I'm baaaack.

I can't believe I've not been blogging for almost 6 months. I've been busy, by which you can interpret to mean "lazy" and also have had a severe case of writers block. But all of a sudden I've seen a few of my friends return to blogging, and reading their posts gave me the kick I needed. 

To catch up on my life, I'll quickly zip back to August and give a quick rundown of our trip to Reno. We've been to Reno quite a few times, but not for years and years. If we feel a yearning for a small gambling holiday, well, the packages to Vegas are just so cheap that you can hardly afford not to go there. 

However, we've both always sort of wanted to go to Reno during the Hot August Nights, which is a whole 10 days of 50's Rock n Roll; the cars, the music, the entertainment....it's like a trip back to 1950, and you do know how I have a passion for that decade. And as well, Stevens biggest "travel want" was to someday go to the Barrett-Jackson car auction, but it's almost always in Palm Springs and Scottsdale....two places where neither of us have any desire to go. 

But, this year, guess where the auction was? Yes! In Reno! And guess when it was? Yes! during the week of Hot August Nights.

When I stumbled across that on the Internet, I hollered upstairs to Steven, and he said: "Book it! Book us a trip right now!" So I did. Booked flights, rooms, and three day passes to the auction, and a rental car...all within minutes. The joys of the World Wide Web.

It was amazingly fun! Amazingly! Reno has changed a lot, the majority of the old, original casinos and hotels are gone, which is sad, they used to be so much fun, but now they've either been turned into what seems to be low income rooms, not hotels, but apartments, or boarded right up. It's a depressing sight, and when we went out walking at night, the streets were literally almost empty. We were often the only ones on a block...and this is at 9 or 10 in the evening. Needless to say, a lot of tourists are, ummm, quite elderly, and they retire to their rooms early. 

But during the day, wow, so much fun! The entire main drag was closed to regular traffic and the streets were just jammed full of show cars. Every parking spot was full and the all took turns cruising up and down. Every casino had a huge Show n' Shine in their parking lot, and every day it was full of different cars. There are only three major casinos on the strip, but there are 4 or 5 huge Vegas style ones towards the outskirts of town. A 10 minute local bus ride took us everywhere we needed to go. (We didn't get the rental car for the full week, we didn't see the need to have it in the city and to try and find parking every day when the bus service was so excellent)

Steven was so thrilled, he and every other man there were like the proverbial kids in candy stores, eyes agog at all the cars, nudging each other with knowing looks  and murmuring words about engines and clutches and horsepower and other car-ish matters. I was really happy to see him so happy. We'd had a lot of health issues and hospital stays in the few months prior to this trip, so to see him enjoying himself so much was pleasure enough for me. Seriously, it was.

As far as the eye could see....cars and cars and cars. There were bands in most of the parking lots as well, 50's music pervading the air all day and half the night (well, until 9 pm anyhow...)

Even the street food was 50's style:

We spend an awful lot of time just wandering the strip and looking at the vehicles. Every night they were gone, and the roads were washed and swept, and then every morning there was a whole different set of vehicles on display. There was something like 6,000 registered cars; where they went at night I have no idea, but they magically disappeared every evening and reappeared in different places in the morning.

During our daily wanderings we discovered that the river flows right through the city, and it's set up for picnics, tubing, swimming and relaxing. In all the times we've been to Reno, we never knew this. Or, we never walked down that way, it's just a quick 5 minute walk in the other direction...away from the casinos. 

And then....(drum roll......) The Barrett-Jackson Auction! I won't go on and on about it, but I will say it was one of the most well organized, smoothly run events I have ever been to. When you first walk in, you're in thismassive, massive space that is filled with hundreds of the most expensive, shiniest, phenomenal vehicles that I have ever seen. Incredible things that you can wander right up to and gaze upon with car-lust.

We managed to get seats very lose to the front, even though it was standing room only as you first walk in, people were coming and going all the time, so you just moved up as people left. Steven also wandered over to the staging area and spent a long time there, up close and personal with the drivers and vehicles. 

I would never have dreamed that I'd find a car show so fascinating, but it was so well run and everything moved along so quickly, that there was no time to be bored. The convention centre was attached by a skywalk to the Atlantis casino and resort, so it was easy to slip away for a quick lunch of dim sum and a speedy bit of gambling.

Here are a few more amazing car pictures. I can hardly believe that I am posting car pictures, it's very unlike me to care about the looks of a car, but these were just so beautiful.

They remind me of something from a Dick Tracy comic book.

We also did some touring around the state, but I'll write about that in the next post.