"Hey - Check this out!"
Early Saturday morning after a late night flight into the city. Follow Matt into the garage and am immediately rollin' the grapes over his newly purchased Porsche. Don't recall the model. It's a beauty - red, black leather interior. He's pointin' features and spoutin' specifications a mile a minute.
"C'mon - I'll take ya' for a ride!"
Five minutes later we're exiting Rt. 215 onto I-95 North. It's highway cruising speed for a few miles to the Lee Canyon Road exit. The car rides and handles like a dream. Beyond that the highway is an arrow straight open track for the next twelve miles to Indian Springs. He throttles it. Even from 60mph that things got plenty of impressive torque. We're immediately pullin' a few G's and firmly planted in the passenger seat.
Big sky highway I-95 north of Vegas
Love the speed, but have always been a nervous passenger. A few seconds and I'm glancin' over at the speedometer - 125mph and accelerating fast. The right foot is instinctively feelin' around the passenger side floor board for a brake pedal.
"WOW! Impressive... OK! I love it! - you can slow this f*k'n thing down now!!"
Matt out at Las Vegas Speedway running a Lamborghini Gallardo LP570 Twin Turbo through its paces. He was big into Formula 1 racing. We still prefer old time muscle car drag racing. But, occasionally catch ourselves checkin' out the latest F1 action on the tube.
---------------
Best restaurant in Vegas, our opinion - New York Pizza & Pasta over on South Jones Boulevard. Best pizza west of the Big Apple.
"Hey Matt - how ya' doin'?"
Jimmy, the owner and chief pizza maker, walks over along with a buddy he was chattin' with. Matt knows 'em and introduces both.
'This is Jimmy and Frank"
Jimmy engages in some small talk for a minute or two, takes our order, then heads back to oven duty. Matt invites Frank to have a seat and some pizza.
"Maybe one slice - I gotta' run"
Frank grabs a seat at our table. Between more small talk I'm thinkin' Frank looks a bit familiar behind his glasses but I can't place him. Older fella'. Reminds me of somebody. A bit of his conversation with Matt is directed toward film and television. Comes across as a producer or somethin'. The pizza arrives. Frank eats one slice then gotta' run. He gets up, bids farewell, waves goodbye to Jimmy, tosses a twenty on the table and is out the door.
"Did you recognize that guy?" says Matt."That was the guy in the movie 'Goodfellas' that gets murdered and hung up in the meat truck!"
Actor Frank Sivero - 'Frankie Carbone' in 'Goodfellas'
Never failed to meet some interesting characters runnin' around the city with Matt. He knew about everybody in town.
---------------
Never did any roped climbing out around Vegas. Only would travel out for a week at a time and never bothered to ship any gear out. If so, would have only settled for multi-pitch routes. Seems (to us) like a waste to climb single pitch with all the big routes about. Nothin' new for us in the short stuff - can do that back in PA. Always got in a bit of bouldering and a lot of (sometimes scary) long route 3rd and 4th class scrambling.
Tons of fun and you can move fast and put in some miles and altitude.
Hangin' out on the summit and return trail from 'Turtlehead Peak' (in background lower image). An easy hike located out at 'Red Rock Canyon'.
Was always a lot of fun with that guy.
.jpeg)
