Every night around this time

I read the Guardian and I need to go to The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering because:

• Young men from the Basque Country arrived in Elko in the 1870s to work as ranch hands, and now dedicate themselves to serving food whose quality is matched only by its quantity. On our first night we make the amateur's mistake of ordering a meal each, only to be defeated by a perfect filet mignon the size of a baseball mitt, incredible lamb steaks larger than most sheep, and side dishes which might elsewhere be mistaken for swimming pools.
  
• Ramblin' Jack [Elliott] did not acquire his nickname because of a penchant for long walks: in nearly an hour onstage, he gets around to three songs, including Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. The rest of the time is taken up with a tangent-riddled anecdote about teaching his dog to drive. It contains not a single punchline, and is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.
  
• It occurs to me to ask Ron what line of work he's in. "Well, Andrew," he says, in that punctiliously courteous way Americans have of employing your name as if it's an honorific, "right at the moment, I'm chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court."

24–29 January 2011.