The first road trip you simply have to do from LA, by law, is to Las Vegas. How can you not? Its so close. In that American way of being close on a really big map but hundreds of miles of endless driving to actually get there. Though its worth it. Even though I don’t gamble. Not really, I’ll stick a few quid into a slot machine, you just have to, compulsory, but actual gamblin’? Naah. But we would go to Vegas for a weekend to save money. It worked like this.

In the LA Times there were always offers to entice people to Vegas. If you had a hotel with 9,000 rooms in it, you’d want a few bods kickin’ round. And the hotel rooms they’ll gladly give away, so they can make their real money from the gambling. So they offer ‘room at the Flamingo Hilton, $20 a night!!!’. And five of us go. One room. The rooms are massive, several double beds and we only used to sleep a bit anyway. And worked out that if you change, say, another 20 dollars into quarters and sit at a machine, they keep bringing you drinks. Free, obvs. In the UK its illegal to ply gamblers with free booze, but over there?? So we put a few bucks in a blackjack machine, and you win and you lose and you win, and after 3 hours you’re either ahead $2.50 or down $3.64. And you’re blind drunk from the endless margaritas, beers, JD & cokes, whatever. You then take your money to the ‘all you can eat’ buffets that all the hotels do, and pig out all you need. Fill a bag. Fill your car. And best of all, Vegas is in the desert. Always hot, always sunny. So you spend the day getting over your hangover at a massive pool in glorious climate.

Me mate Paul had worked for a car hire franchise. And despite what you think, the car that you pick up in LA and drop off in San Francisco is not always just part of some great global ‘stock’ which all ‘balances out in the end’, that ain’t the case. Paul’s Dollar Car franchise, on Hollywood Boulevard, was one of 3 privately owned by one guy. Who owned all their stock. So when some bastard from Texas chose to drop his Chevy rental in San Francisco or Palm Springs, or even Vegas, to fly home from there, those cars needed to be collected and returned to base. And when Paul left Dollar he stayed friendly with the owner and was ‘on a list’ of people to call up when cars needed collecting. And off we’d go, to some great but not too far destination. Best of all, Byron, the owner, had a plane that he flew. ‘Just’ a twin engine turbo-prop but still a really cool, and pretty useful way of getting relatively long distances quickly. So along I’d tag to pick up various cars (love cars) from various places (love places) whenever schedules and needs aligned.

We did San Francisco, we did Palm Springs, we did lots of California. Free ride there, all the tourist shit you can do in a day/2 days, free wheels back.

But if there was anything better than traveling and other people’s American cars, it was, to a 25-year-old me, women. And the best place in the world, so it seemed, to meet and acquire such things was at the pool at our apartment building on good ole Hollywood Boulevard. The building wasn’t called ‘Decadence Central’, nor ‘If this is Hell then that’s where I wanna live’, but it should have been.

Happy Monday

A xxxx