– Maciek, why didn't you take the Best Bike in the World with you?? – my Achilles tendons asked in a weak voice.
– I don't know Achilles tendon, I really don't know – I replied in a voice full of sincerity.
I also don't know why I flew to Vegas without my wallet, documents, or credit cards.
And why I flew on Monday instead of extending my stay for the weekend. Although I know that. The flight departed at 9 a.m. with two transfers, because I was supposed to land from the bikepacking airport the evening before. holidays in Gambia and Senegalwhich I have never been to.
Here I am, at the Luxor Hotel. One of the few "big" hotels I've never had the opportunity to visit. Maybe it's because it's practically at the end of the famous Strip, or maybe because I've never been a fan of pyramids. I've had a bad association with pyramids since I fell into a product sales network after high school. The hotel is a huge, black pyramid, from whose tip a huge beam of light shoots into space. Supposedly, it's the most powerful human light in the world. Anyone who's been to Vegas is no surprise. On our previous visit, we stayed in a large castle adjacent to the pyramid, where knights fight on horseback.
It's 9 p.m., and I'm standing at the check-in machine after an Uber ride of less than 3 miles that cost over $20. I have a small backpack, a wallet, a camera, a phone, and not much else—from when I started bikepackingI have no idea what to take with me on trips. After all, I don't really need anything. For nearly 20 hours of traveling, I was sure I'd forgotten something important, but I couldn't think of what. It reminds me when the machine asks for my credit card. I always take two wallets with me on trips: one for critical needs – with my passport, a stack of dollars, and some important documents. The other for everyday use – driver's license, credit cards, etc. This time, something went wrong, and it turns out I only had my passport and a few dollars. I'm in the States without a credit card. If you've been to the States in the last 50 years, in most cases, not much has changed when it comes to how they handle billing.
The machine, of course, rejects all my virtual cards I have on my phone. I go to the human receptionist. The accommodation was paid for in advance, of course, but the big hotels still withhold deposits – Luxor charges $75 per night. Since I'm staying five nights, they'll withhold nearly $400. Because, you know, the longer you stay, the more you can break things… or something like that. As a goodbye gift, the hotel adds $51 per night as a "resort fee." It's a wonderful country.
There are a few people waiting in front of me at the hotel reception desk. Next to them is another line, similar in length, but for "premium" guests. I'm writing about a hotel with nearly 4,500 rooms. FOUR AND A FIFTY THOUSAND. I know it's hard to imagine, so let's put it in perspective: if every resident of Męcikał got five rooms, there would still be more vacancies than the total number of rooms in the Luxor Hotel in Lublin.
I wait for an hour because the lines are staffed by three people (sometimes they disappear). It doesn't help that "premium" customers have priority. A friend on the phone tells me his debit card worked. I hadn't actually tried. I get out of the line and remember that my debit card is new and I haven't added it to my phone yet. Fifteen minutes later, my payment is also declined. A woman comes over to tell me it won't work and that I should try with a human. I return to the line, but this time there are many more people ahead of me. I wait longer than for a pancake at Manekin.
I confront the receptionist. I tell her I don't have physical cards, and she tells me it can't be done that way. The situation is somewhat similar to the day we arrived at the South Africa's border with Lesotho And we said, "We don't have visas because Poles can't get them, please let us in." I then understood why each customer is served for several minutes. After every serious question, the receptionist has to pass it on to the manager and ask for a decision. I'm also almost certain the manager has PTSD, which is why she's hiding somewhere in the back. I'm almost certain she could be a humanoid robot. Driverless taxis drive around the hotel, and most of the people around are here for a conference at one of the world's largest IT companies. Of course, I get permission and successfully call the terminal. Good for me.
– Excuse me, is this elevator up?
– no, sideways
Very late in the evening I go to my room, which must have been in its prime a dozen or so years ago. It's number 26128, so you can guess how long it takes me to get there. I mean, even before that, I almost fall over. elevator inclinator. The pyramid is completely different than I imagined – the center is empty, and the rooms are on its "walls." The elevator is also there, which means it travels at a 43-degree angle. Here, the joke about the elevator traveling sideways doesn't surprise anyone.
My room has a secret passageway – a door that leads to another door – a well-known trick. So I accidentally walk through that door into a stranger's room. I say hello, excuse me, and leave. At bedtime, I use Google to check if it's safe to drink tap water. Google says it's safe if you like chlorine and are a masochist. I once did an amateur triathlon – it's common knowledge that I like chlorine and am a masochist. So, I'm drinking hotel tap water for the rest of my trip, and to this day, I haven't developed any kidney stones.
I'm also pretty sure that in most Vegas hotels, people allergic to dust mites die the first time they step on the carpets. Hotels here generally have a certain bathtub-overdose vibe.
How much dignity can you give up for free socks?
You know that moment in your career when you're "not a director yet," but "no longer an engineer"? To put it in cycling terms, it's that moment when you're no longer in the front group, but you're riding away alone from the grupetto. That's me, and if you don't believe me, here's a photo from one of my meetings. If you work in HR and are here because you're checking who I am after receiving my CV, forget what I wrote.
Large IT conferences are divided into three stages, or four if you include queuing. These include:
Expo.
No one says it out loud, everyone confirms it. Except perhaps for those invited to private events, where I still don't know what's going on, but I suspect contracts are being signed for millions. People go to conferences to spend a few hours in a large hall with exhibitors – most of them companies you might also see in Formula 1 cars. The expo is a bit like a slave market, but we're selling ourselves. All it takes is leaving your contact information to get free socks, a T-shirt, a rag, a stuffed animal, a keychain, a rubber ball, or even a chance to win a PlayStation. As a professional, I return to Poland with a backpack (new, of course) full of everything. It even has a portable blender that charges via USB and two hats. Throughout the year, I'll be contacted by companies from all over the world, offering to buy a solution that's free for a week and then costs £1.5 million. It does the same thing as other solutions, but it's newer and better, and the graphs are more colorful.
It's easy to recognize the facility newbies. The process of leaving your data is accomplished by scanning a badge worn around your neck. Women are usually assigned to this task, and they begin the conversation with, roughly translated, "Hey, would you like to scan with me?" Diversity and Inclusion has already reached us in IT, but it still has a long way to go. So before you realize what's going on, you're infected with SPAM.
Sessions.
The sessions involve sitting in a classroom, like in college, and listening for an hour to why a particular solution is the best or why a particular company is better than others. Ten years later (that's how long I remember), the pattern remains the same. Something new emerges, large companies invest a lot of money, and we all jump in because life will now be simpler, cheaper, and better. The next year, the topic expands—everything that was easy will now be even easier thanks to a new level of abstraction, and then something new appears again. And so we all entered the cloud, migrated to it, and then figured out how to control costs. Then came microservices, breaking down monoliths, setting up Kubernetes clusters, adding overlays that made managing those clusters easier, and then fixing those overlays by adding more overlays. Then came non-relational databases, so we no longer had to think about what we were collecting and how it would be organized; we simply collected all the data possible to figure out what to do with it in the future. Now we are all going AI.
So every single session was about artificial intelligence, agents, and every possible combination of those words with every possible word describing something in IT.
whores, coke, Firefox
tits, vulva, Google Chrome
– Large Amounts of Lightning at Once
Parties.
And then there are the parties. There's always one large, general conference. In the case of Salesforce, it was, for example, a concert Lennie Kravitz and Alicia Keys at the stadium, where we managed to stand in the front row years ago for some unknown reason, even though we arrived half an hour before it started. Amazon, which holds its conferences next door, but in several hotels, not just one like Google (which means half the time is spent traveling), organized Re:play, the world's largest IT event (apparently). Skrillex, DJ Snake, and Martin Garrix were there – I had the pleasure of attending it three times, and in 2017 I even wrote a post about it and Vegas: https://hopcycling.pl/las-vegas/Thanks to this, I no longer have to write about Vegas hotels and attractions.
In the case of this year's Google, it's a Weezer concert (which was also on Amazon two years ago) and Benson Boone. The former is a band I didn't know, but when they started playing, I realized I did. Besides the two hits, I spent most of the time trying to stay awake and hold in the urine I brought with me to the stadium – I miss the seats near the stage. The latter is a guy I would know if I were 15 and a girl. There's a good chance it would have been the best day of my life. Remember, the audience is overwhelmingly male. IT people With an average age probably exceeding 40 – if the artist selection was trolling, I respect that greatly. Worst of all, the concert was so good that nearly half the audience decided to become homosexuals afterward (my calculations). For the next three days, everything was mystical and magical. Here, for example, the guy does a backflip from the piano:
There are also smaller events, called dinners, to which exhibitors invite clients and potential clients. These aren't talked about openly. I, for example, don't talk about them openly because no one invites me.
The Day the Achilles Tendons Rested but the Forehead Dropped
As befits a self-respecting European, I wake up shortly after 3 a.m. and there's no way I'll fall back asleep. I stare at the ceiling, fire up my computer, and wait for dawn. Of course, I miss it because all the hotel windows are permanently tinted—which makes sense, since the pyramid is black, after all.
Meta, feta, keta, acid, tablet
Koda, mefa, luta, f*cks, burn
Vodka, emka, benzo
I go for a short run a little after 6:00. At this time, Las Vegas is made up of two types of people: runners and drug addicts. Of course, the former are more common around the Strip, and the latter around Downtown. The Luxor is one of the last hotels on the south side of the Strip, and the most obvious running route goes further south. It feels like, after a few traffic lights at most, you can cover about 300 kilometers without unnecessary distractions. So I run south a bit to take the traditional and obligatory photo with the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign, and then head north along the Strip – just for sightseeing. For the first hour, I'm pretty sure I only pass runners from the IT world.
Around mile 12, after passing the large tower that in my mind symbolizes the transition from the Strip to Downtown, I remember I'm hungry. I go into a 7-Eleven for a sandwich and a cucumber-flavored isotonic drink. This flavor is important, because I won't forget it for hours. I pay 40 złoty and remind myself that this isn't a country for poor people. But then I also remember American proportions – that means the layer of ham in the sandwich is thicker than the layer of "bread." The isotonic drink isn't particularly small either, and since I won't be running with it, I drink it in one go. Finding a quiet spot to eat isn't particularly easy. I leave one because the half-naked black man yelling at me seems to be having hallucinations, and I'm not sure what he's mistaking me for. I leave another because a frantic woman approaches me, talking about a dying man around the corner. Even if that man were there, I'm sure there would be two dying people there by the time I got there. So I sit down on the curb of the main street and let the sun melt me.
I've done this for over 26 kilometers. Although maybe a little less, as I sometimes cheat on the escalators. Generally, the Strip is a good run, as the walkways are elevated above the streets and there's no waiting for traffic lights. The parallel roads on the west side are also decent, but if you want to "workout," the only options are probably the trusty "Strip south" or the hotel gyms. I think I'd cover a similar distance trying to reach them from room 26128.
The blazing sun and the incredibly strong wind aren't helping me enjoy the surroundings. The fact that I returned to the hotel around 9 a.m. isn't helping either, as the first attractions aren't scheduled until the evening. I'm starting to remember why cycling is the ultimate way to explore cities. After all, it's been about three hours, and my legs are starting to give out.
The next morning, I'm a more responsible person and only do 16km. Perhaps that's because the "lectures" start at 9am and it would be a shame to be late. This time, I run through the surrounding neighborhoods. Las Vegas ranks quite high in the "cities I wouldn't want to live in" category, although the possibility of weekend getaways would more than compensate.
This time, the intersections are much more difficult, and I seem to be standing more than running. I'm also not sure if we encounter anyone walking on the sidewalk. Walking clearly hasn't caught on here.
My legs aren't working any better, especially since the total distance covered that day won't be any less than the previous day. Well, it's a bit of a walk to get the free socks.
The following days were mostly about artificial intelligence, agents, agents using artificial intelligence to talk to other agents, emails that write themselves, send themselves, and then summarize themselves, and PowerPoints that generated and described themselves on one side and summarized themselves on the other. This way, a human can deliver a 7,000-word message to a human, but the sender only wrote 15 words, and the recipient only read 15. And maybe evening strolls through Vegas, which still impresses me, but I still don't know what it is. Mixed feelings is a good description. But each time, I discover something new. For example, for the first time in my life, I'm riding the escalators at Caesar's Palace... which, as befits a Roman interior, are spiral.
The second day, I spend most of the evening in the bathroom trying to get the lens out from under my eyelid. It never ceases to amuse me when I spend the entire day listening to the latest technological advancements, only to find myself unable to remove the lens, or when the zipper on my sweatshirt gets stuck, or when the double loop on my shoelace gets too tight.
I also have a mission: I have to go to the store and pick up my groceries. The days of cheaper prices in the States are over, but the days when American promotions sometimes make it worthwhile to fly just for shopping are still alive. Especially if you look poor and they don't catch you at the "nothing to declare" checkout at Okęcie Airport. Of course, I'm not carrying anything like that.
My morning shower takes me about 20 minutes because it takes forever for the hot water to reach my 26th floor. I have a feeling that few people in this city shower before 6 a.m.
I leave my room, press the elevator button, get electrocuted, and descend 26 floors at a 43-degree angle. Every day, at least four times a day, I get electrocuted in this hotel. The first dialogue I hear is between two guys walking through the casino:
– so what, f*ck with the magnet
– no f*ck
I smile at them in Polish and immediately feel better. Getting around Vegas by bus turns out to be very simple. I install the app on my phone, buy an all-day ticket for $8 (because I have a feeling of adventure coming, even though I have several stops to go), get off at the bus entrance, smile at the driver, and the matter is settled. As a beginner, I choose the easiest route – a double-decker bus that runs every few minutes along the Strip: the Deuce. Of course, it doesn't arrive at my stop THAT DAY. It veers off somewhere off-kilter, and I end up at the bus depot. Since I'm not the only tourist surprised by my absence from the Vegas Premium Outlets, I overhear someone asking what's next and follow him – we board another bus and head in the right direction, only to take a wrong turn shortly after.
With each stop, I drift further and further from my destination, until almost the entire bus is Mexican. I get off a dozen stops too far, and to avoid looking lost, I go straight to the Five Guys, which is near the stop. A hamburger, medium fries, and a medium drink is about 100 złoty. I head back – two buses and one emergency bathroom visit later, I'm at my destination.
The part about bikes, because the blog is about bikes
On Saturday, I remember that I run a cycling blog, and it would be nice to have an excuse to write something for the blog. I come up with a brilliant idea.
My flight isn't until the evening, so I leave my room early in the morning, passing people mindlessly clicking on vending machines at dawn. Or maybe vending machines mindlessly clicking on people? It's hard to say. I cross the 11 lanes of the street in front of my house and head north on the Deuce bus. Downtown has city bikes – a whole network, the equivalent of our Veturillo. I install the RTC app, browse the station map, and do a cost analysis:
15USD per month, first 60 minutes free, then 4$ per hour
5USD per day, first 3 minutes free, then 4$ for every 30 minutes
Analyzing the costs, I realize I'm not good at math. However, judging by my progress, I conclude that I'm lazy and certainly won't want to change bikes every 30 minutes or so. I also have a feeling I'll end up in a place where there are no stations anymore. So I'm taking the monthly option, even though I plan to use the bike for a few hours at most.
Bikes are perfectly fine; with a bit of luck, you can even find an electric bike – I counted about five in the entire city. I'm heading east, where the nearest mountains are. The internet says that at the end of the paved roads, just before the rocks, there are some nice panoramas of the city. And indeed, there are. Somewhere in the distance, I can even see the tower from where I picked up my bike, and far to the side (third building from the left), my pyramid. I change bikes once along the way. But the entire trip east takes almost 2.5 hours without changing bikes, but interestingly, I only pay an additional 41 TP4T, not 81 TP4T.
The weather is treacherous, with temperatures supposedly lower than in Poland, plus clouds and a relentlessly strong wind... but that's all just a cover-up. Two days later, I'll be saying goodbye to the skin on my forehead. The Indian sun may have preserved my skin a bit, but not my head. I didn't bring a helmet or a hat, so the sun will see parts of my body it normally doesn't. To remind you where Vegas is, here's a photo from the other side. Although it's not entirely true that Vegas was built in the middle of the desert, in a place where there's no water. Vegas is where it is because that's where the water is, straight from the springs.
I'm heading downtown to swap my bike. Vegas, outside of the city center and the Strip, is an exceptionally boring city. Small houses, tiny gardens, minimal vegetation, practically zero foot traffic – only tourists in the center. Everything is the same, and even the villas on the hill overlooking the city don't particularly encourage living there. They look like living quarters for casino and hotel workers, and they probably are.
I turn onto North Main Street, about a kilometer from the end of the Strip, and… oh my goodness. I've driven in some strange places in my life. I've driven past Romanian slums, Gypsy villages on Słowacki Street, Ethiopian towns, and searched for food at night in Ugandan pubs, but what I saw on Main Street was a whole other level. I veered off the curb into the middle of the road, only to be surrounded by cars at the stoplight, because sidewalks are the night of the living dead and the walking dead in the middle of the day. Perhaps there was some kind of community service going on nearby, but the people around me were probably mostly fentanyl in the process of decomposing.
I rode a bit more, and after a five-hour drive, I've covered about 70 kilometers. It's 3:30 PM, and I've arranged a taxi at the hotel for around 6:00 PM. It would be nice to wash up in the hotel restroom, as I'll be traveling for the next dozen or so hours. I keep forgetting that airport lounges have showers, which is better than a public hotel restroom and wiping myself dry with toilet paper. The person sitting next to me in business class will probably guess the same. The only problem is, I don't return my bike at all, because a group of (supposedly) 500 people on bikes appears in front of me. But this isn't a school trip. This is a group worthy of Las Vegas. I'm almost certain I'm the only Slavic, or even more broadly speaking, Caucasian, person. I'm also probably the only person riding without a loudspeaker, with two wheels on the asphalt, and both hands on the handlebars.
I join them, and a polite man of Mexican beauty and the size of two Mackies asks if I'm going with them. I tell him I don't know what he's talking about, but I'm going. He tells me I'm one of them now. I don't know if it's a threat or an invitation. He has a T-shirt with the words "No Sucka Shit" written on it – why shouldn't I trust him? After a while, I discover it was some kind of event attached to BMX Days, organized by se7ensht or SE Bikes And some people I don't know flew in specifically for it, but their cycling content has garnered several hundred thousand views. I recommend clicking the links, because it's like a cross between GTA and Dave Mirra BMX.
In any case, driving through Downtown and the middle of the Strip doesn't necessarily look like a legal operation, and even the local police aren't quite sure what to do. It reminds me of those movies where Krystyna Czubówna reads—where lions sneak up on antelopes and choose the weakest one. In that group, that's definitely me.
It's well after 4 p.m., the group stops at the Liquor Store, and I break off and run as fast as I can to the nearest station, where a bus must also stop. Of course, all the bike spaces are taken, so I have to find another one. I also remember that there's a music festival happening in the fields near Stip, which I passed this morning, laughing at the cars stuck in traffic. It's the New World Festival, and it must be quite a big party, because Korn, Marilyn Manson, System of a Down, Cypress Hill, Mastodon, and a host of other bands are playing there simultaneously. So I park my bike and run as fast as I can to the bus stop.
I don't know how it is that, regardless of the place, time, or hour, I'm always late for everything in my head and have to rush. After all, I left this morning without a plan, having about 10 hours to do nothing, and now I'm running to the bus stop. Of course, I make it, though I doubt walking wouldn't be faster, even though it's almost 10 kilometers. Of course, everything worked out. I end the day with 90 kilometers on my city bike.
Taxis in this city are also a great thing. One of the drivers told me that these cars with cameras all around are a project by people searching for a UFO that escaped from nearby Area 51.
I spend my evenings in my reclining seat on the plane, and that means hours of clicking buttons: to unfold the seat, then fold it back, then unfold it again because I've pinched my headphone cord, then fold it back, then unfold it again because I've lost my glasses, then fold it back to get to the headphone jack, then unfold it to go to sleep, and repeat this process many, many times. Dear neighbor in seat 1C, if you're reading this with your German translator, I apologize.
