This week I saw a really great concert with Shinedown and Godsmack and a New Zealand band called Like a Storm and most of the photos will be of that great show

It is a bird ..no really its just a bird _Royal Hopper

Trust is Fragile and seldom recovers

by Royal Hopper

You see a sleepy smiling man and an angry sad woman walking toward the checkout line in a Sin City hotel and you know instantly that something bad is going to happen . The day is hot and dry every time the wind blows smoke and dust and the oppressive heat of a desert summer mingle with nearly six decades of Sin, celebration, destruction and decadence . The morning after buzz of caffeine inspired conversation suddenly halts as the man sleepily gives a half hearted smile and reaches his hand over for the woman to hold and the woman fighting back tears angrily slaps it away. It wasn’t that loud of a sound when the hand struck the hand away but it might as well have been a gun shot because everyone stopped talking and paid attention.
As they approached the line the woman set the keys on the counter stepped back thought for a moment, turned on a dime and walked toward the door he practical shoes making a muffled thump as she walked.
The man shrugged a little and began a conversation with the clerk then stopped and looked toward the woman and started when he realinzed she wasnt stopping. The noise from the summer time morning casino crowd increased in anticipation of the fight they were certain was going to happen.
She turns on a dime again taking something from her jacket ..a large oiece of paper it seems and throws on the the ground and turns again to leave. The man’s face turns angry and he hurries forward to grab the woman just as two security gaurds no doubt called to investigate the disturbance step forward.
They are nopt small men and the man halts in his tracks as the woman pushes the door open with a huff and walks toward the cab line. The man dodges around the gaurds and runs out the door as the gaurds sprint to keep up and interpose their large bodies between the soon to be ex couple.
The woman halts in her fast walk toward the cab perhaps seeing the large security guards blocking the mans path to her and in one precise feminine motion takes something off her finger and rears back as if to throw it..stops and thinks for a moment and then just drops it on the ground ..and waves her hand in front of her toward the man as if to say “Im done …enough is enough”

Shinedown

She closes her eyes says something to the gaurds ..something like thank you wipes tears from her eyes and then steps foward to hail one of the ever present taxi cabs gets in and dissapperas into the neon and concrete jungle that is the City of Sin ..
The gaurds leave now that the woman is gone and there is no fight to break up and the mans fumes impotently stomps his feet like a two year old and as the totally of the situation finally hitys him begins to fight back tears himself ..picks up the paper and the thing she threw down on the floor and concrete respectively and stumbles inside ..He heads toward the check out desk then changes his mind adn drifts over to the bar amd sits down with a thump in the nearest chair and looks up at the bartender ..who already has his drink made and sits it down in front of him…
Trust is a fragile thing ..it is a a treasure chest earned by other people and stored away for the rough times …It is easily shattered and bankrupted by selfishness, betrayal and lies and seldom if ever recovers ..Without trust and the ability to be trusted the smoothest opertor in the world is just another scumbag to be left drinking alone at a strange bar …His betrayal making them alone and lonely..

That is life in the City of Sin and everywhere else
Love You Sinners