Last month I was lucky enough to go to Las Vegas. Not for business, for pleasure. As most of you know, I usually go once a year by myself to eat too much, drink too much, and not sleep enough.

But I want to talk more about getting to Vegas. Like most trips, mine starts at the airport.

I get there on time, like they tell us to, to avoid delays. I’m in the cattle-chute, mouse maze of a line for the ticket counter. I instantly feel intelligent because I have already given my large suitcase to the baggage people, and I have my little tiny carry-on with all my essentials so if they lose my luggage I’ll still survive the next day with my pills and underwear.

I look around and see people bringing steamer trunks, like I’ve seen in pictures of the Queen Mary back in the ‘30s, that they’re going to try to shove in to the overhead compartments.

All you hear being announced is “Please have your identification out.” Of course, the person in front of me in line can’t find their ID, can’t find their ticket, and they’re arguing with the person at the counter, insisting that they just had it. I was lucky enough to squeeze around them and get to the other person at the counter.

Now we take off our shoes. I have special shoes I wear to the airport because they slip on and slip off. I turn around, here are some young girls with amazing heels, trying to take them off, and asking why they have to take them off. Hasn’t she read a newspaper in the last few years?

In the meantime, all we’re now hearing announced is that “you must have all liquids in a clear, 3 oz. container,” and to my right is a lady yelling at the TSA person that she has this family-sized can of hairspray that she’s trying to convince them that she “needs.”

I stand there, raise my arms, they x-ray my insides. After that, I pick up my bag after they went through it because they didn’t know what my fishing reel was. I’m not angry with that, they are doing their job. Next to me is another lady trying to explain that the three bags of costume jewelry is all duty-free.

I grab my stuff, I’m happy, I walk to the gate they had listed for my flight. I go to Vegas enough to be able to walk by a gate and go, “Okay, those people are going to Vegas.” Like if you walk by a gate and see nothing but people wearing Mickey ears, you know they’re going to Orlando. You just know what your people look like.

I’m sitting by the gate and notice that these don’t look like Vegas people. I asked someone and they told me that it hadn’t been posted yet, but they’d changed my gate. It wasn’t that bad, only fifteen gates away, at least it was in the same terminal.

Remember how they used to board the plane according to rows, from back to front, to make it easier for everyone to get to their row? Now they have these things called zones. Zone one, zone, two, zone four, zone five. So the first zone that gets on puts all of their bags up front so that they don’t have to carry them all the way back to their row.

So I’m in zone five. I get there with my little bag and there’s no more room for my little bag. I look at the attendant and ask, “what do I have to do now?” She looked at me and said, “what would you like to do?” I was stunned - someone asked me a question that I could answer with what I actually desired on an airplane. She found a spot for it to go in the overhead compartment, and everything was fine.

I’m now sitting in my seat and I’m trying to imagine - I’m going through all of this, and I’m paying these people for it. When I book my trip, I always say that first class is a waste of money. But when you’re sitting on an airplane and the only vision that comes to mind with the way we’re packed in there is a slave ship, that extra hundred dollars doesn’t seem that bad.

I always take the red-eye flight when I go because I feel I’ll have more time there and more time to get ready to go. And I can sleep.

Remember when they used to feed you on airplanes? They’d come by with maybe sandwiches? The first time I went to Vegas they came by with a hot towel so you could wipe your face, and little snacks. But now you have to pay for everything. So I got to Wawa before I get on the plane and get a big sandwich.

So now I’m strapped in, finished with my late-night snack at 25,000 feet, ready to take a nap for the rest of the four hours I have left to go. I have my headsets on, I’m listening to Grover Washington, Jr. I’m rudely awakened by a laugh - did I mention I have my headsets on - a laugh that Alfred Hitchcock would have paid someone to do in half of his movies. They were clearly getting into the spirit of Las Vegas before the rest of the flight.

It’s great when you fly in to Vegas at night because you can actually see it coming closer when you look out the window.

So, we land. Can someone explain to me why people think that airplanes are the same as a bus? As soon as this plane stops, people jump up, grab their bags, things are falling on other people, and they’re standing there for 20 or 30 minutes before they can go anywhere.

I take my time getting off of a plane - so much so that sometimes the people who clean the plane are on the plane when I leave.

My advice to everybody traveling on airplanes: try to stay where you land long enough to recuperate so you can handle going through that madness again on the way back.

Thank you for your comments from last month, everybody, I look forward to talking to you next month!

- Kevin S. Nash

Photo details: Four Queens Casino & Resort, Fremont Street, Downtown Las Vegas, NV.