The Drunken Blog

June 20th, 2006

Today started off poorly. I woke up and I felt hung over. The RV was already moving so I just lay there for a while and wait to actually wake up for real. Eventually the need to relieve myself superseded my need to lie in bed. So I got up and walked the 2 feet to the bathroom. I did my business, but I was apparently not quite done. I felt much better after I threw up, but I still didn’t feel well. This was the start of a very long day. A very very very long day.

We decided to stop off at the Grand Canyon to do some sightseeing stuff.

It put us out of our way about 80 miles total. Not too bad really, and when you’re that close to something like that, you just have to take the time.

After all, when is the next time that I’m going to be close enough to the Grand Canyon to be able to actually see it?

We try to find the park but miss the exit a couple of times.

We finally find the road that we’re supposed to be on and we are on our way. We stop at a little baby canyon one the way.
It doesn’t seem so little when we see it for the first time, but compared to the actual Grand Canyon it is tiny. After seeing some intimidating signs we continue onto the actual Grand Canyon. About a mile out from the gate we get the low gas light. That means we have about a 50 mile range as soon as that pops up. We are farther than 50 miles from a gas station. We get a little scared. But we continue into the park because turning around would not help us out. When we get to the gate we ask them about a gas station and luckily they have one inside the park. Too bad the prices are some $.60 more than we had been paying the rest of the trip.

We gas up and disaster is avoided and we continue onto the Grand Canyon. We finally get there and look at it, and it really is impressive.

I’m not sure the pictures really capture the scope of this place. It really is awe inspiring.

But we take a ton of pictures; hopefully a couple of them will do the place some justice.

We finish our site seeing and continue to the Grand Canyon Village, which is basically where they have food and a gift shop.

This is our first food of the day, so it’s pretty tasty and it helps to calm my stomach some.

The next stop was the Hoover Dam.

About 10 miles before the dam, however, we saw something pretty disturbing: a car was upside down along side of the road and there was a mother and daughter standing next to it looking obviously disturbed. They looked unharmed; hopefully they were the only one’s in the car. The cause of the accident, it seemed, was a semi about a hundred yards up the road that had a blown out tire. I’m guessing it was something to do with either the tire debris on the road, or the actual tire falling off the car.

About 5 miles outside of the Hoover Dam they require all vehicles to stop and be inspected, I assume so that nobody will try to blow the place up. So we stop and get inspected (which consisted of a rent-a-cop coming in and checking our bathroom. We then had a somewhat casual conversation; he asked if we had seen the accident, we explained that we saw the aftermath of the accident we didn’t actually see it occur. He then asked where we were coming from and we told him VA, and then that we were from Mason, and he commented on the great run they had this year. I have to say, it’s kind of vindicating mentioning your school and having somebody on the other side of the country know about that school when the previous year nobody outside of Northern Virginia knew about the school.

We drove across the dam, taking pictures all the way.

We didn’t bother stopping because they charged $7 to park. I don’t think any of the pictures actually came out, it was kind of difficult to take them from inside a moving RV, but we did our best. The Hoover Dam was pretty neat, the biggest dam I’ve ever seen, but that’s not saying much. After the Hoover Dam it’s only about 45 miles to Vegas.

It didn’t seem real before, saying that we were going to Vegas, but now that there is a sign that says how many miles away it is, it really has become real and I am excited. We actually drive into Vegas and we are on the phone with James and Nick, whom we are meeting at the airport and will be joining us for the last leg of the trip in the RV. We see the airport and we are at the far corner of it and can choose two ways to go around to find the terminal. Of course, we choose the wrong way and end up going around about ¾ of the airport before we finally make it there. And then we try to go to the pick up place, but the clearance is only 7’, so our 12’ RV is too large and we have to find an alternate place to pick them up. We eventually find that alternate place and pick them up.

We drive to our hotel, Treasure Island, and we start the check in process. I have been told to wait in the RV until we are all checked in. Treasure Island doesn’t have an oversized parking lot so I have to find the oversized lot and park the RV there. Surprisingly, the lot was very easy to find. I was impressed. While finding the lot was easy, the check in process was apparently very difficult. Well, not so much difficult as that it just took a really long time because there was a large line, I guess.

We get everything taken care of and we go up into our room and get everything unpacked. At this point we are starving, so we go to dinner at the casino. I have a chicken burger, and I can tell that this is going to be an expensive stay in Vegas. I think it cost me about $20 including tip. At this point, Art Weaver meets us. This kid I haven’t seen since high school. I completely forgot that he was living in Vegas until I was literally in Vegas, which is a shame because he probably could have gotten us a pretty good discount on a room at Caesar’s. But he’s there and it’s nice to catch up with him some, and it’s not too bad having a tour guide in Vegas.

We went to Pure, a club in Caesar’s Palace, after dinner and Art tried to get us on the guest list, but was unsuccessful. We go up to our room to change, and Art goes back to his place to change as well, he’s going to be coming out with us tonight.

After we change and pregame some we head out to Pure for real. We go there and there is a gigantic line to get in, which is pretty cool for a Tuesday night. We aren’t on the guest list so it’s sort of whatev, but when we walk into the casino (you have to walk through the casino to get to the club) there is a guy handing out flyers, and one of the flyers is for ‘”VIP” access to Pure. Basically it just means free admission, which is pretty good seeing as there was a $30 cover. So, the 6 of us are there and we are waiting in the VIP line because we have the VIP passes. We call up Art and he is in the other line for “normies”. He comes over to us and we send him to the front of the line. He has his employee badge, and it apparently carries some weight, because we get let in. We don’t get let in right away. I almost lose faith, but Art came through, and we got in without paying.

I can’t understand why they even need to charge a cover in the first place. Drinks are $7 for a 12oz cup of Miller Light. Rum and cokes are $11. And what’s even worse is that you can’t get a cup of water, they will only sell you a bottle of water, and that will cost you $7. I couldn’t believe it. We walk around the place, and I’m not having a particularly good time. It really was intimidating how many attractive girls were there. So, I hung around with the guys, some of them split off, for most of the night.

There’re a few different parts of this club. There’s the downstairs main lounge/bar area/dance floor. There’s an upstairs that is out on the patio that has another bar. Connected to the main lounge area is a place called the Pussycat Dolls Lounge.

It’s just a smaller little bar area that they charge $5 to get in, even after you’ve already paid $30 to get through the main door. However, our VIP stamps allow us to get in to there for free as well. It would have been worth $5. There is a stage in the middle of the lounge where there are several very scantily clad women dancing. No nudity, but girls can be a lot sexier with some lingerie. The show was hot.

We then go back up on the upstairs patio. We run into Good Charlotte. I would be impressed if they didn’t suck. But it is pretty cool running into any celebs at all, even if they are only B-list celebs. I get bored upstairs and I want to dance because I’m pretty intoxicated. So Doug, Art, and myself go downstairs once again. We just sort of stand around for a while watching for some perspective girls. I decide that my position is not beneficial to my dancing dilemma. I walk through the crowd and find a place to camp out. After I walked away from Doug and Art I was in a world of my own, because I didn’t see anybody that I knew for the rest of the night.

I start to feel the music, and start doing the precursors to the white man shuffle, and I start to find a girl that I can actually dance with. I do two better than that. I see a group of three girls standing off by themselves so I go up to them and start talking. I think I commented on how they really looked like they wanted to dance, and that I could help them with that situation. I was speaking to one girl in particular, which I suppose could be a tactical error going into a group with no recon based solely on physical appearance. But I was bold and I and I did it, and it didn’t work out too bad, either. So I tell them that I would like to dance with them, the one girl in particular and she says to me, “It’s a 3 for 1 deal.” And the first thing that went through my mind was, “Dear diary – Jackpot!” I then said to her, “you say that like it’s a bad thing” (as if that would stop me from dancing with them) “But I take that as a challenge.” And I did take that challenge.

I danced with all three girls, and my focus shifts from the girl that I originally asked to dance to another girl in the group. We start dancing just the two of us exclusively. We start making out some on the dance floor and we’re just having a good time. We go to get another drink and the girls ask me how old I am. Sometimes if I think a girl is a good deal older than me I will fib a little bit on my age, usually saying that I am 24 or 25. But I don’t this time because I’m thinking these girls are 24 max. Little do I know, they’re 28. The girl that I am dancing with is two years into medical school. This does not intimidate me, though. If I had known that they were that old originally, I probably would not have approached them at all, but since I had already formed opinions, it did not faze me at all.

We left and the sun was beginning to come up. According to my watch it was 8am, of course I hadn’t set my watch to PST yet, but 5am is still pretty late to be leaving a club, especially if you are still on east coast time.

Other posts by Justin

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Cross Country Trip . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.