PROLOGUE:
Madman Mike and I started planning this excursion back in August of this year. Our profession was having it's annual "Midyear Clinical" conference in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. We were able to have our employer pay for our registration fee ($550) and pay us for the days we were at the conference, so we didn't have to use our vacation time...sweet. The rest of the expenses were on us. I kept checking the travel websites and grabbed a RT fare on Sun Country for $287. Rental car prices were shocking to say the least, but a 3 day window of opportunity opened up a couple of weeks before the trip and I bagged a full size car for $163 for the week. Three days after, the price was back to up $245.
Hotels: The conference didn't start until Sunday, Dec 2nd so we were able to get a cheap room at the Golden Gate downtown( our favorite place to play Blackjack) for two nights. I reserved a Pyramid room at the Luxor at a reduced rate so that we could be close to the conference at MB...not a great price, but we were close to the "action". To my surprise I received an offer in the mail from the Luxor people about a month before the trip. They offered me 3 free nights in an upgraded Tower room. I immediately called them and reserved a room and got the 4th night at $65. Looks like my play at the Luxor on two of my earlier trips this year paid off.
Mike and I looked at available shows, and since we were staying at the Luxor, we reserved tickets for Carrot Top and Fantasy. A couple of days before we left, I called the El Cortez and made dinner reservations at the Flame...Stone Crab dinner special for $28...yum. Now the hard part.....waiting for the trip to start. I did have a diversion earlier in the week....the Who concert in Minneapolis the Tuesday before the Vegas trip. Wow, Pete can still rock the house. The band played for almost 2 straight hours took 5 minutes for introductions and then played for another 30 minutes.
FRIDAY:
Picked Madman up at his house at 0500 and headed for the Twin Cities. They had forcasted freezing drizzle, but fortune smiled upon us and the weather remained cloudy with no precipitation. The lady at the ticket counter was cheerful and we took them up on their offer for a 1st class upgrade. Nothing like starting our Vegas trip by going there 1st class. Checked our bags and went to the front of the security line via the 1st class entrance and settled into a seat at the gate to await our flight. We boarded first, and soon I was sipping on my gin and tonic at 8 AM before we left the gate. The in-flight breakfast was probably the only dissapointment of the trip...quiche. Where's my bacon and eggs? We picked at it for a bit, but I gave up and ordered another libation. Listened to some tunes and took a brief nap and soon we were landing and de-planing at the new Terminal 3. We grabbed our bags, hitched a ride on the bus to the car rental center and walked right up to the Enterprise counter with no waiting. After the initial paperwork we exited out to the parking lot to pick up the vehicle and was greeted by a lovely young female attendant. I flashed a "Jackson" in my hand and politely asked if a Lincoln MKZ was available. I pretty much took her by surprise and it took her a few moments to fully comprehend my "incentive". She hesitated but took the $20 and guided us over to a very nice MKZ...sweet. The windshield wiper was pulled up which she said might be a sign that there was something wrong with the car; she had to go back to the office to check...not good. A few minutes later she came back with the bad news that indeed the MKZ was not available and handed back my money....niuts. We ended up with a Chrysler 300...a nice car, but no where near as nice as a MKZ. My last two trips to Vegas I was able to weasel an upgrade to a MKZ, but not this trip.
We handed the car over to the Valet at the Golden Gate and were able to check in before noon. Our 3rd floor room faced the street, which gave us some concern about noise, but what the hell. We quickly unpacked and sat down at the counter at Dupars for a real breakfast. We started off with a shrimp cocktail and then Mike had the pancakes while I opted for the French toast...great. We then sat down at a BJ table and had a riot with a very funny older female dealer for the rest of the afternoon. We then took a stroll down the Fremont experience and ducked into the D casino to check out the new layout. The place looked busy, as did the other downtown casinos (with the exception of the Vegas Club).
We had a great dining experience at the Flame; the Stone Crab special. You get a pound of crab, slaw and choice of potato or rice. I ordered a tasty glass of pinot noir and we dove into our meal. The crab was delicious and with the LVA coupon the price for both dinners came to $31. We were too stuffed to partake of the tempting dessert menu. I had some free play which netted me zilch. Back to the Gate.
We spent the next several hours getting our butts kicked by the lovely female BJ dealers at the Gate. Mike and I just could not get a streak going. It seemed everytime I had a double down opportunity I was dealt a low card...3,4 or a 5. I split my 8's a couple of times and had miserable results. When the dust settled at around 0100, I was down $480 for the day, with Mike in the hole to the tune of about $400....ouch. We walked back the room mumbling about this is not the way to start out the trip only to be blasted by the noise of the band in the street below when we entered our room....holy cow was it LOUD. The band played until after 0200 and the street noise from the drunks continued most of the night. I think I might have gotten about 30 minutes of sleep. Mike got up about 0600 and went down to gamble some more, and I laid in bed and tried to get some more shut-eye...not happening. Blurry eyed I got out of bed and got ready for a new day when Mike returned an hour later.
SATURDAY
We had another delicious breakfast at Dupars. Good food and very attentive service; my coffee cup was kept filled by our waitress. We went back to the room and laid down for a while, but still could not fall asleep. Picked up the 300 from the valet and I tried a new route to get to the MB which worked out perfectly. Drove from the Gate, south on Main, took a right onto Wyoming, then a left onto Industrial. Cruised down Industrial with very light traffic and beared left onto Frank Sinatra Dr. Traffic continued to be light and we were pulling into the Luxor parking lot in record time. I had an appointment for a haircut and royal shave at the Art of Shaving which took about ninety minutes. My barber, Jack, was glad to see me and gave me a great shave and haircut..the guy is an artist. Mike, meanwhile gambled at the Luxor and lost. We met up after my apointment and then went to the MB convention center to register and pick up our name tags and other matierials for the conference...quite a hike from the Luxor. We played some slots at MB with no good results and then drove back to the Golden Gate and got ready for dinner. We dined at the Redwood Room at the California and had the Porterhouse steak special for $24. Soup or salad, steak, choice of potato or rice, steamed veggies and apple dumpling for dessert. Our steaks were very good; not the best that I have ever had, but they were a solid value for the price...tender and juicy. I had a Cambria Katherines Vineyard Pinot to go along with my steak. The only thing missing is that they no longer have a piano player in the adjacent lounge area...too bad, that was a nice touch. With our appetites thoroughly satifisied we made our way back to the Gate via the back door of the Vegas Club. Man this place was empty, hardly anyone in the casino area...you could practically hear crickets chirping.
Tonight's BJ session was a complete opposite of last night's fiasco. We again had great dealers, but we also had some very funny and capable tablemates . During the middle of our session, I pushed with a 20, three times in a row. When I pointed this out to Madman, he replied, "You know what that means? Triple your bet, dude!!" The table got a good laugh, but I declined to bump my bet as Mikey suggested...doh...I was dealt a blackjack. Everyone at the table roared with laughter at my plight and the phrase "Triple your bet" became the by-line for the trip. I kept ordering Tangueray and Tonics, but the CW kept bringing me the worst tasting swill. I finally tipped Ivy, our server a fiver and asked if she could bring me the real deal...done...rest of the night my G & T's were very tasty and STRONG. Things were going great and when we quit at 0130 we were both up over $400 each.
Before we had left for dinner I begged the desk clerk to give us a different room- one away from the street chaos. Thankfully she said we could have another room, but it was a smoking one. We decided to choke on the smoke smell in difference to the noise and lack of sleep. The new room did smell like the inside of a well used ashtray, but we did get a good night's sleep.
SUNDAY
My shower was noteworthy in that the water temperature kept fluctuating from scalding to ice cold. No matter how I twisted the nobs, the water temp kept changing from hot to cold to hot again. We packed up and then went down and sat at the casino bar and watched the NFL games while the bartender poured us free OJ's. They even changed one of the channels at my request so that we could watch my Vikings choke against the stupid Packers. At half-time we checked out and headed for the Luxor. We grabbed some Nathan hotdogs at the Luxor food court and then took our "to go" orders and sat in the Luxor sportsbook to watch the games. Mike and I each had made a 4 team parlay bet with each of us picking Da Bears as one of our teams...they went down in flames destroying our hopes of making a killing. I have been a Lions fan since I was a kid growing up north of Detroit....I have endured some brutal and exasperating football seasons watching the Lions continue to find a way to lose games. That's why I bet against them today. Imagine my delight when the Lions defense folded up like a card table and let the Colts score twice in the the last 4 minutes of the game and squeak out a last second win. Pay me.
Money in hand, we went over and checked into our Tower room at the Luxor. The room was a good walk from the casino, but it was very nice and roomy. The bathroom was large with a separate shower and bathtub. The beds were also very comfortable. We again unpacked and then Mike wanted to iron some of his dress shirts. After watching his inept attempts at using the steam iron and soaking his shirt I stepped in and gave him a quick tutorial on ironing. We looked at our conference schedule and decided to skip the afternoon NFL games and instead attend one of the two hour lectures at the conference on drug interactions. This meeting was followed by another dinner meeting which lasted until a little before 8 PM. We had just enough time to walk from MB to the Luxor and catch our Carrot Top show.
We had great seats, row C, dead center. Carrot Top was crazy funny and we laughed almost continuously at his gags. It turns out that several of his family members were in attendance. His Mom and Dad were sitting right behind us. One comment he made about people's behavior in Vegas was about the young girls who party hard at the nightclubs and then you see them weaving in the hallways carrying their high heeled shoes in their hands. After the show Mike and I went back to the room, changed clothes and then drove back down to the Gate to play more Blackjack until 12:30 AM. (came out $20 to the good). When we walked into the Luxor we were greeted by two hookers and politely declined their offers of providing us with a good time. When we got thru the casino and into the West Tower area there were three young inebriated women staggering toward the elevators each with their shoes in their hands!. One of them was so drunk that the other two had to hold her up during the elevator ride. She was going to be a train wreck in the morning.
MONDAY
The alarm went off at 05:30...groan. We had a breakfast meeting on pain medications...good lecture...bad breakfast....quiche. At 09:30 the keynote speaker of the conference, former prez Bill Clinton was set to speak. He had a packed audience and gave a very informative talk. Afterwards we attended various lectures for the rest of the day until 5 PM. We dragged ourselves back to the Luxor, changed clothes and drove over to the Orleans to have dinner at Big Al's oyster bar. A half dozen oysters on the half shell and a steaming bowl of clam chowder with Blue Moon to wash it down with hit the spot. Our show, Fantasy didn't start until 10:30, a late show. Beautiful and talented women wearing next to nothing. The show is in the same theater as Carrot Top and we were seated just a couple of seats to the left of where we were sitting the night before...right at boob level. An entertaining show, but I don't think I will see it again. I has been a very long day, and we had another breakfast meeting planned...lights out at 12:30.
I think I will end here and write the last segment of the trip tomorrow. Most of the rest of our trip was mostly business, but we did manage to get a little "monkey" business in before the trip was over. Thanks for reading.....
Madman Mike and I started planning this excursion back in August of this year. Our profession was having it's annual "Midyear Clinical" conference in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. We were able to have our employer pay for our registration fee ($550) and pay us for the days we were at the conference, so we didn't have to use our vacation time...sweet. The rest of the expenses were on us. I kept checking the travel websites and grabbed a RT fare on Sun Country for $287. Rental car prices were shocking to say the least, but a 3 day window of opportunity opened up a couple of weeks before the trip and I bagged a full size car for $163 for the week. Three days after, the price was back to up $245.
Hotels: The conference didn't start until Sunday, Dec 2nd so we were able to get a cheap room at the Golden Gate downtown( our favorite place to play Blackjack) for two nights. I reserved a Pyramid room at the Luxor at a reduced rate so that we could be close to the conference at MB...not a great price, but we were close to the "action". To my surprise I received an offer in the mail from the Luxor people about a month before the trip. They offered me 3 free nights in an upgraded Tower room. I immediately called them and reserved a room and got the 4th night at $65. Looks like my play at the Luxor on two of my earlier trips this year paid off.
Mike and I looked at available shows, and since we were staying at the Luxor, we reserved tickets for Carrot Top and Fantasy. A couple of days before we left, I called the El Cortez and made dinner reservations at the Flame...Stone Crab dinner special for $28...yum. Now the hard part.....waiting for the trip to start. I did have a diversion earlier in the week....the Who concert in Minneapolis the Tuesday before the Vegas trip. Wow, Pete can still rock the house. The band played for almost 2 straight hours took 5 minutes for introductions and then played for another 30 minutes.
FRIDAY:
Picked Madman up at his house at 0500 and headed for the Twin Cities. They had forcasted freezing drizzle, but fortune smiled upon us and the weather remained cloudy with no precipitation. The lady at the ticket counter was cheerful and we took them up on their offer for a 1st class upgrade. Nothing like starting our Vegas trip by going there 1st class. Checked our bags and went to the front of the security line via the 1st class entrance and settled into a seat at the gate to await our flight. We boarded first, and soon I was sipping on my gin and tonic at 8 AM before we left the gate. The in-flight breakfast was probably the only dissapointment of the trip...quiche. Where's my bacon and eggs? We picked at it for a bit, but I gave up and ordered another libation. Listened to some tunes and took a brief nap and soon we were landing and de-planing at the new Terminal 3. We grabbed our bags, hitched a ride on the bus to the car rental center and walked right up to the Enterprise counter with no waiting. After the initial paperwork we exited out to the parking lot to pick up the vehicle and was greeted by a lovely young female attendant. I flashed a "Jackson" in my hand and politely asked if a Lincoln MKZ was available. I pretty much took her by surprise and it took her a few moments to fully comprehend my "incentive". She hesitated but took the $20 and guided us over to a very nice MKZ...sweet. The windshield wiper was pulled up which she said might be a sign that there was something wrong with the car; she had to go back to the office to check...not good. A few minutes later she came back with the bad news that indeed the MKZ was not available and handed back my money....niuts. We ended up with a Chrysler 300...a nice car, but no where near as nice as a MKZ. My last two trips to Vegas I was able to weasel an upgrade to a MKZ, but not this trip.
We handed the car over to the Valet at the Golden Gate and were able to check in before noon. Our 3rd floor room faced the street, which gave us some concern about noise, but what the hell. We quickly unpacked and sat down at the counter at Dupars for a real breakfast. We started off with a shrimp cocktail and then Mike had the pancakes while I opted for the French toast...great. We then sat down at a BJ table and had a riot with a very funny older female dealer for the rest of the afternoon. We then took a stroll down the Fremont experience and ducked into the D casino to check out the new layout. The place looked busy, as did the other downtown casinos (with the exception of the Vegas Club).
We had a great dining experience at the Flame; the Stone Crab special. You get a pound of crab, slaw and choice of potato or rice. I ordered a tasty glass of pinot noir and we dove into our meal. The crab was delicious and with the LVA coupon the price for both dinners came to $31. We were too stuffed to partake of the tempting dessert menu. I had some free play which netted me zilch. Back to the Gate.
We spent the next several hours getting our butts kicked by the lovely female BJ dealers at the Gate. Mike and I just could not get a streak going. It seemed everytime I had a double down opportunity I was dealt a low card...3,4 or a 5. I split my 8's a couple of times and had miserable results. When the dust settled at around 0100, I was down $480 for the day, with Mike in the hole to the tune of about $400....ouch. We walked back the room mumbling about this is not the way to start out the trip only to be blasted by the noise of the band in the street below when we entered our room....holy cow was it LOUD. The band played until after 0200 and the street noise from the drunks continued most of the night. I think I might have gotten about 30 minutes of sleep. Mike got up about 0600 and went down to gamble some more, and I laid in bed and tried to get some more shut-eye...not happening. Blurry eyed I got out of bed and got ready for a new day when Mike returned an hour later.
SATURDAY
We had another delicious breakfast at Dupars. Good food and very attentive service; my coffee cup was kept filled by our waitress. We went back to the room and laid down for a while, but still could not fall asleep. Picked up the 300 from the valet and I tried a new route to get to the MB which worked out perfectly. Drove from the Gate, south on Main, took a right onto Wyoming, then a left onto Industrial. Cruised down Industrial with very light traffic and beared left onto Frank Sinatra Dr. Traffic continued to be light and we were pulling into the Luxor parking lot in record time. I had an appointment for a haircut and royal shave at the Art of Shaving which took about ninety minutes. My barber, Jack, was glad to see me and gave me a great shave and haircut..the guy is an artist. Mike, meanwhile gambled at the Luxor and lost. We met up after my apointment and then went to the MB convention center to register and pick up our name tags and other matierials for the conference...quite a hike from the Luxor. We played some slots at MB with no good results and then drove back to the Golden Gate and got ready for dinner. We dined at the Redwood Room at the California and had the Porterhouse steak special for $24. Soup or salad, steak, choice of potato or rice, steamed veggies and apple dumpling for dessert. Our steaks were very good; not the best that I have ever had, but they were a solid value for the price...tender and juicy. I had a Cambria Katherines Vineyard Pinot to go along with my steak. The only thing missing is that they no longer have a piano player in the adjacent lounge area...too bad, that was a nice touch. With our appetites thoroughly satifisied we made our way back to the Gate via the back door of the Vegas Club. Man this place was empty, hardly anyone in the casino area...you could practically hear crickets chirping.
Tonight's BJ session was a complete opposite of last night's fiasco. We again had great dealers, but we also had some very funny and capable tablemates . During the middle of our session, I pushed with a 20, three times in a row. When I pointed this out to Madman, he replied, "You know what that means? Triple your bet, dude!!" The table got a good laugh, but I declined to bump my bet as Mikey suggested...doh...I was dealt a blackjack. Everyone at the table roared with laughter at my plight and the phrase "Triple your bet" became the by-line for the trip. I kept ordering Tangueray and Tonics, but the CW kept bringing me the worst tasting swill. I finally tipped Ivy, our server a fiver and asked if she could bring me the real deal...done...rest of the night my G & T's were very tasty and STRONG. Things were going great and when we quit at 0130 we were both up over $400 each.
Before we had left for dinner I begged the desk clerk to give us a different room- one away from the street chaos. Thankfully she said we could have another room, but it was a smoking one. We decided to choke on the smoke smell in difference to the noise and lack of sleep. The new room did smell like the inside of a well used ashtray, but we did get a good night's sleep.
SUNDAY
My shower was noteworthy in that the water temperature kept fluctuating from scalding to ice cold. No matter how I twisted the nobs, the water temp kept changing from hot to cold to hot again. We packed up and then went down and sat at the casino bar and watched the NFL games while the bartender poured us free OJ's. They even changed one of the channels at my request so that we could watch my Vikings choke against the stupid Packers. At half-time we checked out and headed for the Luxor. We grabbed some Nathan hotdogs at the Luxor food court and then took our "to go" orders and sat in the Luxor sportsbook to watch the games. Mike and I each had made a 4 team parlay bet with each of us picking Da Bears as one of our teams...they went down in flames destroying our hopes of making a killing. I have been a Lions fan since I was a kid growing up north of Detroit....I have endured some brutal and exasperating football seasons watching the Lions continue to find a way to lose games. That's why I bet against them today. Imagine my delight when the Lions defense folded up like a card table and let the Colts score twice in the the last 4 minutes of the game and squeak out a last second win. Pay me.
Money in hand, we went over and checked into our Tower room at the Luxor. The room was a good walk from the casino, but it was very nice and roomy. The bathroom was large with a separate shower and bathtub. The beds were also very comfortable. We again unpacked and then Mike wanted to iron some of his dress shirts. After watching his inept attempts at using the steam iron and soaking his shirt I stepped in and gave him a quick tutorial on ironing. We looked at our conference schedule and decided to skip the afternoon NFL games and instead attend one of the two hour lectures at the conference on drug interactions. This meeting was followed by another dinner meeting which lasted until a little before 8 PM. We had just enough time to walk from MB to the Luxor and catch our Carrot Top show.
We had great seats, row C, dead center. Carrot Top was crazy funny and we laughed almost continuously at his gags. It turns out that several of his family members were in attendance. His Mom and Dad were sitting right behind us. One comment he made about people's behavior in Vegas was about the young girls who party hard at the nightclubs and then you see them weaving in the hallways carrying their high heeled shoes in their hands. After the show Mike and I went back to the room, changed clothes and then drove back down to the Gate to play more Blackjack until 12:30 AM. (came out $20 to the good). When we walked into the Luxor we were greeted by two hookers and politely declined their offers of providing us with a good time. When we got thru the casino and into the West Tower area there were three young inebriated women staggering toward the elevators each with their shoes in their hands!. One of them was so drunk that the other two had to hold her up during the elevator ride. She was going to be a train wreck in the morning.
MONDAY
The alarm went off at 05:30...groan. We had a breakfast meeting on pain medications...good lecture...bad breakfast....quiche. At 09:30 the keynote speaker of the conference, former prez Bill Clinton was set to speak. He had a packed audience and gave a very informative talk. Afterwards we attended various lectures for the rest of the day until 5 PM. We dragged ourselves back to the Luxor, changed clothes and drove over to the Orleans to have dinner at Big Al's oyster bar. A half dozen oysters on the half shell and a steaming bowl of clam chowder with Blue Moon to wash it down with hit the spot. Our show, Fantasy didn't start until 10:30, a late show. Beautiful and talented women wearing next to nothing. The show is in the same theater as Carrot Top and we were seated just a couple of seats to the left of where we were sitting the night before...right at boob level. An entertaining show, but I don't think I will see it again. I has been a very long day, and we had another breakfast meeting planned...lights out at 12:30.
I think I will end here and write the last segment of the trip tomorrow. Most of the rest of our trip was mostly business, but we did manage to get a little "monkey" business in before the trip was over. Thanks for reading.....
