Walking. Gossip. Travel.

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  • Las Vegas – High Roller Observation Wheel (Unlimited Drink)

    Las Vegas – High Roller Observation Wheel (Unlimited Drink)

    This is the 170-metre tall Observation Wheel in Las Vegas, more formally known as the High Roller. It opened in 2014 and is the tallest ferris wheel in the world, as everything in Las Vegas has to be the biggest.

    My visit here was back in 2015 and there were some special offers on, including a ticket which included a barman and unlimited drinks. So, I accidentally got that ticket.

    There’s a little exhibition area to browse whilst waiting to board the wheel. There’s only one observation capsule that has the bar set-up, so there’s a different boarding process to the other capsules.

    This is the set-up, a barman who was friendly and welcoming, all very fitting for the United States and Las Vegas.

    The drinks set-up.

    Back in 2015, I was going through a cider stage, although I’d add that I mean decent real ciders and not Strongbow or anything. I didn’t expect that they would have a stock of scrumpy type drinks in Las Vegas, but they did have this Angry Orchard and this was a more than suitable drink to start with.

    I then switched to spirits….. The whole arrangement was all generous and well-managed, the barman was fast serving, personable and was clearly enjoying his work environment. I can think of worse places to be a barman. This meant that everyone had more drink available than they could realistically comfortably drink, unless they had a real ability to binge drink I suppose.

     

    Some photos above of the wheel itself.

     

    And some photos of the views. Unfortunately, the quality of these isn’t great as these were from my phone camera back in 2015 and Google Photos has squished the image a little.

    As an observation wheel, it went smoothly and quickly, although perhaps the alcohol helped with that process. There were views over the entirety of Las Vegas, and into the desert beyond. There weren’t too many people in the capsule and everyone there was well mannered, so the environment was all rather amenable. Very lovely.

  • Las Vegas – Carl’s Jr

    Las Vegas – Carl’s Jr

    It took me until 2015 to visit a Carl’s Jr, one of the largest fast-food chains in the United States. They were founded in the 1940s and the Jr. bit of their name is because the owners had already established Carl’s Drive-In Barbecue restaurant, and this new venture was something a little smaller. They started their new venture in Anaheim, which is one of the few parts of Los Angeles I haven’t been to, with the exception of sitting on board a coach in the coach station going between LA and Las Vegas. But I don’t think that counts.

    The chain’s first expansion outside of California was to Las Vegas, and although it was in a different location within the city, it’s where I visited them in Sin City. Today, the chain also has a sister company, called Hardee’s, which is to all intents and purposes pretty much the same.

    I’m not entirely sure about the burgers here, as in, they were fine, but they tasted pretty much the same as Burger King, so there’s little unique about them. There’s something about chains like Five Guys, White Castle and In-n-Out that allows their burgers to have a taste that is pretty distinctive to them. The fries are much better, crispy, firm, not greasy and sufficiently salty. Like nearly everywhere in the United States, the service was efficient and friendly, with the restaurant being clean and organised.

    So, it’s all entirely acceptable, but as so often, there might be better independently-run burger restaurants available…….

  • Las Vegas – An Unfortunate Incident

    Las Vegas – An Unfortunate Incident

    This is Fremont Street, in downtown Las Vegas, back in 2015. It’s a street which is neither understated nor quiet, with much going on along its now pedestrianised length. And perhaps, sometimes people forget what is the made-up entertainment of Las Vegas and what is reality.

    Seeing a crowd, and liking drama, I had to interfere quickly to see what was going on. What was actually happening is that someone was standing on a tall building nearby and threatening to jump. The emergency services were already there in force and were trying to contain the situation.

    Now, I’m not really into human suffering, blood and terror, so I decided to take a photo only of the people taking photos and then I left. To go to Banger Brewing actually, but that’s a different matter. I certainly didn’t want to hear the crowd’s reactions to every twist and turn of this drama, let alone witness something even more dreadful. I have no idea what the outcome was, but I’m still moderately surprised by just how many people wanted to watch this unfold.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Canterbury Story

    Defined as “a long round-about tale”, this has an obvious source which is from the long, tedious and winding stories of the fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales. I’ve just denigrated what is perhaps one of the most important medieval books, but they are a bit long…. There’s a possibility that it didn’t derive from Chaucer’s book, but instead from pilgrims on their way to Canterbury on a pilgrimage when they told elaborate and excessively long stories. But, that’s an excusable thing to do to pass the time.

  • What’s My Line and Colonel Sanders

    What’s My Line and Colonel Sanders

    I’ve been watching some of the old US episodes of What’s My Line, and this is certainly my favourite so far…. Filmed in 1963, Sanders became much better known just a couple of years later.

     

  • Las Vegas – Viva Vision

    Las Vegas – Viva Vision

    I still haven’t found the photos that I was looking for, but I’ve found these, from 2015. I’ve worked my way around many hotels in Las Vegas over the years, but my first visit was to downtown Las Vegas and the shuttle dropped me off at my hotel just as the light display started.

    And, as light displays go, this was very Las Vegas. Covering a huge area that once had over 2 million lightbulbs and has since been replaced with 12 million LED lamps, it’s an audio-visual experience that is as understated as Las Vegas.

    I have better photos of this, but as these are the ones I’ve found, they’ll do.

    And here’s a video of what it can look like, with the show changing frequently. They’ve upgraded the set-up over the last year, so I’ll need to go back to Las Vegas yet again to check it out.

  • LDWA 100 – Training Walk 1

    LDWA 100 – Training Walk 1

    This walk was socially distanced….. And is the first walk in preparation for the 2021 LDWA 100. But isn’t an LDWA walk in itself, because these have all been suspended until the troubles are over.

    WALK NUMBER: 1 (Norwich to Caistor St. Edmunds)

    DISTANCE COVERED: 12 miles

    NUMBER OF NATHAN’S FRIENDS WE “ACCIDENTALLY” BUMP INTO: 1

    SUFFICIENT BEER CONSUMED: Yes

    PUBS VISITED: 1 (Artichoke, Norwich, for takeaway beer)

    WEATHER CONDITIONS: Sunny (until it got dark, when it wasn’t sunny)

    ATTACKED BY ANIMALS: No

    NUMBER OF SNAKES SEEN: 0

    So, with just about 12 months to go, Nathan and I have managed to begin walk training in a limited manner given the current restrictions on life. Armed with beer, and a desire not to sit in a city-centre park looking like two alcoholics, we headed to the outskirts of Norwich to a socially distanced bench I saw earlier in the week.

    This giant cow thing was fortunately safely distanced from us by a barbed-wire fence. I suspect that it might have charged us otherwise, you can see it getting ready to attack.

    Our walk went through near Trowse to Arminghall Henge, where we tried to interpret the lumps in the ground of this important heritage site whilst realising I’ve forgotten all the knowledge that I once had about it. Although, I have to confess, I was hardly Mick Aston even at my most well-read on the site.

    From then, we diverted into Arminghall to look at some history (which I had mostly forgotten) and then went to connect back into the Boudicca Way. Now, due to circumstances entirely out of my control, I got lost. This was caused by a man and his two sons (I assume they were his two sons, although it doesn’t really much matter) who politely said hello. I turned off the path as I thought that was the turning I wanted, but it wasn’t. As I’m British and incapable of doing anything like going back, we ploughed off the wrong way so the man didn’t think we were idiots.

    Which meant we never found the socially distanced bench I wanted, but that was fine, we had a spirit of exploration and all that. I heard a little bit of polite muttering from Nathan that he was carrying all this heavy beer and wondering when we would be drinking it. However, after getting marginally lost twice more, we reached a safe destination soon enough. Actually, I did wonder why he didn’t question why he was carrying all the beer. But I digress.

    A path.

    Drinking in a field, although I admit that there are likely much classier locations. Anyway, it didn’t rain and there were no wild animals roaming, so it sufficed. Fortunately, I keep plastic cups and KFC cups in permanent stock, so we had the appropriate drinking vessels. The beer was acquired from the Artichoke, which I still think has the best selection of craft beers in Norwich and they haven’t been lowering their standards during the current times.

    Back to our selection, I will confess, beer poured into milk cartons doesn’t look good. But, it was the rather lovely Dumbo the Elephant from Three Hills Brewing, and thanks to the brewery for toasting my Untapped ‘review’ within a few minutes.

    Beer. The one on the right is Neopolitan Ice Cream and 7.2% and my highly developed palate (well, that’s what I call it) managed to miss most of the flavours until Nathan mentioned what they actually were. I have discovered that I really need a chicken bake to help absorb the flavours to help me recognise them. Not long now though before that treat comes back into my life.

    At this point, it transpired that Nathan had paid someone from where he works to randomly walk by us and tell me how good Nathan is at his job. He must think I’m an idiot if he thinks that this is some event that naturally took place without being staged. Anyway, I pretended I believed him.

    I’m not really a tree expert, but I’m prepared to say with some considerable confidence that I think this tree is dead.

    Since my last visit to Caistor St. Edmund I had downloaded the official app to the site, which has an augmented reality (AR) option to overlay what the Roman town might once have looked like. The AR implementation wasn’t perfect, but it was still useful and this is a screenshot of what I could see.

           

    Photos of Caistor St. Edmund, around two thousand years ago, there would have been a town in the above locations.

    I got very close to this sheep (within around 30 feet), which was enormously brave, to take this photo. I was quite pleased with the sheep in this field, they kept their distance and none of them attempted to attack me. Although, I was trying to look quite rugged, so that might have frightened them.

    Even the big hole they’re digging, which I assume is a quarry rather than someone paying for a huge hole, looks moderately beautiful.

    Now, those people who are quite good at noticing things might wonder why we’re walking in the near dark. This was a mistake, caused by misjudging how long we’d be drinking beer for. I think we allocated around 20 minutes for this, but miscalculated slightly and spent three hours on a bench. But, there’s no point ruining a good walk by not spending enough time drinking beer, so on reflection, we did the right thing.

    So, that’s the first walk over, a relatively short distance, we’ll be doing a longer distance over the next few days. Frankly, we’re currently very confident about the LDWA 100 next year, as what could possibly go wrong?

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Fifty-Nine

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Fifty-Nine

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Cannikin

    This word is described by the dictionary as a “small can”, and in the criminal fraternity, it means the plague. The word comes from the sixteenth century Dutch word ‘kanneken’ which now means cannon, but I think had a different meaning back then that was something like ‘can’ or ‘bucket’.

    The above image shows in red the capitalised version of Cannikin, the blue its lower case. And, there was a surge in usage of the word in the early 1970s. This was because Project Cannikin was a large underground nuclear weapons test, given the fluffy name of Cannikin, but it was something much more explosive than a small can, quite literally. Rather than it being a little can, the test involved 400 tonnes of equipment and a shaft that was nearly 2,000 metres deep. The test was controversial because there were fears of earthquakes and tsunamis, and the concern generated by this is what led to the creation of the Greenpeace pressure group.

  • Las Vegas – Brain Health Twisted Building

    Las Vegas – Brain Health Twisted Building

    I took the above photos in 2015 and I think I have some more recent ones which are of a better quality, but since this isn’t a photo competition these can do. The building, located at 888 W. Bonneville Avenue, is officially named the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and it opened in May 2010. The $70 million building certainly makes a design statement and was designed by Frank Gehry, noted for his work on the Guggenheim Museum.

    The building behind the intriguing frontage is a fully functional health building that investigates brain illnesses, particularly in relation to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntingtons and Multiple Sclerosis. As a work of art though, I think it’s a quite magnificent building.

  • Las Vegas – Las Vegas Sign

    Las Vegas – Las Vegas Sign

    I may not have yet been entirely successful in my hunt for my photos of San Francisco, but I’ve found another tranche of photos from Las Vegas that I’d forgotten about.

    The Las Vegas sign, located at the southern end of Las Vegas, near McCarran Airport. On this point, I’m aware that most of Las Vegas isn’t in Las Vegas, it’s in the unincorporated town of Paradise, but that’s for another post. This sign has been here since 1959 and it was designed by Betty Willis (1923-2015) who didn’t copyright the sign and instead gave it to the city.

    As the decades went by, this sign became more iconic and more tourists wanted to look at it. This was a problem, as the sign was in the middle of a road and if I’m being honest, the Americans do sometimes forget about pedestrians in their pursuit of new roads to build. But, in 2008 the authorities thought something should be done and they made it easier to get to the sign with the installation of a traffic crossing and a nearby bus stop. This made it even more popular and it has now become a safe site to visit for tourists, and many of them do.

    The reverse of the sign.

    I always look awkward in photos, it’s better when I stand much further away and even better when I stand the other side of the camera.

    The sign is visible early on in this video from the 1960s.