So, we’re sitting at the gate waiting for the plane to arrive, we’re informed that it’s slightly delayed, it should be here in the next 15 minutes or so and that we should be able to board shortly after they clean up the seats. They ensure us that all the connecting flights at this point will be able to be completed. We’re just sitting there not really doing anything, I’m listening to my MP3 Player, and he’s on his new fancy phone playing his games. I decide to lean my head back on the chair and get some shut eye, my eyes are closed for maybe two minutes at most, yet I have an eerie feeling going on inside my head, it’s going “Someone’s watching you!”. So I pop my head back up and there he is, Bryan is just staring at me, silently watching me sleep. OMG! Awkward! I can only imagine what was going on through his head @ that time.
In the interest of not ruining my trip, I decide not to inquire further about it; I will just pretend that never happened.
After we board the plane and some light conversation, I find out that he doesn’t sleep on planes; he can’t, for some reason. Then all of a sudden he goes frantically rifling through his bag, not once, but twice. I was unable to fathom a reason at the time as to what he was looking for. It seemed like he misplaced something really important though, but the look on his face seemed like he was about to cry. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what he was looking for, so I asked “is everything okay?” that’s when he told me that he lost his brown envelope.
We get to the Detroit airport and I’m starved! So before we board on the next plane, we make a quick stop @ McDonald’s and we each grab a Big Mac combo to inhale on the plane. He inhales all of his food in no time, ‘man that guy’s fast!’ About half way into the flight, he wakes me up because he has to go potty, so I have to disturb the guy sitting next to me, as I was sitting in the middle. As Bryan leaves, the guy makes small talk with me, asks me if we’re going for work or for fun, I tell him fun. Then ask him the same question, he says he’s going for work, he’s got a conference, and it’s on Power Engineering. Huh! I have no idea what Power Engineer does. But would you look @ that, I learnt about another profession on another trip to Vegas. Vegas is very knowledgeable!
We arrive safely, only a few people at the upper rows clap, I was expecting more excitement that people would stand up, shout hoorays, say stupid shit, because I certainly was ready to do it too, but nobody did it. Too bad, maybe next time. Next time? Yes, there will be a next time!
We de-board and have to take the tram to the baggage carousel, I’ve been here twice before, but I can’t seem to recall having to take the tram to the baggage claim, I must be getting old. We stop @ Carousel 7 and wait, and wait, and wait some more. I didn’t even realize there were only a few people left until I started bringing myself back to reality, that’s when we went to the lost baggage to file a claim.
Long story short, our flight was delayed, so our bags didn’t make the connection, the lady opening up the claim said that we could go buy some necessities and then send the bill over to head office and we’ll get reimbursed for it. We wanted some guidelines on what we could buy, and how much we could spend. She mentioned a $75 Kenneth Cole shirt, that they might reimburse you $50 for it. But in reality she didn’t know. So we decided that once we got back to the hotel we’ll call head office and inquire.
Enough of the prologue let’s get this show on the road already! I have no idea what time it is at this point, probably 10PM Vegas time? Still early right? Plus we get an extra hour too, due to daylight savings.
We hail a cab, hop in and I say “Excalibur please, no tunnel!” The cabbie laughs.
Cabbie: No tunnel eh? Boy you’d have to be real creative to get to the Excalibur via tunnel.
Bryan: Yeah, we just wanted to cover our bases, yano.
Cabbie: You guys Canadian? I thought so, that tunnel thing is only a Canadian thing, I tell yah, 90% of my passengers who ask for no tunnel are Canadians. Not all of us are crooks yano, I just don’t get it, why go all out of your way just to make a buck!
I’m not sure if he was an actual stand up guy, or he was just saying that ‘cause we knew to ask him to not take the tunnel. For those of you who don’t know, there are two ways to get onto the strip from the Airport, one is via the Freeway, where you have to go through a tunnel, this is the longer way, costs about $5 more, and the other way is to just go down Tropicana.
We get to the hotel, he gets out of his cab and begins to open up his trunk, force of habit? We kindly remind him that we don’t have luggage, I give him around $15 for the ride, I think.
We get to the front desk for check-in, time to try the $20 trick (The $20 trick is where you wedge a $20 bill between your ID & Credit Card, to bribe the person checking you in to give you an upgrade to your room). I hand over all of my information, she takes it and says let’s see, and goes “Oh, they already upgraded you, no need” and hands me the $20 back. I wanted to tip her a $5 spot, but then realized she didn’t even do anything! Since she wasn't able to upgrade us, I asked her if the porn in my room could be disabled, she replied by saying "No, sorry, we only have normal porn". Ha ha! I love that joke!
We tell her that they lost our luggage and asked if there was any place in the hotel or around here that we could buy some necessities? She tells us that there is a store in the lobby over there! Awesome!
We get up to the room, drop our things off, use the washroom, and call head office. The guy from head office wasn’t able to tell us what spending limit we had either. I guess no one really knew, otherwise everyone would max out on it.
This room was suppose to be a newly renovated Widescreen room. It was just like the room I had @ the Paris hotel, nothing too fancy, oh well something to look forward to tomorrow.
We find the store do a quick look around, they don’t have what we need. We go to the front desk again and ask a lady there, about where is the closest Wal-Green’s so that we can buy some stuff. She tells us that it’s down the street from the MGM. Oh cool! We know where the MGM is, we saw it as we were coming in! But wait, she didn’t tell us which direction. North, East, South, West? Ah well, we’ll ask again, once we make it to MGM.
We get to MGM and start making our way up the strip, looking for that Wal-Green’s, still nothing in sight, so we ask again since I wanted to make sure we were headed in the correct direction, we still haven’t eaten at this point yet! We finally get there, probably spend about 30 minutes going through the store, looking for all the things we needed to buy, toothbrush, toothpaste, underwear, socks, shirt, sweatpants, 99 cent Arizona Iced tea, spicy Cheetos. We each ended up spending about $50 there.
We quickly head back to the hotel to drop our things off, then quickly head on back out to go find that legendary In-N-Out Burger. We can easily spot it, but it’s on the other side of the freeway? How on earth are we going to get across that? I read on the internet that some where there is a sidewalk that leads us to a crossing on the sidewalk. Luckily Bryan is l33t @ video games and was able to find the hidden pathway.
We head in, holy cow! The lineup is long! It’s probably 1am right now, and all the drunks are piling in, we wait in line and place our orders. Holy cow! These burgers are good! What do they put in them? They’ve got a slight crunch to them; I suspect that the secret to the burger is fresh toppings, lettuce and tomatoes.
We head on out and make our way back to the strip. No word of a lie, as we’re standing at the intersection waiting to cross a random black guy strolls along shouting “HEY YOU WANT COCAINE? TRY BEFORE YOU BUY, FREE SAMPLE. COCAINE, MAN." We just ignored him and laughed about it afterward.
The original plan was to go clubbing after eating @ the burger joint, but since they lost our luggage and our clothes were in there, that plan went to shit.
We then head on over to the Hooters hotel to try and find some $3 blackjack for Bryan since he’s a newbie and all, and needs to build up his comfort zone. They have 2 $3 tables going on, and of course they’re all full, we walk around for a bit more, only to discover that the waitresses are all really saggy looking and that the players desk is closed. So we head out and head on over to the Tropicana. They just remodeled the place, so the place looks pretty clean and neat. The floors are milky colored, so they have a very bright atmosphere to it. Of course being 2AM right now, the Players Desk is also closed, oh well. I didn’t have any of my players cards on me, as they were all in my luggage, but I said what the heck, let’s sit down and show the newbie how it’s done. Played for a bit, not too long and walked away up a bit. I just wanted some spending money, so it wasn’t hard to walk away. After that we just headed back to the hotel for some rest. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.
Some Notes:
The giant slot machine that they have outside of the Tropicana, is no longer there, so now you can’t spin it and get a free deck of cards. - Jerry McCambridge is no longer performing @ Hooter's, not sure if he's even still in Vegas, didn't see any billboards
- The place where I once got $0.25 chicken wings is no longer @ Hooter's. I think it was called Dan Marino's.
My GoogleReader told me there was a new entry on the ONE blog I was following. Looking forward to more. Love the pic inclusions.
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