Sweet Lord, deliver us from idiots.
From
here
LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- There's lazy, and then there's Las Vegas lazy.
In increasing numbers, Las Vegas tourists exhausted by the four miles of gluttony laid out before them are getting around on electric "mobility scooters."
Don't think trendy Vespa motorbikes. Think updated wheelchair.
Forking over about $40 a day and their pride, perfectly healthy tourists are cruising around Las Vegas casinos in transportation intended for the infirm.
You don't have to take a step. You don't even have to put your drink down.
"It was all the walking," 27-year-old Simon Lezama said on his red Merits Pioneer 3. Lezama, a trim and fit-looking restaurant manager from Odessa, Texas, rented it on Day 3 of his five-day vacation, "and now I can drink and drive, be responsible and save my feet."
Now I've been to Las Vegas a few times. And the super casinos, congested sidewalks, and high heat do make getting around on foot hard. But until a doctor tells me I have to, I am not getting on one of those scooters.
On our last trip I must have walked five miles one day. I thought my feet would fall off, assuming they didn't burn up from the heat of the sidewalk.
Can you imagine what it would look like if a majority of the tourists did this?
I can picture a buffet-stuffed, drunken 50-scooter-rider pile-up in the near future. That might be worth a trip to Las Vegas to see...
I've been to Vegas recently myself, and along the Strip. I don't recall any fleets of Rascals and Hoverounds scooting along the sidewalks -- but there are a lot of two-legged blimps who look like they're headed into the scooter demographic. Eating a lot along the Strip is also likely to put you there in due course: it's easiest to find whitebread food right along there. The rest of Vegas looks like Fast Food Nation, too -- every national and most regional eatery chains are represented in that city. Next time I go, sometime in June, I'm looking for eateries that aren't mass-produced. I want food that's better for me.
Next time I'm in Vegas (late August) I will be staying at the Luxor. Or so I'm told. Anyway, she wants a rental car because of all the distance and her health. I see a chance to save money (for blackjack, natch) by getting her a scooter.
Thanks Rich!
PS I am SO gonna get killed for this!
I can picture a buffet-stuffed, drunken 50-scooter-rider pile-up in...
It's always a good day when you get to write that.
Scooters are great for those who need them. Those who are just lazy deserve to be driven off a cliff in one. But, you never know if they really need them or not, so I guess you just have to assume they do. Or assume they don't and put metal bars in the spokes as they go by (do scooters have spokes?)
If you believe the commercials, these folks aren't tired from walking, but from the drunken sexcapades. Wow, I've walked bowlegged after sex, but never needed a wheelchair. Maybe I am not doing something right??? LOL
sounds like a great activity to liven up those long casino nights.
Senior tipping.
Senior tipping.
I love it. Sort of like cow tipping in days of the old.
Maybe it will come to the point that casinos demand that users hang handicap placards from the handlebars so that they can deny service to the merely lazy.
It's a tough call, since some handicapped do not apply for placards.
I'm going to Vegas in September, so I'll be on the lookout for this.
what about kiosks renting Segways up and down the strip? Shit, having trekked that thing up and down several times, I'd go for that. Too dangerous, I suppose. But if you ever go to LV, the Number One thing you need to bring is good walking shoes. 'struth!
Cloud's right: the Strip is long, and it's all concrete. Light hikers would not be out of the question, and pack along a liter of water and a broadbrimmed hat too. Las Vegas summer sun is no joke.
Something I didn't see was quadricycles built for two plus shopping plunder. ?? Maybe they don't mix so well with Highway 15 and its frontage roads, which is pretty much how automobiles negotiate the Strip.
what about kiosks renting Segways up and down the strip? Shit, having trekked that thing up and down several times, I'd go for that. Too dangerous, I suppose. But if you ever go to LV, the Number One thing you need to bring is good walking shoes. 'struth!
Number one on my list is to have a new pair of walking shoes before I go back. Definitely with enough cushion to take the pavement pounding. About the only good think is that there is always an air conditioned space a step away.
I'm surprised people don't go into shock stepping from a 105 degree sidewalk into a 65 degree casino.
Good way to get shot.
Teens don't consider risks. They go for the fun.
Not smart ones. The smart ones watch the fools drive off the cliff with their jacket caught on the door handle.
Going to Vegas tomorrow morning -- will look for scooters.
Good way to get shot.
Tipping cows? Can cows legally own firearms now? Kidding, I kid! ;)
Tipping cows? Can cows legally own firearms now? Kidding, I kid! ;)
Kidding or not, legal schmegal, it's their natural right.
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Just got back from Vegas; did not prowl the Strip proper, but did some poking around its peripheries.
The Vegas Hilton has a really fun Star Trek themed, uh, enterprise. (ba dum bump) A wonderful place to be fannish. You've got a couple of simulator rides themed on Next Gen and Voyager -- Klingons on one, Borg on the other -- and a pricey restaurant that will serve you Romulan -- um, okay, it's not an Ale but a bright blue Pilsner -- and some major serves-four multishot mixed drinks that arrive in what looks like a goldfish bowl, and many supper dishes none of which are Swedish meatballs. It's called Quark's Place.
Strolling costumed Klingons, Borg, and Ferenghi add to the fun, chatting the clientele up in character, while people in Federation uniforms run the simulator rides and admonish the riders to quit playing with the control buttons "unless and until the in-cabin controls have been disabled..." We see every kind of comedy except Borg humor -- which is doubtless something like multiplex-channel punning.
The only guy I saw in a scooter was a middle-aged double amputee.
Now, the crowd at the funpark end of Vegas does constitute a walking, milling cautionary exhibit of bad habits which will in due course put a lot of them on scooters -- the rolling wounded anyway, rather than the ones permanently put away by a fatal heart attack -- but when they toddle back to wherever they came from and return to seriousness, there's still the hope they'll take up jogging and eating their vegetables.
Damnm, UG, I'd bet that scooter guy was Ferenghi. He probably was faking it, too.