SURPRISE VLOG: Las Vegas
Okay, enough of that. This is not going to be a cinematic vlog here; I'm just showing you what I've been up to lately and right now. I need to get from London to Las Vegas and back again in 72 hours. This is guaranteed to be a jet lag disaster. But I have a plan. My body is going to Vegas, but my sleep cycle is going to stay in London on GMT - Grey Master Time. I'm changing continents but not changing time zones. I think this is a great idea. Everyone I know thinks this is ridiculous, but I'm going to give it a shot. Let's go!
What the heck is that? Planes wander around on the runway for a long time, so you always have to check and see when it is going to be real. It's real! Okay. This is future Grey here editing this video and who obviously survived the flight. I'm not normally worried about the actual plane. This is not where my travel anxieties come from, but look at the wing of this plane as it takes off. It really bends quite a lot from the original position.
Now, I have flown a bunch; I don't remember ever seeing this kind of thing before, and I found it extremely concerning. Normally, this is the exact moment where my travel anxieties end. Once the plane is in the air, I can just sit back and read or work or whatever, and just feel like I have a bunch of time on my own. But I couldn't help but keep looking at this wing and how much it bent. Is this normal? It doesn't seem normal.
Anyway, back to past Grey, who's actually on the plane. The very vlog that I hope you're watching right now is something I'm thinking of trying to do on this trip as like an additional thing. But I got to tell you, this wing outside the plane is extremely concerning. Like, it's not just me, right? It's really bent.
Okay, I've been working on the vlog for a little while, but if this plan is going to work, I need to get to sleep because there's only six and a half hours of flight time remaining. It's noon o'clock in Las Vegas and eight o'clock in London, which is a little early, but I've brought sleeping pills of unconsciousness. They're blue, as all such pills are legally required to be. Oh God, it's really early. Alright. I've gotta get up. I'll make up some sleep in the hotel.
Traveling into the U.S. sucks. This is where I protect my phone. This is where I protect myself. Vegas, baby. Alright, it took me way longer to get through the airport than I was expecting. It's almost 4:00 in the morning in London, but it's almost 8:00 p.m. in Las Vegas, and I wanted to sleep a little bit when I got in, but I don't have time because I have a dinner to get to at 8:30.
Okay, future Grey here. I did make it to the dinner on time, but I didn't film it. So here's some stock footage of puppies instead, and now that we're taking this little break, I'm going to let past Grey explain exactly what the plan is, in detail. Let's take a look at London and let's take a look at Las Vegas. 1:00 a.m. in London is 5:00 p.m. in Las Vegas.
Drawing out the rest of the hours gets us at this relationship between the times. Around 10 o'clock, I am definitely asleep, which, expanding to eight hours later, gets us to around 6:00 in the morning, when I'm usually waking up. This means in Las Vegas, I'm going to be asleep from about 2:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 p.m. My 8 or 9 o'clock at night is still lunchtime for people in Las Vegas.
So, I'm definitely available then, but if I'm willing to take away 2 hours of sleep, I can actually make it for the time when most people want to have dinner, which is 8 o'clock at night. Normally that's my nightmare; having dinner at 8:00. But this time, it's working in my favor. Crazy normal people like to stay up until midnight, which I could never possibly do, but now this is looking like a real possibility.
Their midnight is just my 8 in the morning, at which I've already been awake for 3 hours anyway on London time. So, there's a big overlap during this section. Even better, when they go to bed, it means I have the rest of a full working day essentially on my own. No one's going to be around at 4 a.m. in Las Vegas; I can just be doing whatever I want. It's my lunchtime; normal business hours start at 9:00 a.m., which is my 5:00 in the afternoon. So, as far as I'm concerned, this actually works perfectly. I can see people in the beginning of the workday. I can meet people for their lunch. I can be around for people's dinners.
And I actually get to be the guy who can stay up late for post-dinner socializing, a first in my life. And I get a whole chunk of time to myself. I don't see how it could possibly go wrong; the only thing I need to do is just make sure I don't fall asleep at the wrong time. Dinner over, which was my breakfast. I'm pretty tired, but it's 10:40 a.m. on Grey Master Time. I can't fall asleep. I'm going out for a walk to actually see Vegas for a little bit.
Vegas really is the city where I think this plan can work because if there's one place that doesn't want you to know what time it really is, it's Las Vegas. The walk helped; now it's time to take advantage of everybody being asleep, but I need to find bingo. Target acquired! Time to return to home base and edit an episode of Hello Internet. The funny setup, but it works.
Alright. I'm getting pretty tired when I shouldn't be, so I'm just standing in the sun for a while to remind my brain to stay awake before heading off to meet some people for breakfast and then lunch. But I didn't film that, so here's a sleepy hedgehog instead. Alright, it's 9:30 in London even though it's only 1:30 in Las Vegas, and I am exhausted. It's been a long day. I've lost more sleep than I expected because of the flight and the time it took to get to the airport.
But at least one day has been successfully accomplished, but now I am going to bed. Okay, this is the first time that I'm waking up actually according to the schedule. So far, so good. I have a 9:30 dinner that I need to go catch, which is actually going to be my breakfast. You know the drill: people stayed up until way late this time. I'm never the guy who gets to close down a party because I'm Mr. In My Pajamas at 8 p.m., but now the tables have turned and I can be the last one who stays awake.
I have the whole day ahead of me, but I'm skipping to the end because I don't want to spend my whole day filming things, but I saw a big shoe. I saw some robots taking her job. Took a car, met some people for their lunch and my dinner, and now I need to go to bed pretty quick because I need to wake up earlier to catch a final dinner here. GROAN The first few minutes of waking up are not great normally, but when you have to wake up just a little bit earlier, it makes a big difference.
But I know just get into the shower and get going. I was a little bit late and a little bit lost trying to find my way to dinner, but boy, was it worth it. My steak for dinner breakfast is over and this is my last morning in Las Vegas, and there's something I want to do. What is the vlog without a montage? So I'm grabbing a car to the other end of the strip and I'm going to film my way back as the sun rises. Walk with me!
It has been a pretty great time in Vegas. I spent the rest of the day just packing and getting ready to go, which is totally uninteresting. And now I'm setting my alarm and a timer because I have to get up very early to catch the flight home. Future Grey here because past Grey didn't have a whole lot of time between when he woke up, when he had to get in the car, and when he had to get to the airport.
It wasn't close close, but it was a lot closer than I would normally cut these kind of things. The flight was at Las Vegas 10 p.m. time, which was London 6 a.m. time, and this flight home turned out to be the hardest part of maintaining Grey Master Time. This was a night flight back; all of the lights were turned off. I was in darkness the entire time the plane was in the air, for what had been 7 a.m. for me, but I had already been up since about 3:00 a.m. getting ready to go to the airport, and boy did I want to sleep.
To make matters worse, the power in my seat didn't work for the vast majority of the flight, so I was just counting down the time I had left on my laptop to work to give me something productive to do instead of just sitting there in the darkness trying not to fall asleep. But thankfully, the nice flight attendants kept bringing me many cups of coffee and eventually got the power in the seat next to mine working so that I could keep doing stuff. The sun did come up, which really helped. And then we flew above the clouds for quite a while and nine hours later descended through them into the ever bright and beautiful England, then back through a much easier security, trains, and eventually home to a normal day where I could go to bed.
Where I was going to wake up the next morning to see if this test was successful. Was I able to go to Las Vegas and come back without disrupting my regular sleep cycle? Woke up to a foggy London this morning. I know people think the city always looks like this, but in my time living here, it rarely does. So I always try to appreciate a good fog when it comes in. I'm a little tired, which is to be expected given that I've cut at least two hours of sleep off each night for the past three days, but the very fact that I am awake in London at this time in the morning after coming back from America feels like a miracle.
Normally, when I come back from America, I sleep in really late; I feel really terrible. I'm just jet-lagged and I'm totally unproductive for a week, but right now the plan is to head into a cafe and work on one of the final drafts for the next video that's going up. That's a huge relief that this trip didn't destroy a week's worth of productivity, and I don't know if I'll do it. But I feel like it opens up the possibility of doing shorter trips to America in the future. We'll see.
As for this vlog that you may or may not be watching, I don't know if I'm going to finish it. I don't know if I do finish it if I'll put it up on the channel, and in particular, I don't know if I put it up on the channel that people will like it. But for now, it's been at least an interesting fun side project to have that's like a little bit of a secret, which you, dear potential future viewer, may or may not be in on. But right now, I'm going to enjoy the rest of this beautiful morning.