Thursday May 28th, 2009

Today counts as basically the best sleep I've ever had in Vegas. Cory was up off and on in the morning, and I vaguely recall him leaving the room and coming back after finding a blueberry muffin to nurse his stomach. But I slept like a rock, likely because we had no major plans or any timelines to keep today. I get moving out of bed, and scan the room. No Cory.... I call his cell phone to find out he's killing time playing some low limit poker downstairs. I tell him to hang tight and we'll hook up after I take a quick shower.

Side rant, have you ever had a shower head that "squeaks" after a few minutes? The one in room 809 at the Golden Nugget does just that. It's rather annoying, and there's no position you can put it in to fix the problem. Argh. Rant over.

We meet downstairs and Cory cashes out of his $2 / $4 limit hold'em game. I suggest Main Street Station for some food, and he doesn't object. We wander outside, and make it without any problems.

As we're wandering around downtown, we come up on the cross walk turning to the "do not cross" sign. About that time a huge black man with bloodshot eyes and I make eye contact. He walks right up to me and says "Hey man, whatcho need?" I'm a little buzzed by this point and say "Um, what do you mean?"

"I can hook you up with your own incentive, if you know what I'm talking about." Ummmmm......no, I don't. I look into his red eyes and say "Look man, I'm from the mid-west so you need to spell it out for my sorry ass." He nods and says "I got cocaine dude!"

I all but jump back and say "Oh, shit! That's well beyond me man, and I know you're working so I'm not going to waste your time." I figured that was a nice way to get him out of my way without getting hustled.

One side trip later, and we're meeting up with Duster at Harrah's. He was at Rio earlier in the day and got some decent pictures of all the poker pros who are out making appearances for the World Series of Poker. We re-cap the day's events thus far between the three of us, and start our venture outside. But we do manage to get a few pictures of some drunken patrons in the area.

From Harrah's we head over to the Venetian to see what's happening. It appeared that a lot of girls were leaving, so I assume they were likely coming out of the club. I snapped a few (probably not so) inconspicuous pictures as they passed by. For some reason Duster thought it'd be a good idea to jump up and take a drink from one of the fountains. That is until we talked to him about the "gray water" Nevada uses for such purposes. Nothing really caught our attention here, so we left and ventured towards Imperial Palace.

As we approached IP, we were met by at least four different guys who were willing to take us to a strip club. Typical package deal, no cover, no fee for transportation, round of drinks free, yada yada yada. At one point we even had one guy come up to us asking if we needed passes, during another guy asking us the same thing. They're like vultures out there. I posed for and snapped a few pictures while we were standing around and then we saw something that caught our attention.

Not more than 20 feet away from us a girl was pulled over. Of course the drunken crowd had to focus all their attention on the spectacle in front of us. They made her pop the trunk, and then step outside of the vehicle in order to administer a field test to see if she's too intoxicated to continue driving. Normally this wouldn't interest me, but this is Vegas, so we were all in the gambling mood.

It didn't take too long before the prop bets were starting. I had a running bet going that she was going to get a ticket. The girl next to me wanted to disagree. So we put the money on the line to see who would come out supreme. At first it was a whopping one dollar bet. Yes, I know! Quite significant! I agree. The test was administered. The girl followed his finger with her eyes, mostly walked a straight line, etc.

I walked up to the passenger in the girl's car and asked "So, is she pretty wasted?" The girl looks at me and says "Yeah, she's been throwing up all night." That was enough for me, so I managed to up the bet by offering to double the wager. We now had two dollars on the line each! I also had some side bets going on regarding what her BAC would be if they made her do a breath test. Unfortunately we didn't get to see what the end results were as the cops told the crowd to back up, and give them space. That was the mood killer, and we all dispersed into our various directions.

O'Shea's is where we venture to next, only to find the place is full of vagrants more intoxicated than us.

We more or less say our good byes to Duster, as we have to catch a flight the next morning. Cory and I hail a taxi and we're back at the Nugget. It's almost 3:30 am at this point, and we're on the hunt for food. The Carson Street Cafe was the only thing opened, and we're seated. I order the Philly cheese steak with no onions or peppers, accompanied by a shrimp cocktail. Cory orders a burger, and we wait...and wait....and wait.... Finally the food arrives, and we trek back to our room.

The food is inhaled and now it's past 4:00 AM. Our 9:00 AM wakeup call is set, and we doze off to our slumbers.

The next day was basically a waste. Just us waking up, hitting the airport, and coming home. We were glad to be on our way at that point. Our bodies have probably aged at least a few years in the process of this trip.