Memory Problems in Utah

I can’t quite say it’s a regret that I never explored the American West outside California when I was younger, but in hindsight it seems like, for me, there could have been more viable/interesting options than moving to the seemingly unforgiving Bay Area from ’03 — ’04. When I was nearing the end of college in ‘99, it was Denver I was thinking of, Kerouac’s Denver of Cody Pomeroy and his pool hall adventures of Larimer Street (in 2015 I finally made it to Larimer Street and had breakfast at a hipster place). I never pulled the trigger on Denver after college. I ended up falling in long distance love with northern California and then moving there. More on that another time.

I even only made it to Las Vegas for the first time last fall. I was pleasantly dazzled by the banks of blinking slot machines in the airport terminal and once outside resolutely stood in the wrong place for my brother-in-law Jim to pick me up until finally the curbside limo attendants insisted on telling me the right place to go, which turned out to be very, very far away from where I’d been waiting.

A piece of Lake Mead or the Colorado River. Not sure now. I flew Southwest. At the time of the pic I was sure about what I was looking at.

Once I found him and his car, we did an awful lot of fast-paced freeway driving to get anywhere. Come to think of it, Jim is a lot like Cody Pomeroy in a way: he can really whip a Subaru through both freeway traffic and remote mountain passes while keeping up a steady stream of talk. I was bemused by Las Vegas…