Vegas Baby Vegas

As we all do, I love to travel. If you have been reading this blog at all, you already know that about me, but one thing you might not know is that visiting cities can get a little repetitive when you travel extensively. Take my advice, it never gets bad, each city brings its own tastes, smells, sights, and people that make it special and stand out from the rest, however, after you've been to so many cities you don't "look forward" to them as much. It's just natural because they all offer "similar" sights. Before heading to China it had been maybe 8 years since I had gone to a zoo, so I jumped at the chance to go to a zoo in China. Now I've been to 4 zoos in less than 3 months. It's because you hear the same thing when you get to a city: "We have nice places to eat, great museums, beautiful parks, and did I mention the zoo?" Now like I said before, if you are there, you must do these things because even though they sound similar to what you've done recently, something will make it stand out. Every zoo, restaurant, museum, and park are not the same, and I can't stress to you enough, that in the moment it does all seems new and exciting, but before you are in the moment it sounds old, like you've already done it, and uninteresting.

When you travel outside of cities to natural wonders you are naturally excited because you know you've never seen this mountain, or that waterfall before, this desert, or that crater, skied here, hiked there, swam here or snorkeled there. Those things always sound interesting and exciting because you already envision them as singular events that can "only" happen in those particular places and nowhere else. But when I tell you about a museum, park or zoo after a while you think you can see them anywhere.

This is how I felt about cities after Seoul, Shenghi, Beging, Sydney, Hong Kong, Despensar, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and LA in just a few months. But there are always exceptions to the rule, and to that I give you...Las Vegas. I don't remember another city I looked forward to visiting as much as Vegas. Foreigners I met seem to look forward to visiting San Francisco like it is some beacon of American idealism and utopia. I however, looked forward to Las Vegas. I'm not sure why exactly. Of course it could be my propensity for gambling, but I really thought about Vegas as a big city unlike any other city in America, and I wanted to see what it was like.

Vegas, Vegas, Vegas...Where do I start? The stretch limo ride? The Hawaiian Tropics Swimsuit competition? The clubs? The cool people I met? The staying up all night in the hot tub? The thousand dollars I won? The hooker that was killed? Okay so not all of those things really happened, I was a HUGE loser when it came to gambling this visit, and the hooker wasn't "killed" she was...well, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Ha.

Vegas was so much grander than I even thought it would be. I mean how do you explain the picture of me with a huge green bird on my shoulder? Vegas... It is amazing what money can do. Everywhere there is music, fountains, lights, wedding chapels, cars, buildings, and they all seemed to be tricked out by some crazy visionary who a long time ago had the belief that "if we make everything Extremely Tacky but Huge and Overdone, someday when it gets big enough the city will all come together and work" he was right.

The casinos are ridiculous. I'm not sure you can really describe them, there are too many and they have too many things in them. I took a water slide through a shark tank at one, and watched a lion feeding at another. These places are larger than life. They are confusing, five steps after walking in you can't find your way out. There are so many lights, and bells you think people have to be winning, you're wrong. The buffets are really good. However, unlike in Sydney, luck was not on my side during this trip to Vegas. I think I lost everything I played actually. But I still played everything I wanted. Since I had no "wining" highlights I would have to say that my losing highlight was when I played hold'em at the meca of hold'em, Binion's. Some obese woman sitting behind a stack of chips that nearly blocked out her gut called me with 9 high. I had 8 high. She said something was telling her to call. I said it was too bad something didn't tell her to go on a diet, honestly it looked like she only sat at that table for the year, with her only breaks being to the hotel buffet. Either way, it was a small thrill to be all in and called on a bluff.

What next? I stayed out almost every night until early in the morning. I have now seen the sun rise in Las Vegas and that is a good feeling. While seeing the sun rise on a normal night out might make you think maybe you've been out too long, in Vegas you feel like you're doing something right. I met a ton of cool people from all around the world; Swiss, German, Irish, French, English, Spanish, Canadian (should that make the list?), and probably more but I don't remember now. My favorite was when I met 2 girls from Jersey! Not "Dirty Jersey" that's "New" Jersey. They were from the real "Jersey", old Jersey which floats in the English Channel between France and England. Who would have thunk it? They were cool too, but I told them they had to work on their accents if they were going around telling people they were from Jersey. They didn't get the joke either.

I tried to see as much as I could in Vegas, on a budget that is, but I think I did alright. When you walk around everything seems so cheap; a steak dinner for 5 dollars, glasses for 2 dollars, a shirt for a dollar, drinks for 50 cents, a quarter for a dime, I don't know how they get away with it. Well, that's not true, it's the gambling, I know, but damn, everything else seems to cost nothing. I've been to China, and a number of Asian markets where things are supposed to be really cheap, but I think Vegas might have them all beat. Vegas had everything, and for almost nothing.

I spent almost a full week in Vegas, that's about half a week longer than I was expecting to stay, but I couldn't find anyone who wanted to hike and camp the Grand Canyon with me. So I waited...gambled and waited, drank and waited, laid in the sun and waited until I finally thought I could wait no longer. If I kept waiting in Vegas I would run out of money in no time. I was about to bite the bullet and just take the standard bus tour of the Grand Canyon that everyone else takes. I even began to tell myself that this would be good. 15 hours for $115 only about 4 hours that are actually at the Canyon, but I was gonna do it because I had to get there. The Grand Canyon was my number one destination on this trip. I couldn't get to Vegas and then not get there, I had to go while I still had money. I wanted to find someone to rent a car with, hike with, camp with, but after 6 days of asking everyone I ran into it didn't look like that was going to happen.

Again, I was saved at the last moment. I was sitting in the sun waiting for the guy at the counter to come back so I could sign up for the bus tour. I was ready to give in. Then I saw a guy looking at an Atlas. I thought about it, wondered my chances, then asked him, "where ya headed?" His response was, "I'm looking to hike and camp the Grand Canyon." Toby from Switzerland became my new best friend :)

Check out the pictures:

High Rollin' Down Under

There wasn't much left of our trip to Oz. We'd gotten back from Fraser Island, we'd caught up on the year's worth of missed stories, and we didn't have anything else special planned. Yet, a quote I always loved was "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware” by Martin Buber. Well, Mr. Buber, you don't know how right you were.

It appeared to be a normal night. Nothing too special. During the day we did some things around Sydney, tried to go to the zoo, but the ticket salesman said it was too late in the day, and we could enjoy it more fully tomorrow. We took his word (gladly because the zoo was cool, and needs ample time to visit) and we returned home. While walking through the door of Jimmy's apartment it was said as almost an afterthought, "Do we wanna go to the casino tonight?"

After that nothing more needed to be said. Considering we're a group of old friends that got together once a week throughout high school to play cards, and once a week to gamble on bowling (Oh Wacky Wednesday, I will never forget your two for one deal), we all knew we'd be up for the casino on a whim. We changed our clothes into our lucky shorts, sandals, and button down shirts, and we were off to take down the house. And I'm sure we would have, had we not been stopped at the door. Apparently the Sydney Casino is a bit more classy than any other casino that we had been to because they dropped the bombshell of "sorry, no sandals are allowed inside." We were discouraged to say the least. A thirty dollar cab ride there, followed by a thirty dollar trip back home to put on some shoes, and then a second thirty dollar trip to the casino and we were already in dept to the house big. We were all pretty pissed off about the whole incident, and it just seemed like it might ruin the night. Either that or it was a huge karmic misstep by the gambling gods throwing our luck so far down a hole that the only way out of it was to shoot directly up. And that is exactly what happened.

We sat at a 10$ blackjack table, the smallest denomination of money at all of the blackjack tables, and we just lit it up. This was my first time really gambling at a casino table, but I experienced something on this night that I'm sure even veteran gamblers have never been a part of. We started winning. Well, not me, being the rookie I lost my money in about half an hour but Joe, Jim, and Chris all starting rolling it in, and I loved watching it. As you can imagine, with every dealer bust, or blackjack dealt, we were cheering, clapping, and throwing around high fives like it was 1989. A few hours into the table they were all up about a hundred dollars and I didn't think it could get any better, but when gambling, it can also turn for the worse without a moments notice.

It was about here when the table dynamics were forced into a change because Joe had to use the little boys room. He asked the table dealer for a marker to hold his seat until he returned from his tinkle, to which the dealer replied "marker? you mean like a felt pen?" Apparently Australian gamblers don't pee because from the confused/disgusted looks we got, neither our dealer nor his pit boss had ever heard such an outrageous request. This was the second karmic misstep by the gambling gods; relieving oneself should never be a punishable act, and so instead of losing his seat to some Aussie, he decided to give it to me. "You take it Pauly, I'm up, I'm happy, play for me as you would," that's what he said. Now in the karmic battle between good and evil that had been going on in the backgrounds of our night, this was the deciding blow. A friend lending his seat, and money to another friend who hadn't gotten to sit, and lost his money quickly. The karma gods smiled on this act of generosity, and so did I, from ear to ear.

By the time Joe returned from the bathroom I had turned his one stack of chips into nearly three of the equal size. "What the hell did you do?" he asked, to which I replied, "I dunno, I just started winning." I felt like Forrest Gump. Joe knows you don't mess with a good thing when it comes to gambling, so he had me cash in some of the chips I had won, considered himself out (up $400) and told me the rest was mine to play with. This is when things really got out of hand. It seemed as if every move we made was right. I was winning, Jimmy was winning, and Chris was winning too. Every hand started going the right way for all of us. I've never seen a dealer bust so much, and so many times in a row: 22, 25, 26, it was unheard of. One hand after the next, he would bust, or we would get dealt 21. Things started getting so crazy, the luck seemed to be so much in our favor we couldn't sit back and play it normal anymore. We started taking chances.

I was the first to begin adding increments to my bets per hand. If I won the hand, I'd bet $10 more on the next, and then 10$ more on the next if I won that one, and so on. It seemed innocent enough until I won eight hands in a row and was betting $80 a hand at a $10 minimum table. Jimmy liked the excitement and we were already up big, storing hundred dollar chips in "don't touch" pockets, so he decided to jump on board. It wasn't long until we were both betting HUGE hands simultaneously, but that wasn't all, more than ever it seemed like we were being dealt cards that were screaming to be double downed on, or split (in escence doubling our already over sized beginning bets). We decided we had to play the hands the same way we would as if there was only ten dollars on the line, but when we doubled down, or split now, it payed off big time.

Such a crowd gathered around us that it felt like this little, unimportant, ten dollar blackjack table was the main focus of an enormous casino. Something I thought was unheard of. People came over just to ride our wave of luck. They started betting Jimmy's hands, and mine too. We'd still win. There were people throwing $50 chips on our hands, and we'd get blackjack. At one point there were so many people betting on Jimmy's hand that the dealer wouldn't allow it. They set a three person maximum to bet on our hands. When the pile of chips in front of Jimmy was it's biggest, with a hundred dollars of his on the line, and hundreds of three other people's, he turned a blackjack. Jimmy nearly jumped out of his chair, and did a kind of Tiger Woods celebratory fist pump, but with both hands, while letting out a giant roar too, but even that was hard to hear amongst the cheering around him. For the first time in the history of a casino the pit boss was called over to watch a $10 minimum table.

One night, 4 old friends, one blackjack table, and $2,500 won. We were all able to pay Jimmy for the Fraser Island trip, and the car rental after one night of fun together gambling. There was a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow on our trip to Oz, and it was full of Australian dollars. As Jimmy so perfectly put it while walking out of the Casino, "Money won is a hundred times sweeter than money earned." So while the trip to Australia was awesome, and the weather was the best weather of anywhere I've ever been to, and the city was beautiful, and Fraser Island was like no other place I've ever seen, and catching up with old friends was better than words can express..."All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware” and for the rest of my life I will never forget the on the whim decision to go to the Sydney Casino in our sandals because I was unaware of it at the time, but this was our secret destination and I believe everything happened for a reason.