Let's Get Distracted and Lonely in Las Vegas

Detachment is often understood as letting loose of what is attractive. But it sometimes also requires letting go of what is repulsive.

— Henri Nouwen

I am fleeing distraction by flying to the most distracted city in the world.

I have a strange relationship with Las Vegas. Including BiGTRiP V, I’ve now been to Vegas five times, and it’s never a place where I want to spend an extended amount of time. It’s loud, it’s bright, it's ridiculous; in many places, obscene.

And it’s always hot, no matter when you visit. Las Vegas in mid-August is an ungodly level of hot. That heavy heat where every step feels twice as belabored, like you’re walking through Jupiter.

Yet something about Las Vegas is also weirdly appealing. Something unexplainable in me wants to be immersed in this spectacle of a city for about 24 hours every couple of years. When I started planning BiGTRiP V and this national parks tour across Utah, I knew I'd have to fly into nearby Vegas.

And something in my soul leapt with a little delight. Vegas would be my starting and ending point for BiGTRiP V, hardly 48 hours there, and this felt like just the right amount of time for a sugar rush on either side of Utah's dusty wilderness next door.

Flying into Las Vegas is an experience. You look out the window for miles and miles, hundreds maybe, with no signs of life. It's just rock and desert in a sprawling nothingness – and then, a city appears. Roads, neighborhoods, hotels and casinos – even one that's a pyramid rising after the desert.

My car rental requires not one but two shuttle rides from the Vegas airport to the car rental hub to one of the only car rental agencies in the city that isn’t at the car rental hub. While approaching the second shuttle stop, I stand behind a large Lebanese family of all ages. The dad of the group pulls out a plastic bag from his carry-on and starts handing out these bright green cucumbers, one by one, to his parents and siblings. He eyes me and this other white woman in line, offering her a cucumber first.

“Oh, no thank you,” she says with a smile, shaking her head.

He turns to me with the same outstretched cucumber, and for reasons I can't quite explain I find myself extending my hand to accept this strange vegetable from a Lebanese man I’ve never met. I smile and thank him, laughing at the ridiculousness of this moment. I think my laughter encourages the white woman to change her mind, because she accepts the Lebanese man’s cucumber as well.

“Cheers!” I say, raising my cucumber in the air to her and to him, to all of us, to Vegas!, and we all chomp down while waiting ten minutes for our second shuttle to arrive.

This Lebanese family is from Michigan, and they vacation to Las Vegas together every year. What a trip this must be for them.

“We are going to the In-N-Out for lunch,” the dad says with a distinct accent in between bites of his cucumber.

And oh. My. Goodness. I had completely forgotten In-N-Out even exists in Las Vegas until he speaks these words of life to me.

Suddenly, I'm hungry for more than a mere cucumber. I also know where I am going for lunch and what I'm ordering there: double-double with onion, animal-style fries. Always. It’s the only thing I’ve ever ordered from In-N-Out, and if it isn’t broke — and it certainly isn’t — why fix it?

I reunite with the Lebanese family at the closest In-N-Out after acquiring my rental car, and it's a delicious, nostalgic meal, reminding me of my move to southern California as a 23-year-old still finding his way in this world, still discovering new wonders like the sight of the Pacific Ocean and the taste of animal-style goodness. It will be my first of four In-N-Out visits over the next eleven days.

I stock up on water jugs, Gatorade, and salty snacks from the Target next door, already trembling from the 100-degree walk across the parking lot. I've packed a cooler bag to keep each day’s liquids reasonably cool, and I pray it's enough to sustain me this week.

I intend to explore six national parks over the next eleven days, five of which I’ve never set foot. I figure to awaken early each morning to get my hikes and other park explorations before the peak and heat of the day.

But I will also be ready to sweat and groan and cry out to God this week.

I drive down the Las Vegas Strip and check into my hotel – you know that aforementioned pyramid on the south end? The Luxor? It's where I’ll be spending my first night of BiGTRiP V.

This big black pyramid of a hotel-casino has been a bucket list stay for me since 2012, the first time I saw it, the first time I visited Las Vegas. Entranced is a good word.

While booking my already inexpensive flight to Las Vegas, I had the option to add on a hotel at a discounted rate, and the very first suggestion that popped up was the Luxor. And I knew. I just knew. I booked a room there on the 27th floor, one with a slanted roof and slanted windows overlooking the colorful Camelot-themed Excalibur hotel-casino next door.

It almost felt appropriate, like some geographical equilibrium, standing in that golden lobby decorated with giant sphinx and obelisks, checking into this gaudy hotel with the backdrop of dozens of slot machine lights and jingles, all as I prepared for ten days on the road, in the literal desert, surrounded by red and orange rock, sleeping on the ground, camping out in the tent I'd packed. Tonight will certainly balance out the next more rugged nine.

I ride the Luxor's “inclinator,” a slanted elevator straight out of Willy Wonka, riding along the face of the pyramid to my room on the 27th floor. I feel so jazzed wheeling my suitcase down the long hallway as I peer carefully over the exposed edge, down at the food court in the center of the pyramid way, way below.

I feel excited that I'm actually staying here tonight, and I also feel lonely.

This would be a lovely moment to share with someone, even with an Instagram story for my followers. But I've deactivated Instagram for this whole trip, intending to trek as undistracted as I can for the next week and a half.

The national parks tour, the hundreds of miles of driving, the hiking, and the camping out – I genuinely enjoy doing 95% of that stuff all by myself. Basking in blessed solitude. Discovering new space for reflection and inspiration. God speaks to me when I get away and get alone.

But here in this city, in this hotel, in this long hallway overlooking a pseudo-Egyptian world below, I do wish I had someone else beside me. Someone to share in this wonderful weirdness.

I enter my room and almost immediately crash onto my bed, napping until dusk. The jet-lag wears off, and it's perfect timing. I step outside to explore the Strip when it’s “only” 85 degrees, the oppressive sun gone for the night.

Since my last venture to Vegas, I know Sphere has become a thing – this massive glowing ball of a music venue. I set out to find it, passing by a family with a baby who I saw in the Asheville airport earlier that morning, strangely enough.

I catch the fountain show at the Bellagio, where I also find Darth Vader and Bluey and mostly naked showgirls wandering the sidewalks.

I recall a previous Vegas blog, almost wishing I could get turned on by the sight of such revealing women. But they still do nothing for me. They flirtatiously approach different men, putting their hands on their shoulders, pleading for a souvenir photo (and a generous tip, of course). I’m already prepared with my response if any showgirls approach me: “You’re barking up the wrong tree, sister.”

Thankfully, I never have to say those words and resume walking.

I find a roomy Starbucks on the Strip to replenish my fluids on this sticky night and take even one small step to get undistracted in this Dopamine Dystopia. I've packed Yes Theory's book, Talk to Strangers, which chronicles the story of these famed YouTubers known as Yes Theory, a group of friends who pursue courageous tasks like approaching strangers on the street or traveling to new countries or jumping out of planes and helicopters.

One of Yes Theory's mantras is "Seek Discomfort," because growth never happens inside your comfort zone. I've taken this phrase to heart in recent years. A value I hold dear.

I'm already hooked by their origin story in the first few pages, this group of four young men from four different countries finding one another in the same city at the same time. They started their YouTube channel with a challenge to do 30 uncomfortable things in 30 days, and the rest is history. This group of friends now boasts a worldwide audience and community – a movement of millions.

The author also writes vulnerably about his conflict with the group and his journey of walking away from Yes Theory. I'm both sad and inspired. Inspired by his vulnerability with his friends, and with his readers. I'm also sad for his walking away, for all good things coming to an end.

Sadder still that he remains on good terms with his cofounders, reminding me of my own story.

I think about Your Other Brothers a lot as I read Yes Theory's story, a similar origin story of these young men from various geographic corners finding each other at just the right time. Our organization still exists a decade later, now under the pending nonprofit ministry of Your Other Family, and yet I've seen most of my cofounders walk away, one by one, no longer in relationship with the community. No longer in relationship with me.

I'm responsible too, of course. I didn't pursue my brothers after they left. Drifting away felt easier than reconciling differences.

Years removed, their departures still echo. Those first schisms literally sent me to therapy for the first time, a weekly task I still practice, and while I’ve come a long way in grieving and reconciling and owning my side of the fence, I still wince at the memory. Especially now in comparison to these Yes Theory guys who remain on good terms, despite their own schisms.

How does a group of secular and religiously diverse men continue in friendship with one another despite their differences, and a group of supposedly spiritually united Christians does not?

I close the book and set out once more from Starbucks for Sphere, and the curving venue pops amid the black backdrop of a desert night sky. Its big bubble shape glows red and green and yellow and practically every color, along with various designs like the Death Star and a smiley face. The Backstreet Boys are performing there tonight. I wonder what it’s like to be inside the thing, illuminated on all sides by one continuous screen while these aging Gen X'ers perform like ants on stage.

Is it a magical experience or humanity’s death knell? Will more and more glowing screens in our pockets and watches and eyewear and vehicles and living rooms and workplaces and city streets and hotels and casinos and concert venues be our ultimate doom?

Will we start over one day, looking back with incredulity that we ever inundated our lives with this much distraction? These countless screens and polarizing social media that does more to disconnect us from one another and tear us away from

thispresentmoment?

I return to my pyramid after a couple hours of wandering, my fill of Vegas amassed for the next couple years, ready to flee this city and start anew in the wilderness tomorrow. The journey eastward begins. Utah, national parks, camping, driving – my annual BiGTRiP escape from distraction.

How I wish the wilderness to have its way with me.