When I was young and foolish (unlike now, when I am old... and foolish) I made my first visit to Las Vegas as part of a west coast baseball tour. I dealt with an outfit that would take a group of people who signed up from city to city, attending major league baseball games in various cities, traveling by bus in the early part of the day. For instance, on one trip I joined everyone in Milwaukee, We went to Detroit, saw a game that evening, stayed in a motel overnight, then drove to Toronto where we saw a game, stayed overnight, then went to Montreal. It was a great way to see different parks and teams with others who had the same interest. Then the summer of '94 I signed up for a west coast swing. The bus started in Wisconsin, drove out to Las Vegas, stopped for the night, and on a Saturday went on to San Diego, then Los Angeles, then up to San Francisco, Oregon (a minor league stop), and on to Seattle. Then back down to Oakland, a minor league stop in the middle of California, back to Los Angeles and back to Las Vegas after a week on the road. To save the time it would have cost me to ride the bus from Wisconsin to Vegas and also the stretch back, I flew from Milwaukee to Las Vegas and back and joined the bus at that point in the trip. The excursion was marred by problems. When we left Vegas for California, the air conditioning died and the passengers suffered through the heat in the passage. In California, they switched buses to one that had working air conditioning, but when we got to Seattle, the Kingdome was shut down because that was the year the roof had problems and pieces were falling. Sigh. I go all the way to Seattle, and then I didn't get to go inside.
But getting back to my first experience in Las Vegas, I flew in to McCarran at about 11PM, grabbed a shuttle and got downtown about midnight. I checked into my room at Fitzgeralds and dropped everything to see the sights. This was pre-FSE so I was going from casino to casino and trying a little BJ or roulette at each stop. I spent a while in each place, enjoying the atmosphere. I worked my way as far as the Western Hotel and was sitting at a BJ table by the open front, when the sun was just coming up. A scruffy-looking guy at the table was digging crumpled singles out of the pocket of his dirty jeans, and I thought, "Oh my God, what am I doing here?" I stumbled back to the more civilized area of downtown glancing fearfully over my shoulder every few steps, and continued to have fun until almost 9AM when I was to board the bus to leave Sin City. I gathered my bag from a room I had booked but spent almost no time in, and left for my week of baseball. I slept most of the day in the oven of a bus except for waking when we passed through Barstow. The following weekend I got back to LV at 3PM and enjoyed further fun until I got to McCarran for my 11:45PM flight home. I resolved then and there I would get back to Vegas to see all that I didn't get to on that trip. A few months later, I did just that, spending my first full week. I keep going back, because I will never think I have seen it all.
