Hello again, dear friends. I have returned unscathed from Sin City. My wallet, however, did not escape the inevitable. All said I lost exactly $300. The same amount that I went there with in my wallet intending to lose, so you could say I did alright. I didn't lose anymore than I wanted to, like I thought I might be tempted to do. In actuality, I won a lot of money over the course of the trip, I was even ahead at one point, but whats the fun in being in Vegas if you aren't going to gamble? Hence, I lost it back to the casinos. Dirty Vegas. So my apologies to everyone who commented on the last blog. None of you get the $100 I promised.
Recap -- The long story.
Sunday: 1:40am, Me, Ryan, Todd and David all pile into Ryan's car to drive to Austin where our flight departs from. We all did our best to nap a little before that, but it didn't ever really happen. We arrive at Ryan's sister's house in Austin about 2 hours later and she drives us to the airport. We got there plenty early since our flight didn't leave until 6am. We first flew to luxurious DFW airport ... which was kind of a bummer since we've all been there countless times, but we weren't there for long. We actually had like this 4 mile trek to get to our next gate, but luckily were able to flag down one of those motorized carts. We arrived in Vegas around 8 in the morning due to the time difference and took a cab to our hotel. We stayed at the Aladdin. Our rooms weren't ready yet cause it wasn't 11, so we checked our bags and went to gamble. The first thing I did was put some money into a dollar slot and win 40 bucks. That was pretty exciting. I then proceeded to hop from slot machine to slot machine to find my favorite. And boy did I. Turns out I'm not only good at Wheel of Fortune in real life, but also dominate the slot machine version. That was probably my best game. We hit up a few casinos that day, one of which being the Golden Nugget. There we had the coolest dealer named Graham at the $5 blackjack. He taught us how to play better ... when to hit when to stay and he was fun to talk to. I ended up being at that table for a good 3 hours off of the same 40 bucks. At one point I was up another 40 on top of that, but ended up leaving the table dead even. At that point, I was even on the trip. We then went back to the hotel, got all cleaned up, ate at PF Changs (our first meal in about 24 hours) and got ready for our limo ride. I was wearing a shirt I had purchased earlier in the evening, so in actuality I didn't leave Vegas completely empty handed. Our limo took us up and down the strip ... and then a tour of all the seedy strip establishments in Vegas, but we didn't actually go inside any of them. Our final destination was the Hard Rock. That place was pretty damn sweet. However, the smallest tables they had were $10. So I start off all confident and play $50 worth of blackjack and lose it very quickly. I was kind of upset about that since I didn't even get to play more than 10 minutes, so I went and found Wheel of Fortune. It wasn't as nice to me at Hard Rock, so I lost 40 bucks. I did however get to see Chris Kattan walk right by me. That made my damn night. Since you only get free alcohol when you're gambling in a casino, I essentially spent 90 bucks for 2 beers, which was ridiculous. Todd was also way down on the day, so we decided that instead of paying 45 bucks for a beer, we might as well sit at the bar and pay 4 bucks per beer, which we did for a while. It was a much better time than throwing away your money for nothing. So that was the first day.
Monday: Discouraged by our loses the day before, me and Todd decided to hit up the pool the next day when we woke up, so as to delay our inevitable next loss. David joined us and we sun bathed for a while. The air in Vegas is so dry though that it'll sap your eyes of any moisture they have ever had. My eyes were almost completely colored in blood red. Scared me pretty good, so I bought some Clear Eyes and they returned to normal. I had to rewet them several times a day though. Then we went to a couple of casinos. I don't really need to name them all, if you're really that curious, just let me know. One I will talk about is Excalibur, cause we robbed that place blind. All of us came out of there ahead ... something that only happened at Excalibur. We first hit up the horse races. It was this game that had 5 little horses in this little race track and you'd bet on which 2 horses would come in first, and each combination had different odds for each race. And you have like 30 seconds to place your bets (a quarter each) and then it takes another 30 seconds at least for the horses to get around the track. And you can yell at them like 'GO 3 GO!' and its funny cause they're mechanical. I liked that game cause it took a long time to lose your money if you were only better a quarter at a time. Everyone else got bored with it after a while, but I didn't. Plus it was getting me a plethora of free drinks ... all of which were Pina Coladas. I decided to see how many I could drink in one day, which may sound unhealthy, but they give you very, very, very weak ass drinks if you're playing cheap games, so I didn't even get drunk despite the 8 pinas I had. The moral of this story though, is that I put a quarter on horses 3 and 4 to win with 162 to 1 odds, and it fucking hit. I was so excited. Me and the guy next to me were high fiving and yelling. He bet 10 on it so he won nearly 400 dollars. I only bet 1 so I got around 40 dollars. But it was still exhilerating. I left after that and robbed the Excalibur. Man, my fingers are getting tired. Almost done though, bear with me. After that we went to Casino Royale and I pissed away all of my winnings at the craps table. Turns out that I don't really like craps. I lost at it almost every time I played. Casino Royale was lame. We went back to our hotel and got ready to go out that night then. Me and Todd sat down at Wheel of Fortune before we left, and on my first pull I got a spin and won 200 quarters. Cha-ching. On Todd's third pull he got a spin and won 100 quarters. I then decided to play some more dollar slots and won 10 more dollars. Then we both played Monopoly on the nickle slots and I won 6 and Todd won 5 bucks. I was on a roll and so was Todd. We were feeling good as we left to go out that night. First we stopped by Bellagio to see the water show. It was set to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." It was pretty impressive. After that we went downtown. That was a bad night for almost all of us. We went into Fitzgerald's to play some $5 blackjack. I threw down $60 to have it changed into $5 chips. Over the course, then, of 12 hands, I won once, and promptly lost that 5 bucks. So in effect, I really lost like 13 hands in a row, and I was so pissed. The dealer sucked too, she wasn't fun to talk to or lose to. It was probably the only time on the trip that I actually got upset about losing. I got up and took a walk around the casino. Everyone else got robbed by this bitch too. I swear she had so many blackjacks and stuff. It was absolutely ridiculous. Needless to say my winning streak was over. We went back to Aladdin and drank some more beers that I went ahead and just paid for.
Tuesday: The next day we had to wake up a little bit early to check out of our hotel rooms. By a little bit early I mean 11:00. We checked our bags and went to get some last minute gambling in at the Aladdin. I had 70 dollars left over and not much time so I decided to go balls to the wall on dollar slots. First thing I did was play some San Francisco game and win 50 bucks right off the bat. Then I hit Wheel of Fortune. I decided to put all of my dollar coins (80 dollars worth) into the machine and not cash out my credits. So if I lost, I lose, if I won, I won. I wasn't going to play anymore credits. Well, I put in 80 and I took out 80. Big deal, so I found a different Wheel of Fortune game that I was feeling good about. I hit the spin a few times and won 50 bucks, 30 bucks, 30 bucks, 20 bucks. In the end I was left with a bucket totaling around 150 dollars. I didn't have much time left, but enough to still be gambling. And I could have left with 150 in my pocket, but I still would have been down and I hadn't hit it big yet. And it really takes some startup capital to hit it big, so I decided to go for it. I sat down at a few more dollar slots and slowly pissed away all of my winnings until I was left with nothing. And thats how you find me here today. Completely broke. Shit. Dirty Vegas. Oh well, it was a completely friggin blast. We caught our plane then to LA, which didn't make much sense, but oh well. We got into LAX late and our flight to Austin was about to leave. So we had to literally sprint the entire length of LAX to get there on time. Needless to say it was a little bit painful for your arthritic, crippled author. We made it though and got to Austin around 10:something. Time zones really mess with me. We ended up in College Station around 2am and went to bed.
And that, my friends is the end of my Vegas Vacation story. Though you might not believe me, I didn't document every event on this blog, so if you still want to know more, just let me know, I'll talk your ear off. If you read this whole thing, consider yourself among the most loyal of Sidesho-Viewers. Thanks ... and gig this.
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