Having been to Bakersfield many times, I was surprised to find that there is somewhere in the US that is less appealing to visit. That place is Reno, Nevada. Reno is like Las Vegas on steriods, if the steriods have utterly ruined your body and turned your genitals into miniature versions of what they once were.

People go to Reno for various reasons:

• To gamble in the casinos and pretend they are in Las Vegas
• To go to conferences and pretend they are in a real city
• To go to Lake Tahoe (only 40 miles away) and save money on accomodation

There used to be a fourth, more popular reason: to get divorced. In the 1930s Nevada legalized many things that were illegal elsewhere, including divorce. Reno was so popular that to say "I'm going to Reno" was sufficient for people to know you were getting divorced. As other states started to offer similar opportunities to Nevada, Reno became less signficant.

To be fair to Reno, their airport is more impressive than Bakersfield's. Bakersfield has one food concession, Blimpie. At least Reno (or more accurately, Reno-Tahoe) has a McDonalds and a Peet's Coffee! It also has plenty of slot machines to get you warmed up for your stay (or you can stay in the airport and save on hotel bills):

Once in one of Reno's prime conference destinations, we were welcomed to the conference by Tommy Tutone, the '80s band famous for 867-5309/Jenny:

And if you can't remember them, here they are back in 1981:

Oddly enough, Tommy Heath, the lead singer is now a computer analyst so he was right at home at this conference!

Normally at conferences there is a trip out somewhere. For instance, if you are in Orlando you go to Universal or SeaWorld. If you are in Reno there's not many choices. In fact top thing recommended by our bus driver and the girl behind the bar was to go to the Nugget Casino for an Awful Awful burger. Having been to Bakersfield and had and awful burger I wasn't tempted. Anyway, the conference organizers arranged for us to visit the Freight House District, a redevelopment of downtown Reno based around the Greater Nevada Field baseball stadium, home of the Reno Aces:

 The Reno Aces are a minor league team that is affiliated to the Arizona Diamondbacks. No baseball players were hurt in the making of our night out, but we did get some food, beer and live music. Then at the end we got an impressive firework display:

 Apparently this caused great confusion in Reno as the fireworks normally only happen on Friday nights!