Vegas Baby... Vegas

So we made it back in one piece, but not for a lack of trying not to. The trip was good fun, busy, tiring, alcoholic, gambloric (of or pertaining to Gamblor, the demon of the slot machine), relaxing, and exciting. Here's a recap of exciting events:

We left work at about 4pm, left San Francisco at about 5pm. Now, for those of you who have never driven from San Francisco to Las Vegas, it's about 10 hours without stopping. With stopping, it's about 12 hours. We stopped in Los Altos to pick up friends, and made it all the way to Gilroy for dinner. Outcome: Chili's pretty much sucks.

Off from Chili's down 152. We almost ran out of gas and I coasted the car to the bottom of the hill past the dam for gas. Than on to 5 and whatever else down the valley, and we made it eventually to Bakersfield, where I said we should stop for the night (it was about 12 then). We kept going to Tehachapi where we got gas and I got a second wind, and there were trains. We made it to Barstow, where there are no hotels, then past Barstow where there was 1 and it was full. Derek took the wheel from there to Vegas, where we arrived at about 5am.

We were pretty tired by that point, but the good people at the Monte Carlo let us check in at 9am, so it was like we got 3 nights for the price of 2 (which was still pretty expensive). We slept until noonish, gambled a bit, ate some food, gambled a bit more, and had dinner eventually. Beyond that, we lost track of which day it was, gambled a bit more, and went to this club at the Mandalay Bay called rumjungle. That was pretty fun. Mandy got drunk on this one drink that was basically 151 in a pint glass. Then we danced and crashed at around 2 at the hotel.

The next day (Sunday I guess), we gambled a bit, explored the north strip, and had some emotions. We had Mexican for dinner, which was OK. All in all, the food we had in Vegas was not exceptional, especially when compared to San Francisco's food. We tried to go to the Coke museum, but we found out it was closed forever, so I cried a little, and Mandy did too because she was really excited to take me there. Fuckers at Coke didn't understand that one bit.

We went to sleep and woke up pretty early Monday morning to head for the spa at our hotel, which was awesome. When I grow up, I'm going to have a shower with 3 heads. And a steam room. After that, we checked out of the hotel from our TV (which was magical), and we put our crap in the car, then went to NY, NY to ride the roller coaster there, which was cool. Then, a buffet lunch back at our hotel, which was OK (see above on food in Las Vegas), but I did steal 2 cookies. Then, on the road at around 1:30 or so for home.

The trip home was largely uneventful, except that we made it back to San Francisco in about 9 hours, which is pretty good considering we stopped in Los Altos to drop people off. We watched CSI (haha), and we went to bed.