Vegas for Dave’s Bachelor Party

This past weekend was spent with VERY little sleep, miles of walking, gambling, and copious amounts of alcohol. This was all in the name of Dave’s bachelor party. Angel, Nicky, and I also hit up the Shark Reef exhibit at the Mandalay Bay and Red Rock Canyon just 10 or so miles north of Las Vegas. It was a damn good trip. I slept for about 11 hours last night just to recover from the weekend.

So, this all starts out in the wee early hours of Friday morning. I had gone to bed around 2:30 or so, but had my alarm set for 4:30 as Angel was going to be by my place around 4:45 so we can get to Vegas without the hassle of traffic. I roll out of bed feeling queasy from the rather greasy dinner I had the previous night with Helen. So it was either force the stuff up, or push it down. Not wanting to taste my previous night’s dinner twice, I decided for the latter. Sitting down, the first part of the experience was just a couple of pockets of gas. Getting rid of that, got some solid chunks that must have been the snacks I ate when I got home from work. After the solids passed, came the peeing out of my ass. And after a few minutes of dehydrating myself, Angel calls up to let me know that he’s outside. I let him know that I’m in the process of peeing out of my ass and that I’d be at the door shortly. Nicky needs to pee. It was a shame that my morning session wasn’t an overly putrid smelling one, so Nicky lucks out.

I finish getting ready and we head out. It’s about 5 in the bloody morning. Nicky has her blanket and is ready to switch off between napping and reading through the trip. I thought about possibly sleeping, but got to just chatting with Nicky and all of a sudden we were in Barstow for breakfast around 6:30. My stomach is still a little on the queasy side, and I had not completely flushed out the fluids still residing in my colon earlier in the morning; so I took the opportunity on our stop to do so. We finish eating and head back out. And Nicky and I end up chatting the whole way. This made for a quick trip and ruined Nicky’s original plans for sleeping and reading. It was the perfect drive. We get into Vegas at exactly 9 in the morning.

With nothing better to do, I suggest we hit up downtown Vegas. It has been well over 20 years since I last remember being in downtown Vegas. I like gambling down there. The players and dealers are not as uptight and unfriendly. We walk around outside and I text Ed to see if he’s up. He wants to hit up some restaurant for breakfast, and due to time constraints, we were not able to meet up. While walking around out in the middle of downtown, a guy walks up to me to ask for money. He wants 30 cents so that he can get down to the “hospital” to get his “meds”, and all the while, he’s showing me his arm which is just rows of needle scars. I didn’t see a spot where he could shoot up. This only depresses Nicky, as she states that, “Downtown Las Vegas is where dreams go to die”. Hilarious. Leaving mr heroin addict, we walk the length of the downtown area and then head back into the casino we parked at.

I sit down at a paigow table and play a few hands. There are two white guys at the table and our dealer. The dealer is a feisty one. She’s firing out insults at us for being slow, for when we lose, for when we win. Fun times. One of the guys asks her how many times she’s been married because with that voice and her personality, it was fairly reasonable to expect multiple marriages. She tells us that she’s only been married once, and still is married to the same guy for well over 10 years or so. The guys are thinking about some witty comeback when I just ask, “so is you husband deaf?” The entire table erupts in laughter. The dealer can hardly breath; so yeah, I just let the dealer know that I can definitely hold my own. We continue playing and our banter continues. Nicky and Angel show up and Nicky joins in, of course siding with the dealer. Jokes end when the dealer gets her smoke break and a new dealer comes in. After a few rounds of back and forth winning and losing, I tell Nicky that for the next hand, if it wins or loses, we’re gone. I win the next hand and I color out. I started out with 20 and ended up with 65, not too bad a start to the trip. We leave. After cashing out walking by the same paigow table, the guys there tell me that the dealer had a four of a kind hand immediately after I had left, cleaning up everyone at the table. I chuckle at my good sense to leave and we grab Angel and head up to our hotel.

Driving up the strip, we pass by the Pawn Star’s pawn shop. There is a frigging line of people trying to get in, and stupid tourist taking pictures of the place…. well, at least when I took my picture, I was in a moving car and just not actually out of my car visiting the place.

We get to New York New York, park and hand off our bags to the bellhop. Too early to check in still so we head over to the Mandalay Bay for lunch at the Burger Bar. Deciding that I want to lose some weight while in Vegas, I opt for the stairs every chance I get. This guilts Nicky into following suit. While waiting around for our table at the Burger Bar, we snap a few pictures. And now begins the game of ‘douchbaggery poses’.

We get in, order food and eat. Angel and I are smart with our burgers, we cut them in half. I only finish half my burger. It was an american kobe beef burger topped with bacon, prosciutto, cucumbers, avocado, caramelized onions, and a pepper corn sauce. It was a $30 burger. Fantastic. Well, at least it served me for two meals. After stuffing ourselves, we head out to walk off our meal before heading back to the hotel to check in and relax a bit before meeting up with everyone.

We get to the shark reef and decide to check it out. Entering the place felt like walking into the Indiana Jone’s ride at Disneyland. I had half expected just an aquarium with a tunnel through it and some sharks. It was much more than I had expected which is a very nice surprise. First on the stop is a Komodo dragon. I had never seen one live so this was pretty damn cool.

Saw some large cat fish, arowanas, and piranhas. I’m guessing that the staff member standing at the piranha tank was there to sometimes feed them and keep people from sticking fingers into the open tank. Pretty cool.

The lion fish is always cool, one of these days I’ll dive another tropical location and actually swim with these fish.

And since my camera is a little too slow to capture the sharks swimming around, I took a few quick videos. Apparently you can also dive with the sharks. It only costs 650 per diver, but all equipment is included. You just need to be a certified diver. I think there are bigger aquariums that are cheaper to dive than this one, but still, cool to dive with sharks.

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Jellies

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After finishing up the reef exhibit, we headed back over and Angel and I made a short stop at the Minus 5 Ice lounge. It’s a minimum of $25 to get in, and this includes a single drink. They take all your electronics so you can’t be inside snapping pictures. It’s -5 degrees inside, the glasses are made of ice – and they’re fairly tasty. We also take a shot of Petron through a sculpted nude bust of a woman. Fun times had by all.

After our drinks in the freezer, we headed back towards our hotel, stopping by to kick sponge bob in his pants and admiring the large display of dry aging meat. If I only had the space to do the same thing. Once in our hotel room, Nicky and Angel napped, I showered and went downstairs to look for Dave and company. They were off at the coke store that was across the street so I just wandered the casino. I wasn’t really feeling great about playing so I just wandered from table to table just watching. When I did sit down, I think I was 2 hands in when Dave and crew showed up. I told Dave to give Nicky and Angel a call to get them down stairs with the rest of the group and continued to play. I ended up losing about 30 bucks.

We headed out towards the MGM Grand for dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant there. Apparently I annoyed our waiter with a comment about how bassy and loud his voice was, but won him back over when I ordered my beer which impressed him as he was a fan of that particular beer as well. He took our group picture for us. Dinner was excellent, and we wandered around the MGM Grand for a bit before deciding on something to do.

We decided to hit up the Excalibur as there was an arcade for some folks and gambling for others. Tables were cold and I ended up losing about 2 hundred. I did hit a four of a kind hand that got me a net win of 125 on a single hand but that happened fairly early in the night and it just didn’t feel right to leave that early. Hindsight says otherwise. But as the night wore on, the crew thinned out. Angel and Nicky had gone back to the hotel, but Angel returned leaving Nicky to sleep. A little after midnight, Dave left and I played for a little while longer. Angel and I then just wandered the strip. Pointing out the awkward couples, I noted that the women in those situations were hookers. And the game of “spot the hooker” began. At one point, Angel and I overheard the following conversation; “Yeah, we can do it for $150”. Oh do I love the city of sin. We walked through a couple of the new hotels and snapped a few pictures.

leaving the Aria hotel, Angel and I stumble upon two women looking at the art works. Passing by, I exclaim that most of the pictures look like testicles, the women giggle. Walking further down, we stumble upon a sculpture that had a hole in the middle where a young lady was sticking her head in while her companion was on the other side sticking his head in and they were trying to meet in the middle for a kiss. I loudly exclaim, “AWWWWW, how cute!” which quickly embarrass the hell out of them, ruined their moment, and they ran off. Angel and I cackle like morons. And here is said sculpture:

We’d wandered down to the Bellagio before turning around and heading back. Still, the staggering drunk women, countless hookers with their johns, and packs of people entertained us all the way back to the hotel. We ended up grabbing a seat near the clubs to people watch while we hydrated ourselves with 3 dollar Gatorades. Calling it a night, we got back to our room around 3 or so.

The next morning, Angel and Nicky woke up and headed to the pool. I stayed in bed until about 10 before getting up and heading down in my swim wear. I run into Angel and Nicky as they’re done with the pool and heading back to the room to get ready for the day. I tell them that I’d be up in about half an hour. I wander the pool area and it sucks, so I wandered around the casino. Then headed back to the room to get changed. They wanted to hit up a 7-11 to get some money and replenish the water supply. I picked up a couple of vitamin waters, and then headed to Orchid’s Garden, a dim sum restaurant north of the strip. The food was fairly good and we enjoyed our meal. Funniest thing was that our total for lunch was cheaper than any single meal I had eaten so far. After lunch, we headed north to check out Red Rock Canyon.

Pictures alone do not do justice to the beauty. But I will try. Time of day also changes the colors of the canyon, but since we were on a fairly tight schedule for the evening, we were fairly limited to what we could do and how long we stayed. But here are some pictures.

The douchbag pose game continues…

More pictures of rocks…

Nicky spotted some road runners in a fairly large pack so I snapped a picture and took a quick video.

With the look of the canyon, the road runners, and our stupid antics, I think we’re the coyotes, and the road runners are just running away from us.

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We get back to the hotel at about 5, and quickly take turns showering and getting ready for the evening. Dinner was at 5:30 but in one of the Italian restaurants in the hotel so we had time. Dinner wasn’t anything to write home about. I had a salad and shared a pizza with the De La Cruzes. After dinner the men and the girls split, we did keep Nicky and Mike’s girlfriend, Irania I think. We cabbed it over to the Rio for the Penn and Teller show. More douchbaggery…

Having arrived a little early, we went to one of the bars in the casino and ordered a few drinks. The boys set themselves up at the bar and got some drinks.

And after seeing what the serving wench was wearing, I immediately decided that we needed to grab a table, since I hadn’t ordered a drink yet. They had those fun microsoft table thingsy and Dave and I immediately started a game of chess. I ordered a beer and got the girl to take a picture with Dave. She’s much better looking than the brunette. With time running close to the start of the show, we quickly finished the chess game and ran off to the show.

Mike had picked up some excellent seats. Walking in, there are two people playing some smooth jazz off to the right side of the stage. Not obvious to everyone is that Penn is playing the Bass. Damn cool. The show starts and every now and then, they do a bit with people from the audience. Penn’s politic views are not so subliminal in a few of their bits, but they were cool and entertaining. If you have ever watched their show Bullshit, you get a pretty good idea of what to expect in their live show. Their last bit involved shooting guns at one another with bullets signed by two audience participants. They asked for two participants that have handled weapons, preferably as a current or former peace officer or us military. So I raised my hand, and got picked by Teller. I signed my initials on the bullet, then drew a picture of a fish that looked more like the symbol for infinity on the jacket of the bullet. The guns are fired through glass, and the bullets are caught in the mouths of Penn and Teller. We’re called back on stage to inspect the bullets and jackets. Pretty cool trick, and we got to keep the bullet pieces. After the show, Penn and Teller are outside signing and taking pictures. Pretty damn cool.

After the show, Nicky and Angel go hunting for a grill cheese sandwich, and the rest of us find a bar. We order a few drinks and sit at a table where I can shout at random folks passing by and stare at the lovely shot girl.

Dave and I hang out while the other two guys from the group wander off to get free shots from some guy with a wig and happy birthday hat pours shots into people. Two guys come up and start chatting with us. Great, now I can add being hit on by a couple of fags to our trip. Ok, with that checked off our list, the night continues. Ange and Nicky show up and we grab Dave and go get a shot from the lovely tatted shot girl.

And the ubiquitous douchbag pictures:

I have a decent buzz going and we leave Rio and cab it over to Cesar’s palace. Walking through the casino, we run upon the Ali status, and after another group is done taking their posing picture, I take mine, followed immediately by Brian. After his picture, I loudly exclaim that he has no sense of originality. The poor guy had become the target of my taunts for the night. Back at the Rio, he was already drinking water which I admonished him over.

At Cesars, we grab some frozen alcoholic drinks and the girls leave us. Mike gives Irania some money to get a cab for her and Nicky, and I find out later that they walked it back because they didn’t want to deal with a cab.

We walked into Paris and wandered around a bit, ending up at the Bally’s side. While walking there, we found some large statues of wild African animals, one of which was a gorilla. Angel stopped me from taking a picture so that I could tag Nicky. Upon reaching the Bally’s side, some of the guys needed to pee so I snapped some pictures of the bar girl dancing in the bar above and outside the restrooms. Some old guy started to talk to her so I walked up and pretty much cock blocked the guy and stole her attention.

We wander the strip talking to random people and taking pictures with random people. There was a couple of girls that one was holding on to her friend by her hair. I made a comment about being leashed and the leashed one exclaimed her pleasure at having her hair pulled, very audibly, so chatted with the a little more.

We went into the Planet Hollywood hotel to check the place out. Finding some really cool posters, I decided that I needed a picture. Mr originality wanted one too, so I forced him to take one under the other poster.

Our next stop was the MGM Grand. We were debating on if we wanted to gamble. I ended up pissing off an entire table including the dealer, so I took that as a sign that we return to our hotel. At least I’d be close to my room if my mouth got us into any more trouble and we got our asses kicked. Mike, Brian, and erin’s brother whos name escapes me right now left us while I was in the midsts of pissing off some koreans and a gook paigow dealer. So it was down to Angel, me, and Dave. We returned to our hotel and sat near the clubs watching the hookers work and drunken shinigans. Seeing two of the women necking, I decide that they were probably fair game for random thoughts that formed in my head. I got up, told Dave that I was going to get him in trouble, and walked over to the two that were necking. I politely asked them for a favor. The blond declined immediately, but the brunette was game, and went to get the “healthier” blond to join in my request. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a video but the brunette grinded on Dave’s leg for a little bit before settling down for the picture. Fantastic!

The piano bar closed so we wandered over to the other bar a few hundred feet down and sat and watched that end. The fags entertained us, the fatties entertained us, the dorky men coming out and begging the women not to end their nights entertained us; as did the hookers. It was about 4 in the morning and Dave was starting to pass out while sitting there so we called it a night.

I ended up crashing out closer to 5, only to get woken up by Nicky around 8:30 while she was hustling around. She was waiting until 9 to wake my ass up. I waved her off and her and Angel went downstairs for breakfast. They were back within half an hour, and I came to the realization that they wanted to leave, so I got up, showered, and we checked out and go on the road home. I passed out for the first third of our trip back. We got into Baker around noon and stopped for lunch. Angel was fading and was hitting the rumble strips a couple of times, so after lunch, I took over the driving and we came straight home. It was a damn good trip. Hopefully Dave had as good a time as we did.

And for all the stupid pictures, go here: http://gamerabaenre.com/vegas_8_21_2010.htm