Just Another Day in the Office
Vegas, Baby, I thought as I boarded the plane in Denver. Ticket in hand, camera in tow, and a bag full of rope, draws, and clean undies in the checked baggage compartment below, I was ready for the sunny sandstone and the hordes of adoring readers I’d encounter while repping the mag at the fifth annual Red Rock Rendezvous; March 28-30 — one of the biggest, most laid back climber events of the year.

I planned on skipping the casinos cause there’s nothing less fun to me than losing money playing a game I don’t understand, but everything else Vegas is famous for was on the agenda. Well, not the hookers, of course (I have a girlfriend)... and also not the nightlife (no dancing with sequin-clad divas on the elevated glass patio of Ghost Bar and doing body shots off the torsos of hammered spring breakers, I promised myself—not this time). But everything else.

Vegas reality set in early when I squeezed into my seat on the fully-booked Frontier Airlines plane next to a woman so large that we could not put the armrest down between us. I donned my headphones and prepared to zone out into my own private dance party when I realized my iPod was not charged. The blinking battery icon sent my heart into the baggage compartment below deck, where it joined my undies. With the armrest wedged in the up position I could not even plug my phones into the onboard music system. I wore them anyway, in an attempt to block the plane sounds, but the tactic, along with the sanctity of my personal bubble of space, was foiled by my neighbor’s snores.