The Vegas Recap - Part I

I decided this fall that I would travel to Las Vegas on the first weekend of June with my co-ed soccer team to take part in a tournament held there every year. In previous years I did not have a team to go with, but everybody kept telling me about how much fun the trip was and how much fun I would have, so I couldn't resist. I gave in this year and booked my ticket. Oops.

To begin with, I discovered in January that spring quarter finals would begin the week following my return from Vegas. With any luck, my finals would not be on Monday and Tuesday. Things usually work out for me, so I of course assumed that my finals would be Tuesday and Wednesday. No such luck. My Legal Ethics final? Monday, 8:30am. Too much irony here for me to fully address. Oddly enough, I had Family Law on Tuesday. It seems to me that the two subjects I would be tested on were particularly fitting given my trip to Vegas. How many families have been destroyed by what people did while in Vegas? So I knew before I left that I would have to study while in Vegas... I should have taken bets on my productivity.

We arrive on Thursday night at 11pm. I link to this Bill Simmons article because he does an excellent job of describing McCarran Airport. Simmons refers to it as the "Seventh Circle of Hell", and he's correct. We land, and it's a race to the taxis. I am traveling with friends Dan and Matt. Matt is in Vegas at least once a month for work, as he manages an office there. He informs us that in order to travel with him, we are not allowed to check bags. Fine. We all have carry-ons. We get off of the airport tram and it's a speed-walking contest to the taxi-line. I wish it were a sprint, but the distance couldn't have been any shorter than a mile. We finally get there (Matt and I get there, Dan is considerably behind and counting the moments until he can start smoking), and the line is ridiculous. We deliberate, and decide on taking a casino shuttle, thinking this will save us time. The decision blows up in our face. Although it leaves the airport 30 minutes before we would have gotten a taxi, it stops to drop off the other 15 riders on the shuttle first. Each rider staying at a different casino. In other words, the Sixth Circle of Hell. We could have walked to our hotel in 20 minutes. Instead, we were trapped on this shuttle, continually driving within 4 blocks of our hotel but never actually going there. It felt like being on the merry-go-round and reaching for that stupid ring. This was always an issue for me as I was NEVER tall enough to reach it. So, constantly within sight but always out of reach. That was our trip to the hotel.

Finally, at 1am, we arrive and check in. Our room is nice, and the bed is comfortable, but this is Vegas baby! We're not staying in our room, we're going out! Dan and I meet up with the rest of our team at the MGM. They've all been in town for a day, and they are all wasted. Dan and I are sober. This is not fun. I end up leaving after an hour because I've had my junk groped three times - and never by a person who does not have their own junk. Sometimes I wonder about soccer players.

Matt was the smart one. He went to sleep when we arrived at the hotel. Because he knew something we didn't. We would be waking up at 7am to run errands. We had to pick up our rental car. We had to go shopping for booze. We had to check in to our new hotel. And then we had to go to a day-long bachelor party that Matt's friend was throwing in Vegas. Dan and I, who between us slept maybe 8 hours, were tired and grumpy. Coffee helped solve this, as did the convertible we rented. But Vegas is hot, and nothing makes me grumpy like sweating in a car. Every time we stopped moving it felt like I wet my pants. I have a perspiration issue - I sweat at the drop of a hat. So Vegas and 107 degrees is problematic for me. But I struggle through, and we get to the Palms with $300 worth of booze and an afternoon to kill with a bunch of early 30s bachelor partiers at a pool-side suite. Good times ahead.

Small explanation. You can't check in to a hotel at 11am, so when we moved to our new hotel, all we could do was check our luggage. I forgot to bring my swimsuit with me, so when we got to the Palms, all I had to swim in were my cargo shorts. I decided what the hell, and got in the water, knowing full-well that I would be moist and unpleasant the rest of the day. The pool at the Palms was familiar... reminiscent of something I'd seen before. No, not other swimming pools... Aha! I remembered! It was like watching Animal Planet shows about mating behavior. In the pool were no more than 10 guys who were not using steroids or human growth hormone. People in the pool were huge. Even the small guys looked like Magnus Ver Magnusson, able to pull a jet from the runway to the gate if the engines were to lose power. The women were mostly plastic or botox. Again, maybe 10 women in the pool did not have fake boobs. But the most memorable people were not in the pool.

The first was perhaps a 26 year old man, roughly 6'3", who was dancing on the edge of the pool wearing a cowboy hat and expensive sunglasses. His dance reminded me of a Bird of Paradise, showing off his moves for a potential mate in hopes that they would be powerless to resist him. Either that, or the barking/splashing spectacle that seals put on when trying to attract a mate. Whether his dance was working or not is unclear. I was not there long enough to witness any success. I was there long enough however to see him attempt his own Thunder Down Under review show with a poor girl sitting in a lawn chair next to the pool. He "mounted" the chairs on either side of her, shook his business in her face, and gradually moved in closer and closer. At one point, it appeared that the girl threw up in her mouth a little bit. At this point, he turned around and started shaking his ass in her face. Everybody in the pool was watching, so this guy achieved his goal of being the center of attention. Perhaps he's more successful than I thought because I'm writing about him now. But he's a D-Bag. So in the end he loses.

The other was a cougar. Perhaps in her mid-30s, this woman stood at the edge of the pool for over an hour. She was dressed in a bikini top, expensive sun-glasses, platforms, and those boxer-brief type shorts that girls wear when they want their ass to hang out. This girl had a nice ass - hell, she had a nice body. And everybody knew it. But so did she. So she stood, on the edge of the pool, for over an hour, facing her friends in the lawn chairs, addressing her assets to the eyes of all men in the pool. Shameless promotion. But she did have a nice ass. She was not enticed by the dancing D-Bag, however.

As time progressed, Dan and I had to leave to go to the MGM and meet up with our teammates. We took a shot for the road, and I was a wee bit drunk. Drunk enough that I forgot to bring my t-shirt with me when we left. So there I was, moving from one hotel to the next, in nothing but flip-flops, wet shorts, sun glasses and visor, and a towel. I probably looked like an asshole. We wandered out to the lazy river pool. Recall I was a bit drunk and had only been to the MGM once before. I had no idea where we were going or how we got to the pool. But I wasn't falling over or anything. I was just distracted by all the bright lights! We got to the pool at 4pm, and started drinking for real. Beer after beer after beer. Everybody was buying 5-beer buckets for $25. The beer was flowing like wine, and the elite were flocking like the salmon of Capistrano! Well, it's hard to gauge how drunk you are when you're in the water and it's 100 degrees. So when 7pm rolled around, and everybody wanted to go change and get dinner in anticipation of going out, I was in trouble.

I believe, and this is no better than a rough estimate, that I consumed 8 beers while at the MGM. Along with what I'd had at the Palms, I'd had roughly 13 drinks in 6 hours. I was WASTED! But I didn't know it until I tried to get out of the pool, which, took me three tries. I got halfway out, only to fall back in. Again, but this time, 3/4 out. Finally, with some assistance, I made it out of the pool. I took two steps, and fell down, scattering lawn chairs in every direction. People laughed. So did I. How drunk are you? they asked. A lot drunker than I thought, I answered. After another lawn-chair scattering fall, I had secured a towel, dried off a bit, and retrieved my wallet and cell-phone, which went into my pockets. Dan and I walked out, to drive back to our hotel and change for the evening. No such luck for me, things would not be that simple.

As we walked, the pool was on my left. I was probably 10 feet from the edge when it felt like gravity drew me towards the pool. I began to lean, and pretty soon my momentum was carrying me towards the pool, while my body still faced forward. To the onlooker it appeared as though I'd been pushed, but that was not the case. Instead, I fell into the pool, ruining my cell phone. Once in the water, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, just in time to see it go dead. People laughed. Dan, however, did not stop to wait for me. I have no idea where Dan went. I finally made it out of the pool, and began to wander alone back towards the casino lobby. That took awhile. I was drunk, wet, I had no shirt, and no means of communication. I found the lobby, but no Dan. I stumbled around. People stared at me. I had a towel and a sunburn. I must have been a sight. I began to weigh my options. I did not know the room numbers of the people who were staying at the MGM. I knew the name of the person the rooms would be under, but the workers would not give me the room numbers. I was too drunk to realize that they would likely be willing to call the room for me and then I could figure out what their room numbers were. I had money. I could take a cab back to my hotel. But wait, we hadn't checked in. And my name wasn't on the room. So if I were to go to the desk at my hotel, again, they wouldn't give me the room number. And I didn't know if anybody was there, so would I be able to get in? I had no shirt. Again, this greatly limited what I could do. And I had no phone. So I stood there, wondering if I was going to spend my first full night in Vegas hanging out in a lobby, wet and drunk, waiting for somebody I knew to come by.

Fortunately, somebody came by much sooner, and I was saved. Eventually I got in touch with Dan, and we made it back to the hotel. I passed out at 8:30 and woke up the next morning completely refreshed, just in time to play some soccer...

This concludes Part I of the post.