Lets Backtrack - Part I

This evening I enjoyed a night of good food, tasty beverages, great friends, and hilarious stories. One particular (mis)adventure of mine came into teh spotlight and I figure it's about time to let the world in. You may find it funny, you may not...

To begin, I must paint a bit of a backdrop. Every summer for the past coupel of years I had an arrangement with my employer to have six consecutive Friday's off of work so that I could volunteer at my old Boy Scout summer camp just north of St. Joseph, MO. This past summer, I was invited by a client of mine to attend the ICAST show in Las Vegas, which is the largest industry trade show for the sport fishing industry. The show fell on a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday during camping season and I booked my travel such that I could still arrive back in Des Moines on Friday in time to drive down to camp for the evening program.

I flew into Vegas on Wednesday afternoon, checked into the hotel and grabbed a few winks before meeting up with my client for dinner and drinks afterwards. Dinner was good, drinks at the Hard Rock Casino were better (I spotted Blake Griffin and the lead singer from Journey). We called it a night at say... 10:oopm.

The next day I got up, got to the show with Ric (my client, and now my friend) and we spent the whole day walking the floor. I made a ton of great contacts and was feeling absolutely great about the whole trip. That evening was dinner and drinks again, but Ric started to not feel well so he cashed in early. On the way back to my hotel, still on a high from the success of the day, I decided to go ahead and walk over to the strip and check out the fountains at the Bellagio.

Standing in front of the giant bursts of water I thought "Hmm, I could go for a cold beer. Maybe a pint at an Irish pub would be good... New York, New York would probably be a good place for that!" And so I strolled down the strip a little ways (actually a long ways, one's sense of distance gets very skewed in Vegas), and finally found a great little joint called "Nine Fine Irishmen" at New York, New York Casino.

I strolled up to the bar, ordered a pint and started to take it all in. This is the point where things go awry.

Standing not four feet from me is a group of five Norwegians living it up. I don't know why or what I did, but they saw me and decided that it was now there duty to include me into their group. I became something of an honorary norwegian for the night I guess. I know that this can be trouble for me given that I have an 8:30 flight the next morning and as anybody who's ever flown out of McCarran can tell you, it's a real bitch to get through check-in and security. I plan for a two hour cushion no matter what. Which means I need to be getting up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready, packed up, checked out, and carted to the the airport. To stay out late is really not a good idea.

However...

I also can't discount the fact that I am with a group of Norwegians and, being the American patriot that I am, can't turn my nose up at a chance to achieve some degree of international diplomacy. So at around 10:00pm, purely out of a desire to help with global relations with my country and Norway, I decide to oblige and begin to good-time it with my new Scandinavian friends.

Then, somehow, 3:30am came around... uh oh. Not good for me. I know this is bad news, after all I have to hoof it back to the hotel, try and get maybe an hour and a half of sleep before getting up to catch my flight. I won't go so far as to say I was drunk.... but I certainly wasn't sober.

Finally at my hotel, feet throbbing (please refer back to earlier statements about distance in Vegas - things are farther than they appear), head still swimming I set my alarm and crash.

I awake, feeling kinda rough, but not too rough - which means I'm still feeling pretty good if you catch my meaning. I check the clock and the heart stops.... it's 8:15am. My flight is at 8:30. That obviously isn't going to happen, so I guess now it's on to plan "B".


... to be continued...