Vegas x 2, an Accident and a Wedding

Vegas Twice
My Aunts Luz and Aida from Hawaii were in town for their birthdays. Of course since it was their birthdays, they HAD to try their luck at Vegas! They had planned to go to Vegas twice. The first week was for Aunt Luz's birthday and the following week for Aunt Aida's. They did not want to "dilute" their luck by combining their birthdays in one trip! So My mom and I accompanied them (by accompanied, I mean drive them) to Vegas.
As usual, Aunt Luz started winning as soon as we got there. She has always been very lucky at Vegas. I don't think I know of a time when she did not come out a winner. Some winnings were bigger than others but she always left Vegas a winner.
On an earlier trip a few years back, Aunt Luz saw me checking this bike out which was the grand prize atop a bank of slot machines. She told me that "we" were going to try to win the bike! Before I knew it she chose two machines and slipped a $100 in each on them. She said that we either win the bike or lose it all! We were playing for a good 20 minutes when the lights on my machine started flashing and bells rang. No, we did not win the bike but we came VERY close to it! I had to ask her if we should keep playing until we "won the bike or lost it all" and without batting an eye, she said, "no, I think you should take the money!"


I guess either no one won the bike or they just opted for the money. There is another bike on top of a different bank of slot machines now.


Here are the slot machine trio!


As it turned out my aunts qualified to be entered in a slot machine tournament.




Unfortunately, they didn't do too well but they had a lot of fun!
We were there from Wednesday and left Friday morning.

Vegas Drop off and accident

Their second trip to Vegas was only a drop off for me. The plan was a turn-around drop off on Tuesday for me and an uncle would bring them back Friday. The trip to Vegas went off without a hitch, we were even ahead of schedule. We got to Las Vegas Hilton just before 6:30pm. I still had time to hit a buffet for dinner before heading back! As long as I left before 8pm, I would be alright.
On the way back to Los Angeles, I pretty much had the freeway all to myself. Around 10:0pm a half hour past Baker, my car hit something big. It happened so fast that I still have no idea what it was that I hit. The water emptied out of my radiator so fast that by the time I pulled over the engine was already conking out.
So there I was 40 miles from Barstow, in the dark, intermittent cell phone reception, and no clue as to what to tell AAA where I was located! I ended up walking 200 feet to the next sign using my cell phone as my only source of light (did I mention it was dark?) in order to get a reference to tell AAA. The tow truck took about an hour to get to me.
Thanks to Berda, Kathy and Stephanie for keeping me company (calls and text) while I waited. Celia, Jim and Wonton then came to the rescue and picked me up at Barstow, by the time they dropped me off at home (with a little detour to Jim the Donut Man for some donuts) it was already 5am.

:::UPDATE:::
My car is still at the shop in Barstow being fixed. The insurance company said that it is repairable so they are going to replace the radiator and repair the head cylinder. I don't think that it will be as reliable as it was. The car already had 140,000+ miles on it and was still going strong but now with this I'm afraid that I will not reach the 200,000+ miles I was hoping to get with it. I think I may have to start looking to trade it in soon.