The Renée Review

October 23, 2009

Here we go!  I got up early, had an opportunity to hug Marlo goodbye and start the packing process.

The pressure to be out the door at a certain time marginally exists when you fly yourselves.  In good weather, it can stray a bit one-way or the other.  If an incoming weather front must be avoided, we hustle to either beat the weather or bag the flight.

Today looked like great flying weather.  We left the house at 10:15AM for Rocky Mountain Metro Airport and arrived at our hangar.

We fueled up, pre-flighted and took off. Paul flew us in our Cirrus SR22 http://cirrusaircraft.com/sr22/ aircraft.

Unfortunately, the pickings over the Rocky Mountains were slim.  There were numerous clouds and turbulence that caused an extra long journey.

Typically, after we cross the Rocky Mountains, Paul keeps the plane at around 10 to 12 thousand feet.  From that altitude we catch great scenery and it’s usually very pleasant flying. 

Because of the crazy turbulence, our path took us to an altitude of 16,500 feet and we had to use oxygen for a long portion of our journey, I hate using oxygen.  Meanwhile, the scenery was still great.

We finally landed 3½ hours later, at Henderson Airport.  While our journey was long, the overall flight experience was lovely. 

Sometimes air traffic control vector the small aircraft over McCarran International Airport.  I hate going right over the main airport, it feels really dangerous with all of the big planes coming and going.  Surprisingly, this type of vectoring is typical. 

Today, air traffic control gave us a good vector around McCarran.  We landed with the strip directly in front of us.  Nice.

Henderson airport has really gotten huge!  The FBO (Fixed Base Operations) where private aircraft land and pilots flight plan, arrange for parking, pay for fuel etc. was unrecognizable.  They’ve even built a new runway since our last landing here.

My Dad and Step Mother Sue were waiting at the FBO to pick us up and were given a ride out to the tarmac.  We met, hugged and were glad to see one another.  The driver helped us gather our luggage and once Paul finished replacing the 49 gallons of fuel we burned, we went to their terminal building.

The fuel prices were amazingly good - $4.69 a gallon!  Awesome – I think our fuel price at Rocky Mountain Metro was $5.99.  This makes our one-way flight costs $293.51.  This of course doesn’t factor in annual maintenance, hangar fees, professional fees, insurance or the parking fees at Henderson, but we would have spent more money and burned more fuel driving. 

The next leg will be cheaper since the fuel costs were less.  Paul will be flying to Burbank while I go commercial back to Denver.  Fuel in Burbank is probably $6.99 a gallon.  It’s amazing how much fuel can fluctuate from airport to airport.

They got us to our hotel (Planet Hollywood) and stuck with us to see our mutual friends Larry and Simine Tepper who also flew in from Boulder for the U2 weekend in Vegas.

We all had an early dinner at Yolos Mexican Restaurant in the Planet Hollywood complex.  The food was absolutely marvelous! I was surprised at how good the food actually was. I had crab cakes with mango chutney salsa and then street tacos with grilled mahi mahi in sweet corn tortillas.  A delicious mango chipotle sauce enhanced this dish.  I was super starving, so this was a delightful and truly appreciated experience!

Dad and Sue were so gracious.  They loaned us their car.  Actually, they loaned us the nicer of their two cars so we could get around comfortably without having to use a taxi.  How generous of them!

We said goodbye to Dad and Sue and hustled to get ourselves together for the concert.  After a brief 20 minutes of room time, we were in the car on our way to the Sam Boyd Stadium where 70,000 people were headed for the sold out concert.

The 9-mile journey from Planet Hollywood took an hour and 20 minutes, but with our good friends for company, we managed to keep our sanity. 

After a successful parking job, we made our way into the stadium. 

When we arrived at our section, I could hardly believe my eyes.  First of all, our seats were excellent – but I knew that before going in. 

The big surprise was the stage!  This stage, which I had viewed as a graphic line drawing during seat selection, was far more elaborate than I had imagined.

It was an amazing, futuristic structure resembling a space ship with the anatomic features of a King Crab. 

The circular stage was suspended between 4 enormous spiny crab legs.  The legs and head of the crab structure had a stretched canvas skinning the frame and were knobby giving the illusion of a hard outer shell.

The canvas was similar to that of DIA’s architectural roofing, which spans the main terminal building and emulates the mountains. 

The entire frame of the crab changed colors depending on the lighting focused on the canvas skin.

The structure was massive and the legs supported numerous platforms at various levels.  The platforms lived inside the incline of each leg providing spaces for lighting, camera rigging, speakers, etc.

The exterior sides housed the strobe lights, disco lights; colorizing lights, smoke machines, etc.   

If I were asked to guess the girth of these legs, I’d say they were at least 30 feet in diameter at the base and grew from there. 

NPR did an entire segment on the custom built staging.  The structure takes a solid two days to dismantle and a solid two days to build. 

The tour hasn’t been in any city for more than one night.  They were in Arizona last night and are off to Pasadena tomorrow, soooooo I have to wonder how many of these amazing stages they undoubtedly own?  This also means they have numerous crew managing several sites simultaneously.

AMAZING!

The head of the crab sported a tower.  The tower is a needle and was adorned with an enormous disco ball.

The sides of the tower are vented and produce smoke. 

The ball, when lit with the smoke in the background, turned the entire outdoor stadium into a disco palladium.

Hanging from the thick upper portion, below the head, was an accordion like jumbo-tron in circle vision. Think of it like the tube from the mother ship, extending down from central command. 

The jumbo-tron could move as a single unit up and down or expand in a mesh shaped cone toward the stage. 

Remember – this visual feast wasn’t even the main attraction.

The Black Eyed Peas opened at 7:30PM – only 30 minutes delayed and put on an energy filled riotous show.

The group has been together since 1995 and has their act together in a big way.  They were humble, thanking the audience for showing up early to see them.

They also joked that when they got this gig “it was like – hey, we’re opening for U2!” 

Then when they started playing the gig, “it was like, hey – everyone’s coming to SEE -U2-?!?”

They admitted that they had never played a stage like this anywhere in their careers and that it was awesome to be doing this tour.  Fergie was of course marvelous.

The group was dressed in black.  Sequins and lights adorned much of their stage wear and had the tailoring styles of a futuristic Yellow Submarine era Beatles meets Devo. 

Large sunglasses and oddly coiffed hair finished the look.  They totally rocked the crowd!  I need to purchase more of their music. 

After an hour + performance, The Black Eyed Peas left the stage and we had an opportunity to prepare ourselves for the main event.

The last time we were in Vegas was August of 08 and flew commercial air.  We purchased commercial tickets then because we couldn’t risk bad weather and needed to be in Vegas for the wedding of my ½ sister Katie.