Vegas, Baby!

When we left off, Conor and I were finishing up our last night camping. After an uneventful night, we took a quick morning hike (in flip flops, great idea guys) up a trail called Canyon Overlook. While the view was great, the company was even better: upon reaching the summit – note: the hike was maybe twenty minutes tops – Conor spots a solo hiker, maybe mid-thirties and wearing a cowboy hat, doing a very strange dance.

The dance looked something like a cross between sideways hip thrusts and the Tiger fist pump. I didn’t see the dance, but Conor re-enacted it for me later. The funny thing was, when the guy saw Conor watching him, he gave a half-embarrassed, awkward laugh and said, “That was my happy dance.”

Happy dance, indeed. After heading down the canyon again, we left for a quick 4 hour jaunt down I-15 toward the City of Sin and the Wild West Inn AKA Days Inn Craptastic Hotel Extraordinaire. Great deal on the room, though. Kudos, Conor!

(We did get a AAA discount. And 2 coupons for free coffee, which we did not use.)

Conor and I executed our gameplan to perfection: eat In-N-Out, explore the city (which we did from 1-3 while waiting for our room to become available), come back and nap, eat dinner and get ready to go out.

PS: When exploring, we walked past a bar where a midget (sorry PC'ers) was announcing that he would be pouring free shots at the bar later. I cannot describe to you how awesome that is. Unfortunately, we never found it later in the night. 

PPS: After our nap, Conor and I versed ourselves in the language of craps: pass bet, come on, place bets, odds on, and the like. We read somewhere that craps is the best thing to play in Vegas because it offers the house the lowest advantage; as we discovered, it is also incredibly dangerous and is a great deal of fun. After dinner, Conor and I hung out in the room awhile, made a budget for the night, and hit the town.

The play by play:

Part 1: Caesar’s Palace.

We lost at 25 cent slots. That is all. Slots are awful.

Part 2: Planet Hollywood.

First of all, while changing locations, Conor and I decided we were going to be British and spoke in London accents all down the Strip. Highlight of the night for Conor: a pair of girls caught wind of our random conversation. One turned around and said, “Your accent is really cute.”

Conor couldn’t wipe a smile off his face the entire night. 

Once at Planet Hollywood, we headed straight for craps. Craps is a BLAST, especially when you’re winning. Which we did in large proportions. Some guy named Art was really lucky with the dice. Thanks, buddy!

And then, instead of walking away, we promptly lost most of our substantial winnings. You all know how that goes… right? Vegas always wins.

Also, Vegas has the most brilliant business model ever. They give you all the free drinks you want and then basically expect you to stick around and spend more money on gambling to make up for it. And you do, my friends. You do. 

We decided to change locales again. This would prove to be one of those Very Bad Ideas. As we were leaving, we ran into a bachelorette party and talked to the revelers for about an hour. And got a picture. Distractions.  Tsk Tsk.

Part 3: Time Dilation…?

We finally ended up at New York, New York (yes, that's a casino) and tried to play craps again… but no one was around! After wandering and betting on random things, we finally realized why there was no one there: it was 3 am.

What the hell? How did time go by so fast? Time flies when you’re losing money. And we did.

So we went home.

Quick-Hit Small Victories:

·        We did not wake up with a tiger in the bathroom

·        We remember everything. We think.

·        Neither of us got married, thank God

·        We didn’t go over budget

·        We did not die or get beat up by bouncers.

Side note: I was unreasonably angry with Conor due to the fact that he wanted to set an alarm for 9am (it was now 4) because he wanted to get to Thacher (his old boarding school) super early. I still am not sure why. He was so dialed in to getting to school that we didn’t stop for lunch. Maybe it was the conversation (we talked about active listening, Bayes’ Theorem, conversationalism, and lots of other things), but more likely Conor just really wanted to see his brother and sister. So cute.

I just realized I use way too many parentheses in my writing. Shame on those of you who call me a good writer. Skilled with punctuation, I am not.

Anyway, after about a six hour drive, we did indeed arrive at Thacher, a beautiful school that is so… Conor that it makes perfect sense. We met up with Conor’s siblings, Gracie and Evan, who graciously showed us around.

So now we’re at the house of a friend of Conor, Cal, whose family has graciously opened their house to us two poor couch surfers. As has been the case across the country, their hospitality has been amazing. 

Well, this is almost the end. Tomorrow morning we’ll go for the scenic drive up Route 1, which follows the beautiful California coastline you see in car commercials all the time, until we hit San Fran and the end of our road trip. I’ll post once or twice more and then be done.

Stay tuned!

-Nate