Dec. 15, 2012 – Flagstaff, Az. to Las Vegas, Nev.

The gas tank neared empty somewhere before the Nevada state line. There wasn’t a store, gas pump, or town in site.

Cham suggested we retreat all the way back to Kingman, but I figured we should keep on driving. We soon came across a hole-in-the-wall corner store: wo pickup trucks sat outside, a billboard advertising gun sales hung above it, and the desert stretched for miles in every direction.

We pulled in to get some info, Mareike and Juliane peeling into the restroom as Cham and I approached the lady at the front desk.

But the grumpy, old woman pushed past us to go bang on the door.

“One at a time!” she hollered angrily at the German girls. “What the hell are you doing in there?”

We told her we just needed to find a gas station.

“Twenty-five miles this way, 40 miles that way,” she said, jerking her thumbs to indicate direction while refusing to meet our eyes.

I quickly realized this was the least friendly person I’d met in the United States.

We thanked her, relieved ourselves, and tried to take off. Cham and I got to the car, but the old lady held up Mareike and Juliane – it was going to be $4 for using the restroom.

The Germans have a mostly-foolproof plan for uncomfortable situations: “we German, no English, so sorry, what you say? We German.”

But it didn’t come off this time, and the old lady tailed them out of the store.

Cham and I agreed we wouldn’t be paying that ridiculous fee – we had just bought a bag of chips from the place! As we zoomed back onto the highway to resume our desperate search for gas, I watched the lady copy down Cham’s plate number and retreat angrily into her store.

After twenty-five miles retracing our steps, we had enough fuel to get to Vegas. We pulled over at the impressive Hoover Dam upon entering Nevada, and then carried onto Sin City.

Let the games begin.