price hike for Creative Cloud with November’s bill and then some sort of credit-based price per use strategy will be implemented for AI services. This is not my first rodeo, going back to the death of Flash and a few other introductions of services that involved a voluntary price increase in the form of paying more to use the program. Adobe Express and the Adobe 3D programs come to mind. I haven’t done much with Adobe Firefly, just a little testing here and there, unlike Microsoft’s Github Copilot, because I pretty much expected that this would end up where it looks like it is going. My plan is to sit tight until I see what the actual price increase for Creative Cloud is and also I have a better understanding of what the monetization of AI entails and then make a decision as to where to go or what to do next.
And finally, for the first time since a couple of months before the Pandemic began, I am headed back to France, and for an all-time bucket list item. Apparently, or so I have read, this event began as a payback to Mary, yeah that Mary, Notre Dame. Way back in 1695 or something like that the city council of Lyon France made a promise to her that they would put on this show of lights every year at around the same time. This in exchange for protection of the city from some later age plague. And so began the Lyon fête des lumières. I’ve never been to Lyon in Winter. I’ve loved it very much in the late Spring and thought it would be wonderful to visit in Winter because it is in the valley beneath Mont Blanc and the French Alps. It is also the gastronomic capital of France. That, right there, is saying something. And the home of Beaujolais which is my go-to when in France.
We also expect to spend some time in Paris, my other go-to when in France. And I’m hoping to hit up southern Spain and live it up with the gypsies one more time. Maybe Malaga. I’m not sure yet. I tend to do these things on the fly. Planning the next step only in the middle of the current step. There was just the one time when I was pretty much homeless in Barcelona for part of a week. But that is another story altogether. Anyway I’m back at it, going through all of my Aula Spanish classroom workbooks hoping to recover all that I have lost, in the way of language skills, over the course of the pandemic, and then some.
Soon to be where I belong, on the road again!