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Las Vegas by Night
| The recent Ayles family vacation to the American desert included a number of stops in Las Vegas while we were between canyons. Since I'm the only person who got any photographs without rocks in them, I though I'd post some here. I found Las Vegas to be startlingly free of irony while I was there, which really helps you get into the spirit of things. Funny town, and I sure wouldn't want to live there, but there's some flashy scenery for the tourist to enjoy... |
| Las Vegas is, of course, known for its many extravagant and well lit hotels. This is one of the first that we passed on our way down the strip. |
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| One of the interesting aspects of Las Vegas is that it's the only place in the world where you can see the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle, the Pyramids of Egypt, and the New York Skyline in less than a half-hour. Some of the scale models are more convincing than others and when taken out of context, they can look pretty impressive. |
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It didn't take us very long to figure out if we had found the right hotel or not... |
| I think this picture stands pretty well on its own. |
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| Of course, no trip to Las Vegas would be complete without seeing Seigfried and Roy, who were at least present as a set of 6-foot tall bronze busts outside their dolphin/tiger sanctuary. I can't really claim to understand how that place must work, but I do think it's nice that they thought to include their tiger in this disturbing statue. |
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Good Times, Happy Days
| June was a pretty killer month for Irish music in Montreal, thanks to a large group of out of towners from Limerick and Vancouver. If you weren't there, then these pictures won't mean much to you, but we had a good time. |
| Neil and Keona hail from Vancouver, though it's worth noting that Neil is originally from Manchester (home of the Vimto fruit flavor drink). Here we see Neil giving my banjo a whirl on the McGill campus downtown. |
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| Neil and Keona play in a group whose name escapes me, which is how they came to be passing through Montreal in the first place, sort of. Here's the group's third member, Nora, tooting away on her Sindt whistle. The fourth member of the group is Keona's sister Clara, but she wasn't around when I had my camera. |
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| We eventually wound up (much later) at a bistro called La Mer à Boire with Darren and Laurence. Darren's the one playing Dave's bouzouki, and he hails from far-off Limerick. |
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| Here's Laurence, working his magic. |
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| Nora and Darren, shaking some booty. It just occurs to me that Nora appears to be "choking up" on the whistle, and I'm not sure why her right hand is at high as it seems to be. |  |
| Neil's quite the faker - he wasn't actually playing at all when I took this shot. |
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All together now! From left to right: Neil, Keona, Nora, Darren, and Dave, who is blocking Laurence.
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Another group shot, this one taken by Dave (as the keen-eyed may have already deduced) |
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| And here are Dave and Joanne with Darren on his last night in Montreal. We made a quick pit stop at Boustan's to prepare for a trip to Hurley's, where Nick was playing with Charlie MacLeod. |
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All Around My Hat
| For the record, I played a pub gig at O'Donnell's on the 6th of July, 2002, which was mostly notable because a Texan trucker gave me his hat during the show. I'm not the kind of guy to say no to a free hat, and I thought that the least I could do would be to wear said hat for the rest of the night - hence the following pictures. |
| That's a nice lookin' hat you've got there, son. |
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| My supporters that night: Don, Alana and Madeleine. |
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What is this thing called 
?
