Vegas

Dan asked me if I wanted to go to Vegas with him in March of 2011 nearly a year ago.  Our cousin, Adam, went to a NASCAR race every year in Vegas and he said I had to go and experience it.  I didn't question this at all and I immediately put my $200 down to reserve my spot.

Well, the trip happened last weekend.  It was my first time to Vegas and I really had no idea what I was in for.  One of the nice turn of events was that Kendra and I were able to drive to Vegas rather than fly.  Although driving took much longer than we had expected (nearly 6 hours each way).

But we got to Vegas on Friday and met up with Dan and a coupe of his college buddies and got right after drinking and gambling.  I fell into the Vegas trap and somehow lost track of time and wasn't able to head to bed until 5am.

Saturday held an exploration of Vegas that included all the classics of the Bellagio fountains, all you can eat buffet (including all you can drink mimosas), New York New York roller coaster, day drinking with plenty of great people watching.

Saturday night Kendra and I went to a great sushi restaurant which was made even better due to the fact that we got to the restaurant 30 minutes before our reservation and Kendra decided to sit down at a black jack table and walked away 20 minutes later $200 richer.  We later met up with the rest of the group to do something a little out of the ordinary: drink and gamble.

We decided to call it an early night on Saturday since we had to wake up at 8am on Sunday to head to the NASCAR tailgate party- so we left went to bed at 4:30am.  I fell into another classic Vegas-rookie mistake and lost $250 from 4:10am-4:30am on Saturday....that really hurt the check book.

We woke up early on Sunday to head out to the middle of the desert to watch some NASCAR.  This was another first for me and I was pleasantly surprised.  The tailgaiting wasn't very special but we got into the track and I was amazed at the production of the race.

And then the drivers started their engines.  It was quite impressive.  I thought NASCAR was the best live sporting event ever while the cars were driving in a pack.  There were accidents and a large amount of time to talk to people while the cars were on the other side of the track.

The "sport" got really annoying around lap 50 when the cars were so spread out that there was no chance to talk to anyone around you.

Lucky for me (for a couple of reasons) Kendra came to pick me up around lap 100 to head back to Los Angeles.  It was lucky because I was getting very drunk at this time (mainly because there's not much else to do since you can't talk to anyone) and I really couldn't take the engine noise anymore.

On the way home, I was told (by Kendra) I was fairly entertaining until I passed out 3 hours into the trip.

I know it was a good Vegas trip...mainly because it took an entire week to recover.