Cami and Mary ready to leave!

Friday, 18 August 2000 7:30pm

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e're finally leaving, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity for Mary to get home from work. The car has just received new oil, been washed, and the tires rotated. We were ready to go. We stopped by the Burger King drive through before we got on the freeway and headed north toward Vegas. It took forever to get to Vegas. Somewhere near Barstow was a bunch of yuppies or something with SUV's, all towing boats. They all felt like they needed to drive slow and block two lanes. Everyone was driving 60 in a 70 MPH zone and everyone just thought it was traffic. But then as I got closer to these boat-towing SUV guys, I noticed that the road ahead of them was totally clear. They had been blocking traffic and making hundreds of people drive 60MPH through parts of the desert where they should be doing 90 or better. Jerks. We stopped in Barstow for some gas. There was a Lamborghini Diablo stopping for gas too.

Saturday, 19 August 2000 1:30am

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inally, at 1:30am we make it to Vegas. A little later than planned, but hey, we made it anyways. We checked into the fabulous Mirage. Our room was on the tenth floor, with one gigantic king sized bed. The room wasn't terribly large, but very well appointed. We had a

In the car on the way there

great view of the mountains outside of our window. We were all tired when we got there, but just being in Vegas gave us a second wind. So we called for a roll-away bed, and by 2AM we were next door at Treasure Island at a coffee shop eating some food. Then we went back to our home at the Mirage and gambled a little. I played some blackjack. Mary and Cami went and played some slot machines for a while. I was sitting next to this wannabe-high roller guy. He was totally dressed up with a bright red jacket, black shirt, and gold chains everywhere, and of course, the essential Vegas high-roller accessory -- the bimbo on his arm. She was cute, and had very little going on upstairs... but she did have some very large breasts. Anyway, I say this guy was a wannabe high-roller because he all decked out and looking high-roller-ish, but he was only betting single green chips (that's $25 for those of you who don't know). I gotta say, that's pretty weak for a high roller. He was

The golden Gideon Bible

quite demanding of the floormen, considering that he wasn't really much of a high roller. Meanwhile, his bimbo, who is doing nothing but standing there rubbing his leg keeps asking him if she's "doing ok" and he would say "yeah baby, you're doing just fine." Doing what? She's just standing there... is she worried about doing a bad job of just standing there? Then again, I shouldn't be making fun of him. I mean, he did go back to his room with her and he probably got some too. I didn't get any when I went back to my room.
By the time we got back to the room, it was like 5:30 in the morning and the sun was coming up already. The roll-away bed was there waiting for us, and man, this was no crappy roll-away bed. This thing didn't fold up, it had a decent mattress, and it even came with a bag of toiletries, including oatmeal soap, shampoo, conditioner, and the lotion that Cami loves so much. Wow! Is this what being a high-roller is like? I mean, this is a pretty high-rollin' hotel, we did pay a pretty sum for the room. Even the Gideon Bible that was in the night stand was gold. I almost fell over laughing when I saw that. Tired and beat up, I decided to take the roll-away bed, and we were sleeping by 6AM.

9:00am

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hough I had planned on sleeping in, and even though the curtains were drawn so tightly, I woke up after only having 3 hours of sleep, and I couldn't fall back asleep. I got out of bed while everyone else was

The bag of Mirage toiletries at home with me

still sleeping, and went into the bathroom and prepared myself for the day. At this moment I realized that I failed to pack any socks. Ooops. I decided that I would take this opportunity to head down to the hotel salon and get a haircut since I was needing one pretty badly at the time, and the salon was probably pretty empty at this hour, and besides, who wants to be all scruffy looking in Vegas?
The service at the salon was fabulous. While I waited, someone brought me coffee. Once I was actually inside and my hair was getting cut, someone would come by every few minutes to ask if I needed anything like water, or more coffee. It was great. And the guy who cut my hair was just plain meticulous. While using clippers to cut the sides and back, he would go very slowly, and go over the same area a number of times just to make sure that there weren't any rogue hairs that escaped the blades. Usually after cheap-ass haircut, I look in the mirror and I can pick out 2 or 3 hairs on the sides that got missed. Not this time! So I got a really fancy haircut, and I paid a really fancy price for it, but hey, it was worth it. I asked the guy where I could get some socks. He said next door at the Caesars Forum Shops was a Just For Feet store, which was probably the closest place I could get socks for cheap.
So with my freshly cut hair, I ventured into the casino, and played a little blackjack. The dealer was very friendly, and humorous, and really was a joy to play against. I even won a little bit of money. As I was at the cage changing in my chips, I was greeted by Mary and Cami who were on their way to the pool. I decided that I would join them, so I went up to the room and changed into my swimming trunks.

11:00am

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Vegas, baby, VEGAS! (click to enlarge)

oly cow, now this was some pool!! It was like a jungle lagoon or something, with a huge waterfall, big waterslides, a big, tropical bar, and all kinds of stuff. Not only did the pool look great, but once we got inside, it was the most refreshing thing I'd ever experienced in my life! Now this was totally worth the cost of staying at the Mirage! But I didn't stay there for long. I needed to go next door to buy some socks. Which I did. I had a little lunch over there too. After I got my socks, I set out for a little blackjack playing. After a few hours of that, we met back at the room and went to Planet Hollywood for dinner because, well, the buffet lines were too long and we couldn't really think of any other place to go where we could all eat together before I had to go to the Sting concert.
The waiter there was from the Bronx. He came out to Vegas to visit once, and ended up just staying there.

7:30pm

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ting baby, Sting! I arrived at MGM Grand, only to find that the line for the will-call tickets was longer than something really, really long. But after about 40 minutes, I got my ticket and went inside! There was some lame band opening, probably locals, and they seemed all star struck to be playing in front of so many people. Anyway, Sting sang a lot more older songs at this show than the one I went to in October, and he did a really cool version of Roxanne. He also did All This Time which I do not recall him doing in October. Conversely, some stuff wasn't as cool this time, like there was no cameo appearance from Stevie Wonder, and his group of backup singing chicks wasn't there either, and neither was Cheb Mami, the guy that does the arabic part on his song Desert Rose. But he is still an excellent performer, and I enjoyed this show.
I was hoping to get a seat next to some lonely single chicks, but I ended up sitting in the boyfriends who got dragged by their women section. Which wasn't so bad, but it just would have been cooler to be around people who were actually into Sting instead of just hanging out. Like a few rows up there was this bunch of people and they were totally getting into it. And once again, I rediscovered that a Sting concert is a very lonely place for a single guy, especially when he starts singing slow songs and everyone is dancing with their dates while all the single guys just kind of awkwardly stand there. One last little side note about the show... I saw Billy Joel at the VIP entrance. He was there to watch the show I guess. And one more final note about the show... I saved $7 buying the ticket directly from the MGM Grand website. Ticketmaster wanted to charge a handling fee, along with a "convenience charge". I thought the convenience was the fact that they were handling it. Anyway, MGM didn't charge a convenience charge, only a handling fee.

11:30pm

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ter a long struggle to get out of the MGM parking structure, I decided to swing by the Hard Rock Hotel to see if I could maybe hook up with some chicks. I heard that place is really rockin'. Well at 11:30 it was so rockin' that I couldn't even get in the parking lot, so I went to plan B and drove to Fremont Street to play some hard core blackjack in seedy Downtown Las Vegas. On the way there I saw a guy get pulled out of his truck and beat up. That must have been fun. Anyway, I played a while at Binion's Horseshoe. They have a great $5 one-deck game, and I played there for a while and talked to the spaced out dealer and the spaced out player. It was kind of weird. Anyway, after a few hours and losing some money, I decided to try my luck at Hard Rock again.

Sunday, 20 August 2000 2:00am

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round 2am I arrived at the Hard Rock Hotel... I got in the parking lot but it took me about 15 minutes to find a parking space. Freemont street was empty when I was there at 2am, but inside Hard Rock, man it was totally jumping!!! Young people everywhere. I thought I'd play some blackjack. All they had were $10 tables, and there were no chicks playing blackjack at all. But I decided to play anyway. This was the least enjoyable blackjack experience of my trip. I didn't really win or lose any money, but the fact that they were so concerned with underaged gambling was very annoying. You'd sit down at a table and get carded. Then you'd stand up and go to the table right next to that one (in the same pit even), and you'd get carded again. I was only there for like 2 hours but I must have gotten carded more than 10 times, including at the door on the way in, and at the casino cage cashing my chips out.
I was playing at this table with this really scary guy. He was very big and very tall, and could probably easily knock me out with one blow. He had a big scar on one of his eyebrows. I could just imagine that it came from a crazy bar fight or something like that. Anyways, this guy was sitting next to me and he was just fuming mad. He had been playing $100-$200 a hand all night, and was losing all night. He was extremely frustrated, and every time he got some bad cards but had to hit, he'd slam his fist into the table and say "hit that!". I just had these visions of him losing again and again, and just getting so mad that he turns the table over and then punches me out just because I was the most convenient thing around to punch.
Well, at one point, he was playing 2 or 3 hands at once. And finally he got a blackjack, and some other good cards. He was so happy that he bellowed out a deep and rumbling "YES!!" and then proceeded to hi-five me...

Leaving the Mirage (click to enlarge)

so I put my hand out there and he hit me with so much force that he probably could have knocked me to the ground if he had hit my head instead of my hand... or if I had been flexing my arm muscles and keeping them rigid. But at least I knew he was happy.
Anyway, I did talk to one girl there. She was sitting at a table with a continuous shuffle machine. These machines are pretty much impossible to beat at blackjack, but I figured, hey, if I'm here to pick up chicks, I can sacrifice that. So I sat down (and got carded again) and started to play a few hands. I forgot her name, but she was from Michigan and she was pretty cute. Sounds like I'm off to a good start. Until about 3 minutes later, her boyfriend shows up from wherever he was hiding before. Damn. Well then I lost a couple of hands in a row so that was a good enough excuse as any to get away from that damn continuous shuffle machine and the lone girl I saw playing blackjack there without a man hovering over her (until her man did come back and hover over her). After that I decided to go back to the hotel room.

4:00am

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ack at the room, I discovered that Mary and Cami had already returned from The Beach, a rockin' singles club that they had hung out at with Leanne that night. I was actually surprised to find them sleeping already since I thought Cami had mentioned something about staying up all night until like 5am or something. Anyway, I climbed into bed and then subconsciously battled with Cami all night in the bed, which she talks about in her update on her site. Now I feel really bad about that because she was also feeling sick and I was taking up the whole bed. But hey, I can't help it. You give me an inch and I'll take that inch... but I'll usually only take up as much room as you give me. You move out of the way, I'll take that extra space too.

10:00am

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heckout time was supposed to be 11am, and yet, we were all still groggy and not awake yet. After we got up and were almost ready to leave, I discovered that the snazzy electronic safe with its hi-tech keypad (which looked like it was straight out of Knight Rider or something) had gotten its memory erased.

Mary and Cami on the Caesars walkway (click to enlarge)

Ooops. I had the rest of my gambling bankroll in that safe. So we had to call a security guy to open it, and with a little computer and some secret codes and stuff, I ended up getting my money back.
And so, we were off. We checked out and got our cars from the Mirage valet (and took some pictures in front of the volcano that didn't come out on my camera because they were al backlit) and drove them all the way to next door. How LA is that? We were gonna get a lunch buffet at Caesars, but the line was so dang long that we decided to go across the street and just go to Harrah's instead. There was no line there. This is the crazy place with the giant vegetables holding up the ceiling that Cami talked about in her update. She even took a picture of me with a giant peach, but she hasn't developed her pictures yet so I don't have that here for you to see.
After that, we went next door from there to Casino Royale and played some blackjack. I did alright there. And then we walked back to Caesars to pick up our cars and head back home.
Of course, we couldn't just go straight home. I mean, there's the Desperado roller coaster on the way back. So of course we stopped by there and rode on it. It seemed especially fast that day, I don't know why. I just don't remember pulling so many negative g's at the tops of the hills before. Pretty scary when you consider that all you have is a lap bar to hold you in!!
The drive back from there was just ridiculous. It was literally a parking lot in the middle of the desert. We passed by a sign that said "Baker 11 miles", and we got to baker about an hour and a half later. I asked Cami to stick her head out of the window and take a picture, and she did.

5:30pm

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e stopped in Baker. We ate at Burger King. The stream of red brake lights seemed to go on forever, on up into the hills. How long did it go? No one knew. It was like something out of a bad movie. Thousands of people streamed into this little town in the middle of the desert, tired, frustrated, and wondering what to do. You wanted to believe that the string of brakelights ended over the next hill, but that was just us wanting to believe that the solution was just over the next hill. We just sat on a curb and pondered what to do.
I was fully prepared to just drive back to Stateline. I knew it would only take about 30 to get there. Spend the night there and come back the next

Stuck outside baker (click to enlarge)

day. The others were not so keen on that idea. Actually, I was entertaining the idea of just driving back to Vegas and moving there. Kind of like what that waiter from Planet Hollywood did. I mean, I knew that there'd be hotel rooms available... and I had enough money in my pocket to put down a deposit on an apartment... and of course, there's money in the bank. I could come back in a few weeks when there was no traffic and pick up my computer and junk. But alas, I had to take Cami and Mary home and I don't think they were feeling as adventurous as I was at the moment.

7:00pm

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inally we got back on the road. The traffic was still bad, going about 20mph. But at least it was going a steady 20, and not stop and go like it was before. I think it was good that we waited. We were practically in Ontario before I was actually able to drive more than 50mph. And after that, it was pretty much just an uneventful drive back to San Diego. We got back, only 8 hours after leaving Vegas. Tired, beat up, but relaxed and happy for sure.

10/12/2000 update:
The pictures in Mary's camera have finally been developed and added to this page. I don't know anything about Cami's pictures though. But when those get developed, of course, the good ones will be here, and once again, you will find out about it through the regular update. BTW, that pic of me throwing money was taken by Mary... and was doctored up by me. Yes, the money there is all real, but no, there wasn't really that much of it there. :)