If you're from Reno, or anywhere else in Nevada, for that matter, I'm sorry.

If you've never been, don't go. Vegas isn't worth the piles and heaps of trash, human or otherwise, that you have to sift through to find anything worthwhile.

I've been to Vegas, years ago. It was fine.

But Reno is a different story. If any of you have read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , the great ramblings of Dr. Thompson, his description of North Vegas were likely just his mistaken vision of Reno. Reno's the kind of place that has a direct shuttle from Vegas that ships all the dead beats and degenerates who've fallen balls first into a den of rabid yellow spotted lizards.

I was there for two or four days.

It all blends together, connected by a glue of old men's tears and dip spit. My family and I were stopping over there on the way to one of our perfectly wholesome almost Von Trapp-esque ski vacations to Lake Tahoe. We stayed in some casino and resort or another for our time in the "Biggest Little City" in the world, as they so quaintly call that pile of festering filth. Most of the time, I just sat in the sports pit, the lowered area where people gaze at countless TVs showing all manner of sports or archaic competitions, like rick-shaw races which, yes, are a thing.

Now, I don't gamble, but back then, I did smoke, which is fully encouraged in casinos of this kind, the kind where portly local women and semi-retired aging hookers are strapped inside of spandex cocktail dresses. I would just sit in these pits and watch people scream and chant and harass each other about whatever game happened to be on at the time.

I watched on old man yell so loudly at a teenager that his Maverick Menthol and three of his brown, rotten teeth fell to the grimy floor. He just left them there without a second thought and ordered another skunked Schlitz.

I watched five people vomit on the floor at four in the morning as I quietly sat and smoked and listened to an old 30 for 30.

I saw hundreds of sad people on family vacations whose final destination was this trap of souls waiting in line for three hours to go to a buffet, supposedly the best in all of Northern Reno.

I witnessed many gamblers weeping in front of video poker machines after losing all of their money.

I don't know if there's a shuttle that takes people from Vegas to Reno to some other hole, probably Baker, but if there is, many people got on it, trying to find their luck elsewhere for cheaper minimum bets with uglier waitresses and stickier floors.

I realize this sounds like a defamation of Reno, but I kind of liked it. You have to go there and let the sadness wash over you, absorb it and drink it in. Drown in it. It's all a good laugh if you just realize that you're in a better shape than them. It gets bad when you realize that they relish in the misery that is their lives more than you will ever enjoy anything you will ever do.

But don't let that get you down. You have an education. Your addictions aren't going to destroy your life, just a marriage or three and your relationship with your kids. You'll never be down and out like this though. You won't be living every Kris Kristofferson song, not like these people are.

We might not end up happy, but at least we won't be dirty and broke, grasping at our last flashes of life in a smoke filled room in the screen of a digital slot machine.