That 40-plus hour per week diversion that calls  itself “work” sees us in Vegas, which means a chance to revist our previous fling with Sin City’s monorail. Indeed, it was a year ago that I first tried the Strip’s  tram–when God himself wreaked holy hell on Mamaroneck and submerged it under 10 feet of water.

The monorail is still an underrated way to get from one end of  the Strip to the other, though it’s located a few blocks off the Strip at several points,  which means interminable walks through seemingly endless casinos.

The monorail is sponsored  by an  energy drink called Monster; Monster ads  line the four-car trains, and videos of mooks  doing mook things  on skateboards while hopped  up on Monster juice air on small TVs.

The monorail  runs  every five minutes and  never seems to get  held  up waiting  for the  car in front of it to clear out  of the station. That’s what I thought, at least, until I got off at the Harrah’s station and was  boarding the escalator when I heard a man yell, “Let go of the door!” “Let GO OF  THE DOOR!” The  man in front of me on the escalator mimicked the dude, an employee in matching golf shirt and chinos who seemed to report the  offense into a CB radio.

After an overpriced/underwhelming  dinner at  David Burke’s  egg-themed joint in the Venetian (the $28 “red bank” chicken was the cheapest thing on the menu), I decided to walk part of the way back to the Barry Manilow-themed Hilton, then hop the double-decker bus known as the Deuce on the way back.

The Deuce cost two bucks and was  pretty packed. I’d seen it zip by down the Strip a few  dozen times and pictured it stocked with bachelorettes  wielding half-full  half-yards like  Roy Hobbs swinging the Wonderboy. But  when I got on, everyone was  pretty quiet, as if they didn’t known exactly how  to behave on the  Deuce, and took their cues from the rest of  the quiet masses.  Most everyone  seemed to be a tourist, though I did sit next to a Hispanic guy in the checkered  pants of a line cook.  So at  least one rider seemed  to be  commuting.

The  Deuce let us out at the  Sahara, then it was a fairly long and  definitely creepy hike  through the massive hotel’s endless parking lots.  Even so, both the monorail and the bus are decent ways of getting  up and down the  Strip, especially when you encounter massive lines of conventioneer guys in  beer guts, Dockers and  good old boy accents,  waiting for cabs. 

Just got back from Vegas, and what a time to miss commuting on Metro-North: tales of submerged stations, hour delays, and people hitching rides to the city with Noah and his furry friends, as the bearded one’s ark made its way down the Bronx River Parkway.

A few commuter-oriented notes from Sin City: For all Jet Blue’s talk about the passenger’s bill of rights after its horrid P.R. hit following February storms, you don’t see any mention of it at the airport–it’s not posted anywhere as you check in, the support staff doesn’t mention it, and you don’t see it on board (at least I didn’t).

That said, Jet Blue is still head and shoulders better than the rest of the airlines. Thanks to a truly dismal performance by our corporate travel agent, I was given middle seats both ways. I got on the horn with Jet Blue to have it changed, and was told both ends of my trip were sold out. Still, JB got me aisle seats both ways, on two packed flights.

And in terms of Vegas itself, I can’t rave enough about the new monorail (new in the sense that it wasn’t there when I was last in Vegas some seven years ago). It runs a few blocks below the Strip, behind most of the big resorts, and pulls right into several of them. It’s $5 for a single ride, $9 for a round trip, runs until 2 a.m. on weekdays and 3 on weekends, and even has its own publication, a pocket-size monthly called Monorail (granted, it’s no Mileposts).

I asked my cabbie, a garrulous blonde woman from Bulgaria named Debbie Angel (I know, I know, a stripper’s name) who told me I look like Bill Gates (I don’t), if many people commute via the monorail. “Noooo,” she said with a vigorous shake of the head. “Too expensive.”

Even with the escalating price of gas, not to mention the traffic in a city that seems to double in population every year, she says people prefer to drive.

“It’s for tourists,” said Debbie Angel.

Another cool aspect of Vegas, from a commuter standpoint: You can go from the airport to the strip on 15 minutes, about how long it took me to walk from the Hilton across the street to the Riviera.