After a weary 8-hour flight from JFK to Long Beach, CA with a lay-over in Salt Lake City for refueling due to strong headwinds, I spent a few hours running around looking for a car charger for my 1st Generation iPod. Little did I know that companies like Belkin and XtremeMac don’t support older players, like my trusty 1st generation, 20GB unit, which has never given me a problem.

Luckily, I found a solution at Radio Shack, because I definitely didn’t want to make the 3.5 to 4-hour drive to Vegas through the Mojave desert in my favorite new rental vehicle, the Kia Sorrento, without my tunes playing through my new Griffin iTrip FM wireless transmitter.

Fortunately, I found a Radio Shack in a strip mall about 20 miles outside of Long Beach off CA-22 East, where I picked up a charger and adapter that work perfectly with my unit. After a pit stop to pack up on low-carb snacks and water for my drive through the desert, I made my way up over the mountains, passing Death Valley (yikes!) along the way.

As the setting sun blanketed the mountain range around me with a warm orange glow, I cranked up the sounds of Terry Lee Brown, Jr. and headed North along US route 15 through Barstow, to an elevation of about 4,000 feet. By that time, it was quite dark and I didn’t see much of the desert. Just the shadows of the mountains to my left and complete blackness where there were long expanses of nothing but tumbleweed and higway.

I thought the road was going to be very lightly travelled and a bit more rural, but emergency call boxes dotted the highway every few miles or so and traffic was pretty heavy at times. Of course, high up in the mountains the exits for small, rural towns were spaced out, but I didn’t feel as if the drive were a dangerous one to make, even by yourself. And with the speed limit at 70 MPH out here, you can push a little and make the trip a bit shorter.

As I made my way down into the Las Vegas area, I pulled over on the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the milliions of stars that dotted the sky. Living in New York City, you don’t get a chance to see the stars from that vantage point all to often.

I also took this photo, which I thought was cool, which shows the traffic snaking down through the desert, past the first set of casino’s about 40 or so miles from downtown Las Vegas and “the strip.”

This morning, I’m on a conference call with the home office and then it’s off to MAGIC for the first day of this massive fashion trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Time permitting, I may head to Project Show at the Sands as well. But with 5,000 brands presenting, MAGIC is where I’ll be most of the day.

I’ll also be blogging from both shows, so stay tuned for more posts later on today and tomorrow.

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