Day 2 - "No dude, we are having a great time. We don't need you't $h!t"

What sort of vacation wouldn't be complete without waking up early yet again. 7:30 comes way to early for anyone, especially me. We packed our bags and headed out the door; Vegas was in for a surprise. Adam, Beth, Booms and myself piled into the tan Jeep Cherokee parked out front. We were all stoked for our road trip. Quotes from the" Cleveland Show" and the "Hangover" were being rambled throughout the entire trip. Not to mention various other quotes from random friends, TV shows and movies. You can only look out the window for so long on trips like these. Nothing but desert and emptiness.

This was the view for about 3 hours. Every once in a while we would see the random group of dune buggy rides or caravan of jeeps. One time Adam said he saw water; I'm still stating it was an RC Cola machine. Silly mirages.

The driving continued until we saw. . . more desert. This trip was getting old at this point. Our only saving grace was the unlimited hours of music we had on 3 different iPod's. Without it, we would been driven to the brink of insanity of boredom.

After 1 fill up for gas, 2 bathroom breaks, 270 miles and 4.5 hours We made it. we finally arrived to sin city, the city that never sleep . . . Las Vegas. This time we chose to stay at the Flamingo Hotel. Which literally looks like they plastered the walls with flamingo remains. PINK EVERYWHERE!

Anyway, while Adam and Beth were checking in, Booms and I decided to explore our surroundings. I just so happened to get bit by the gambling bug and decided to play a couple of slots. Already down a $1, damn. Oh well, on to the Roulette table. I placed a couple of bets and ended up getting down to my last $5 chip. Luckily I was able to win back what I lost and broke even. So far down $1 total for the trip, not a bad way to start off.

To save money we decided to share a room. Four friends crammed into a "Deluxe Suite". Ya. . . right. As soon as we settled in we decided it would be a grand idea to all do a shot of Marker's Mark. For those of you that know me, I hate shots :) and for good reason. We toasted to having the best friends the world has to offer as well as a great time in Vegas. We then made our way down to the pool.

We had two paths, 21 and over and the public area. Since the 21 and over pool was $15 to get in we chose the road less costly. It turns out the public area was having a Land Shark party. $25 for a bucket (5) of Land Shark Beer. Let me tell you, heavenly. We took turn buying buckets and achieved our goal of poolside drunkenness. After laying outside, listening to music, swimming in the pool, jumping under the waterfall and down right Tom foolery, we decided to change and eat lunch /dinner.

As we have become accustomed to, we found a semi-inexpensive buffet located inside the Eiffel Tower. One thing to consider though before trying such a place, most of the food inside . . . is french. Now this wasn't a problem for me, because I was three sheets to the wind already. Nothing like walking around with several plates of food while enjoying a fantastic Land Shark induced buzz. I'm pretty sure I had the prime rib (which was rather salty, I remember that) and pulled chicken thigh. We ate until we were stuffed, and at $27 per person, we better have.

I decided the smart thing for me to do was to take a nap and sober up before heading out on the town. Silly me, I thought playing the slot machines while in an inebriated state was a good idea. Oh how wrong I was. Luckily only $5 managed to find its' way to the Vegas gods. After about 10 minutes of pulling on the One Armed Bandit, I some how managed to find my way to the room and passed out while watching reruns of King of Queens. That Doug and Carrie, when will they learn. I awoke about 3 hours later to find my fellow travelers back in the room waiting for me to awake from my drunken slumber. We then cleaned up and put on our Sunday Best. Or as I like to call it, our "Damn you guys look good" clothes.

We wandered over to Caesars to check out the Craps table, sure enough $25 minimum bet. Now I don't know about you, but I like to at least attempt to enjoy throwing my money away. This of course can not be done if you bet a quarter of your gambling allowance on the pass line. We continued to walk around and made our way back to our own hotel, the Flamingo. It was here that Booms and Adam began playing Black Jack (Beth decided to stay in the room). I, myself, went back to the Roulette table to try to hustle the Casino out of Millions of dollars. And then I woke up and told myself, this isn't Ocean's 11, 12, 13, the Hang Over, or Rain Man. I managed to double my initial investment. It was at that point I should have walked. But honestly, doesn't anyone really listen to the little angel on the shoulder when gambling. The highest point of the night - $97. It was then I should have walked, but no. Not me, I got greedy and the dealer got cold. So I decided to walk at $75. It's okay, I'm still up $34 for the day. Not to bad, at least my hotel room would be covered.

We moved over to another casino to look for cheaper Black Jack hands. I agree $10 per hand is a little pricey when your gambling budget is only $100. Of course the cheap tables were full at O' Sheas. We stepped outside to decided what to do next. Apparently our luck ran out, because we were then being harassed by a short ill dressed Korean fellow. Now normally when you walk down the strip people try to get you to get a hooker, go to a strip club and or go to a club. Once you tell them no thanks, they leave you alone. Not this douche bag. He decides it's a good idea to try to convince us to go to a club. REPEATEDLY and then continued to mock our choice of gambling and as he put it "leaning against a pole". I walked away with my middle finger in the up position. I felt I had to tell him he was number 1 in my book.

We decided to keep walking and see what else was on the strip. We walked through Imperial Palace and one other one, who's name escapes me at the moment. After about 45 minutes of walking and looking for something to do, exciting I know, we came to the conclusion that the Flamingo was our best bet. Then again we would have to walk past the Asian troll to complete our quest. Sure enough the Frodo sized Jackie Chan look-a-like was standing there hassling us again. This time we had a plan, sort of. We had a couple of options:

· Push said Asian into Traffic and have a Taxi take him out (we didn't really want a "Hangover Experience" so that idea was scrapped)

· Just walk to the other side of the street (I wonder why we didn't choose this option)

· Heckle him back and give him a hard time (ding ding ding)

Adam then decides to open his mouth and tell him, "Dude, you already told us about the club, and we told you no... Ya man we are having a great time... Yes, walking up and down the strip is more fun then your Sh*ty club.... We don't need your Sh*t" Ha, we sure showed him. I'm sure he's used to it by now, but we didn't care. We stood up for ourselves and felt we had to defend the fact that walking down the strip was more fun then a club. Or perhaps it was because 66% of us had girl friends and we weren't about to go without them. That could be it to.

We made it back to the Flamingo and stumbled upon a glorious place, Burger Joint. A burger restaurant that is open at 3am; what a country! Not the cheapest burgers, but yet again this is Vegas. They were decent enough. After a few conversations about UFC being a bunch of dudes having sweaty man sex and interrogating the server as to why her name is Jennica (we decided her parents couldn't decided between Jennifer and Jessica) the three of us parted ways again. Adam and Booms went back to the room, I mean it was 4am after all, and I found my way back to the Roulette table. If you couldn't tell by now I like Roulette. Unlike my last dealer that enjoyed hitting back to back zeros (thank you so much Chandler) this dealer was very inconsistent and appeared to barely have enough strength to spin the Roulette wheel. Sadly she cleaned me out. By the end of the night I was down all of my winnings :( So I was back to even. With a frown on my face I went back to to the room and tried to get some sleep. On the bright side, no pun intended, I was able to watch a Vegas sunrise. God bless gambling until 5:45am.