Since Kevin had driven late into the night and Jed had awoken early in the morning feeling fresh, Jed decided to go ahead and take the wheel and finish out the drive to Las Vegas. Kevin, for the first time, was able to sleep in back on the bed while somebody stayed awake and drove! When we started to near the Hoover Dam, something Branic, Kevin, and I have never seen, we were stopped at a security checkpoint just a few miles away and the RV was boarded. The man who boarded the RV wrote on paper, “Homeland Security. I need you to open all compartments.”

Of course, Jed and Branic, who were awake at the time, complied and took the guy on a tour around our RV. Naturally, we passed the inspection, and continued on before parking at the Hoover Dam and taking a look around. It was only 8 a.m., and since it is Sunday as well, the Dam was nearly deserted and we were able to take our time and peacefully look around the place. Jed, the only one of the four of us who had been to the dam before, was shocked when he saw what the water level was. It was just a few short years ago, explained Jed, when the water was several feet higher. You can see through residue on the dam that the water levels have slowly and consistently dropped over the years since it has opened. I enjoyed seeing the world’s largest dam, built as a part of the CCC during the Great Depression. Our stop was brief, almost thirty minutes, since the visitor’s center hadn’t even opened yet. We then finished out the thirty minute drive to the Smoke Ranch clubhouse in Las Vegas where there would be a gathering.

There, more than 120 people packed in a room designed for what looked like 60, and the population was concentrated to retired senior citizens. The make up of the Deaf community is the same throughout all of Las Vegas, as there are not many young Deaf people who live in the city. We received a very warm welcome there, and were each given a Las Vegas t-shirt to commemorate our stop there. A hilarious comic about traveling through Las Vegas adorned our huge cake, and Sprint representative Todd Bader was there to provide refreshments for the whole event. He also gave a presentation on new technological strides Sprint has made, including its Cap-Tel phone which allows hearing impaired users to talk and listen on the phone like normal, but read captions which show what the other user is saying. The audience was extremely engrossed in this new phone, and they flooded Todd with questions afterwards. I noticed that the Las Vegas community is a very tech-savvy one, and very accommodating to new technology. After the event was finished, Kevin invited me and Branic to his mother’s home to swim and relax in the hot tub. Both Jed and Kevin’s parents live in Las Vegas, incidentally, and while the three of us were cooling off in the pool, Jed went home to mom and dad.

We needed to meet at 6 tonight, because Todd Bader wanted to treat all of us to dinner on the strip. We wanted to eat at ESPN Zone in the New York New York hotel, mainly because the Lakers and Timberwolves were playing, but of course, every single person in Las Vegas wanted to see the game as well. We couldn’t get in at all, albeit a three-hour wait, so we decided to find another place to eat. We went across the street to Smith & Wollensky’s, a steak house and one that boasts what was recently voted the best steak in Las Vegas. My t-bone was so moist, its texture reminded me of cotton candy. The steak practically melted in my mouth and I had never had a steak like this one in my entire life. Each of us savored every single bite, and engaged in a good, lengthy conversation with Todd in order to put off finishing our excellent meal. All four of us want to thank you, Todd, for taking us out to such a fantastic restaurant and giving us a great break from fast food and meals on the RV.

Kevin wanted to go to the Palms after dinner and try his luck in the casinos. Branic decided to join him while I tagged along with Jed to see an old friend of his from when he lived in Las Vegas a few years ago. Little did Jed and I know that soon we would see something that we would not forget for a long time. After Jed caught up with his friend for a while, Jed and I got in his dad’s pick up truck which he had borrowed for the night, and started to get ready to leave. Jed’s friend was being courteous by walking us to the car, and while Jed and his friend were chatting with each other, while I was busy fiddling with my Sidekick. Before I knew it, Jed was panically trying to start the car and get out of the apartment complex. Jed later told me that a policeman had hurriedly approached the two yelling something, but when he found out that we were Deaf, he gestured “house, house” quickly. Jed’s friend ran back in his home and Jed started the car and tried to get out of the area before we were caught in the middle of something serious.

I thought Jed was joking around in his hurry to leave before two cops with semi-assault rifles approached us as we were exiting the premises and ordered the car to stop. I thought no big deal of it until Jed motioned to the cops that we were Deaf. A split second later, the cop on my side of the door had thrown up his gun and aimed it inches away from my head. I was shook up by the initial draw of the gun, and was confused as to why they were pointing a gun at us. I looked behind myself to get a better bearing of what was going on, and the first thing I saw was two more cops running toward the truck, weapons drawn. I looked back to the front, and even more police were racing into position, surrounding the truck with guns. I had never seen so many guns in my life, and it was shocking for me to see all of them pointed at me and Jed. The entire time, Jed was talking to a policeman on his side of the window, and the cop insisted on looking into the back. By this time, I saw two more policemen running behind some apartment buildings away from the pickup and in another direction. It hit me that the police must be after a fugitive, and by the time the policeman had looked in the back of the truck and saw it was empty, all the raised guns were dropped, and we were allowed to go on our way. When we drove outside the fence, we saw an entire force of police cars and news vans, and Jed and I looked at each other in disbelief. We happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the police was chasing a suspect, obviously armed and very dangerous, and we got caught up in something that belonged on cops.

Driving away, I was still soothing my nerves which had jumped with so many rifles and pistols pointed at me, when Jed broke out in laughter.

“Welcome to Las Vegas,” he said.