Well, here we are again – time for the 2013 Vegas Diary. I may have waited too long before putting the diary on paper, as I have already forgotten a lot of the sessions during the week.
Two general thoughts before we get going:
I think we are all in agreement that moving the trip to conference championship week (vs. the first week of the tournament) is a great move. The crowds were definitely less, which means less time waiting for dinner; more space at the gaming tables, little (or zero) lines at the sports book and a generally more relaxed atmosphere. As we get older, we don’t need the chaos, and the trip seemed a little more laid back and relaxing. The downside? This is the weekend of Rob Kardashian’s birthday (more on that in a minute), so we will have to plan around that accordingly.
It never ceases to amaze me that each trip can provide a distinct set of memories. My unverbalized fear before the trip was: are we getting into rut? Will it be the same stories, same inside jokes that may get old soon? And the answer is no. Every year something different comes to keep us on our toes. For instance, this trip was the worst in terms of craps stories/memories/performance, but experiences elsewhere more than made up for that.
Now on to the diary:
Tuesday, March 12
Allow me a bit to describe the travel problems I had in getting to Vegas in the first place. When I made the reservations, I allowed for a 2 hour layover in LA to go through customs, get baggage, and go from the Tom Bradley terminal to the Delta terminal. The China Southern flight was supposed to land at 7 pm and my Delta connection to Vegas left at 9….should not be a problem if nothing goes wrong, but….
First, Delta sends a note 2 weeks before informing me that my flight has changed; the connection to Vegas now will leave at 8:45. So there goes 15 minutes off the buffer.
The China Southern flight shut the doors in Guangzhou on time, but we spent an good while taxiing. Once we got in the air, they made the announcement; we plan to land at LA at 8 pm. Um, really? I talked to the flight attendant; he said “no, no, it’s 7 pm, I guess there is a time change and that’s why they said 8 pm”. I didn’t believe him. That’s the China experience – make up an answer and hope the customer will accept it and go away.
Oh – it was nice to relax on the flight and not have to frantically cram through 130 pages of 6-point font on 68 basketball teams. Another plus for championship weekend.
Well, they started serving “breakfast” at 6:30 pm LA time – that’s when I knew I was in trouble. We landed at 8, got off the plane at 8:15, flew through immigration, waited too long at baggage claim for my clubs – and exited customs at 8:45. I went to the baggage transfer to drop off luggage; they said “Sorry, go see Delta”. Uh oh.
So I lugged the suitcase and clubs to the Delta terminal – 400 yards away. They said the plane left, and they can’t do anything for me since it is a China Southern ticket. I had to go back to the International terminal and have China Southern work it. Oh yeah, that will work.
I back track the 400 yards to Tom Bradley where I was met by 749 people at the China Southern counters, since it is check in time for the return flight to Guangzhou. Someone was there to help me; they took my passport and ticket…..and disappeared for 30 minutes.
Now I’m stuck. I have Wiz yelling at me to get on a Southwest flight at 10;30; I can’t get through to National to see if I can rent a car to Vegas…I’m sitting there as time ticks off the clock.
Finally at 9:30, the China lady says “let’s walk over to United; there is a 10:30 flight and there is one seat, but no one is answering the phone over there.” I think it was during that walk where a wheel fell off my suitcase. Finally, I was able to get a seat on that flight and landed in the new, completely deserted terminal 3 at midnight, arriving at the Mirage around 12:30.
I’m not sure what happened when Layup and Wiz was checking in; but there were some major screwups with the reservation. Thank God it was a Tuesday night. Layup said we are on floor “E”. E? I opened the door to a two bedroom suite. Wow. The suite may be an option for the family in the summer. I was greeted by Wiz in his boxers in the room; he was done for the night but mine was just starting.
I meet again Layup on the floor and the initial game for the trip is craps. Unfortunately, this was the best craps session of the trip for me as Layup again hits back-to-back hard 4’s when I parlayed – two years in a row now. At around 2:00, Layup decided he had enough and went to bed.
I laid in bed…2:00, 2:30, 3:00…..and was wide awake. That’s not going to work. Downstairs I go to play UTH….alone…with no one else at the table. Vegas probably isn’t much quieter (and lonely) than a Tuesday night at 3 in the morning. At 5, I had enough; I was starving for Triscuits and bought a box for $10 and went to bed.
Wednesday, March 13.
“Eric!” “Eric??” “Eric! Do you want SMU or not????”
I awoke to Layup literally screaming at me to get my parlay pick in. It was 8:30, and he wanted to confirm my pick for our group parlay; the group would send in a parlay once or twice a day for $20 each; each of us would pick a game. If we get all 6 right, that’s a $4800 payday; if we go 5-1, the loser pays for dinner; if we go 1-5, the single winner would get a free dinner. SMU was my pick for the morning; the Vegas trip is officially underway when Layup has to wake me up to get this pick in.
The day was spent with Wiz, Layup and I on a road trip; first to Target for the annual Supermarket Spree. I think I heard Wiz ask Layup: “How long will this take? About 30 minutes?” Layup just shook his head; they went and got coffee and stale popcorn while I went up and down the aisles for plain white T-shirts, Leap Frog Pens and Combos.
(By the way, is Combos out of business? I can’t find any on the West Coast).
Then we headed to Red Rock for the long-awaited bowling challenge. There were 58 lanes at Red Rock; about 20 were in use so we were able to have some space to act like fools during the competition. The vodka tonic for each game helped to get the energy level up as well.
Layup was a complete sandbagger; Wiz and I gave him 20 pins and he starts by rolling a 193. Wiz and I played straight up, and at $1 pin I profited in the triple digits. Excellent – a 647 for 4 games.
After that, of course we stayed for a $5 craps session there, where none of us could roll; it’s amazing how much money one can lose at a $5 craps table when it goes cold.
We got back to the Mirage around 4:30 to see the rest of the group – Don, Mike and Leland, who all had arrived. The first truly group game was Pai Gow, where we were all relaxing before our appointment at dinner that night with Jose Andres. More on that later.
I was feeling very good – from all the drinks during the day – and having fun until there was a slight problem at the table. I think I had 2 small pairs and an Ace up top; I was half paying attention when the dealer showed a pair of queens and a king-high up top. I started paying more attention when she didn’t ask for commission.
I was a bit confused when I told her that I think I won that hand.
“No, it was a push”
No, I had 2 small pairs down below, I think.
“Do you want me to check and pull the cards out?”
At this point, I had to guess how confident I was in my hand . I put it at 90%, even though most hands I can’t remember what I had on top. Yes, go ahead and reconstruct the hands.
“Floor!”
The pit boss came over as the dealer pulled piles of 7 from the stack. One at a time, she – and all of us – tried to identify the hands. It was like CSI: Pai Gow as the dealer placed the seven cards on the table, re-played each hand as we tried to identify the owner.
“That was mine”, Don said…the second hand was claimed by Derek. Then the dealers’ was found.
My hand ended up being 6th in the pile, and by that time I was shaking. I had better be right on this – it’s not the money I was worried about, it was the embarrassment and my memory. Should I have stopped the game for 3 minutes just for $25?
“Pair of 6s, Pair of 3s…..yes, you were right…..you won the hand”.
I slumped in my chair and let out a deep breath. I haven’t been that nervous in a casino in a long time.
Dinner that night was the Chef’s table at the Cosmopolitan. Just walking through that casino made me feel 10 years younger. Wow. I can be cool! I can be hip! (and I wasn’t even wearing a mock turtleneck!). Seriously – what a nice place.
The dinner was a special 24 course meal prepared by the chefs in front of you . It started bad with some sort of drinking talent show where it was clear that all the other members of the group are adept at handling cylindrical objects that spurt liquid into their mouths. I’m not sure where all of you got the experience for that.
The courses were one, two or three bite portions of incredibly fancy, over-the-top dishes. Some were exquisite, like the fried fish sandwich or the chicken oysters. Some were discomforting, such as any dish with truffles. But the meal was unforgettable – and it is still shocking that we were out of there in less than 3 hours.
We headed back to the Mirage for a group craps run; the table was choppy (and it was clear that Layup and I were the Mantle/Maris of cold rollers; we could not be stopped rolling “7”s. Mike shows an uncanny ability to roll a) “9”s on the come out roll, and b) Field rolls. Leland and I kept track; at one point, he rolled 10 fields in a row and a total of 15 out of 16 field rolls. (But did you make the point during that run? I don’t think so).
At about 1, 1:30 the party broke up as we had an early tee time tomorrow…..maybe I can get some sleep…..
