Wind In My Head: On the trail of Grissom, Day 6.
Wind In My Head
Friday, December 19, 2008
On the trail of Grissom, Day 6.
When we decided to come to Vegas for the winter, we thought it would be just cold. It has been cold. Quite. Cold. It has also been dry which means my skin itches, my nose bleeds and my hair stands up. Yup, dry weather equals to a lot of static and I'm a very charged person, as in I store a lot of static. Brushing my hair is impossible, taking off my sweater means pulling it over my head and my hair then looks like I got electrocuted and I try hard not to touch metal surfaces, lifts, car doors etc. It is always a danger to try and kiss Packrat because you can actually hear the sparks between us and these are not the type of sparks that relationships are supposed to be made of. It makes for unhappy and literally smarting people.So that was the weather we sort of knew we were getting ourselves into. There was talk of some rain and possibly some snow Monday morning. I woke up at 7 am to watch because that was when it was supposed to be snowing. But it was just rain. The thing about the Strip is that it is so lit up and that it's hard for snow to have a chance to remain snow amidst all the lights. Wednesday, Packrat and I decide to walk the Strip again. Well, actually take the monorail down the Strip because it looked wet. By the time we got to the Venetian, it was coming down hard and looked like a mixture between rain and slush. I felt sorry for the gondolas outside the Venetian because they looked very very frozen and I also wondered if the water froze over, would they still have to stand tall in the gondolas?
Through the walkways of 'Venice', we heard whispers about snow though all we saw when we stepped back out was a lot of rain and even that is a bit strange for the desert. By the time we got to our next stop, which was Tiffany (yes, I have a gleam in my eye), we knew for a fact that it was closing. Tiffany was shutting down its store because it had been deemed dangerous for their staff to drive back after dark and they wanted their staff home asap. We felt bad because we were the only people in the store and they were basically waiting for us to leave. I must add at this juncture, that the Tiffany staff in Singapore have NOTHING on the staff here. Anyway, everyone was in a flurry. Apparently, it hadn't snowed like that in about 30 years and the city was not very prepared to deal with it. The freeways shut down, schools were declared shut the next day, the States only 2 snow ploughs or whatever had to be deployed, driving to LA was a No-no, as was driving to Salt Lake City, flights in were cancelled, flights out were grounded, just one big panic, one big mess.
But for us, tourists who were staying put and not going anyway, it was quite exciting. There was snow on the roads, snow on the cars, snow on the pyramid, the sphinx, the pirate ship, the Eiffel Tower, all over. The good thing about the snow was that the air was wet (I have a thing for snow air), I got to bundle up in my winter jacket and cuddle up to Packrat who was freezing because SOMEONE was too macho to bring a thicker jacket. Ok, wait, to his credit, he had a thicker jacket but in his excitement to see the snow, he ran, slipped on a patch of slush and got soaked through. Hence, the thick jacket got wet and he was freezing in a fit for Singapore offices type of jacket.
The sad thing was looking down on the Strip now, we wouldn't know that two days ago, there was chaos, panic and child like glee. It's gone back to charged, dry, cold weather. I'm praying it'll stay this way though because we leave first thing Monday morning and we cannot afford for the flights to get cancelled. I want to get home in time for Christmas with my kidlets.
Technorati Tags: Las Vegas, snow
Ondine tossed this thought in at 01:28