Another Year, Another Laughlin Run, But somethings different

What's it been? 7 or 8 months since I last posted? Who says blogging can't be fun?
So another winter is almost behind us and what a change this one has been. Me and the wife found ourselves pretty much picking up our lives and moving 90 miles east to beautiful Riverside California. A job-offer-she-couldn't-refuse came around and despite my reservations about leaving the relative security of a position she'd had for 10 years, plus moving out of a house we owed very little on, we took the plunge and switched it up.

So we (gulp)put the old house on the market back in September right before the world went to hell in a hand basket. To our amazement, the old homestead sold in four days. We thought we'd have easy pickin's finding something out here since the real estate market had tanked here in the inland empire area of southern Cali about twice as bad as anywhere else. Well, to make a short story long, we found a foreclosed house, put in our offer (one of only two, ours being the highest) and the night before we left for Vegas Bike week, we found out the other (lower) offer had been accepted. WTF??? But God smiled on us and we eventually wound up getting the house.

So we spent the rest of the winter and early spring focusing on the new abode with very little riding to be had. During this time of course...well, as I said....the world seems to be a different and much weirder place with people by the thousands losing their homes, their jobs, their savings and sad to say, their hope. It's a fucked up world right now and weird indeed. So I feel blessed to have what I have and I think at this time it's probably best to heed a bit of advise from my old sage HS Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" So I say we all need to turn pro, help each other out and try to remember that it's during times like these that friends turn to each other.

I have no idea what any of this has to do with my original idea to post something about this years Laughlin River Run but I guess I got off on a tangent. But in a way it does. Last year we noticed a very thinned out crowd at the event from years past yet the rip off the biker prices at the Laughlin casinos hadn't changed one penny. They were still raping us with $200+/night rooms in a shit hole corner of the desert where they normally are lucky to get $75/night on any given weekend.

This was of course in late April of '08 and the economy was just starting to show signs of deeper problems and at the time we wondered what the '09 event would be like and whether the event promoters, DAL-CON Promotions, would pull the bloated heads out of their fat asses and figure out that you can't continue to screw people with those prices.

So sure enough for this years event the prices at most of the casinos are down considerably. We usually stay the the Riverside and if not mistaken, we're usually taken for about $650 bucks for the 3 nights. This year, I believe the online price is about $435. About $145/night which is still a RIP OFF (y'all listening DAL-CON???) when compared to the Vegas Bike Week for example, but it's better than it has been.

So we're gonna head on out once again but our good riding buddies we usually go with will be staying home this year. Hmmmmm....wonder why? Well, she's a realtor and he's in commercial construction. That they even have jobs that still pay is a miracle but they're not taking anything for granted and are hoping that they can make it on some local runs over the summer and then have a nice time in Vegas come fall.

Strange, sad, sorry times indeed. It should be interesting to see what the crowd is like there this year. I pray for everyone that we are at or nearing the bottom of this black hole and that the rest of '09 and 2010 bring better days.