Purdy lights
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2008
1
8
21
Trip End
Ongoing
Las Vegas,
Nevada,
United States
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Leaving San Diego we headed north east out past LA with all in the car (besides me) deciding that because we drive on the correct side of the road in Australia, I wasn't really going to be driving much on the trip. Seeing as our station wagon along with the fifth member of our crew had bailed the night before we sat rather cozy in Jackie's little two door sports car. Once we escaped the suburban sprawl the road opened up and the houses turned to desert. We passed innumerable empty decrepit shacks and trailer parks, along with some which should probably be empty but are home to god only knows who
Driving in the rain
. We passed through some beautiful country with massive cliffs in dramatic shades of red and white. It was around this point that I decided to expose everyone to some top quality Aussi tunes. For dramatic purposes I busted out some Hilltop Hoods which, after initial hysterics, went down quite well. The sun soon disappeared behind a mountain of clouds and torrential rain. I was glad I wasn't driving. The skies cleared just in time for us to see the glow of the Vegas lights. Considering that it was dusk it was certainly an impressive effort. We drove on past Vegas to Hoover Dam. The thing is huge. We only made it about a quarter of the way across the dam wall when we were stopped by the police who told us that they were closing the road and sent us packing. It kinda sucked that we didn't get to walk the whole thing but I had Vegas on the brain so I didn't really care.
As we drove into Vegas I took control of the ipod and cranked out some ol black magic from Mr. Sinatra himself. I even donned the suit and mandatory cigar and whiskey. I was the man. So the last part may have been an imagined byproduct of jetlag but I don't care, was still the man. Vegas is incredible. The movies don't quite show the ludicrous scale of some of the buildings and cinema like billboards
Las Vegas Baby!
. I suffered from a little bit of over-stimulation and may have wet my pants (a little... again).After driving down the strip we pulled into Motel 6 a couple of blocks back and dressed up to hit the town. Turns out all I had to dress up in was my ripped jeans, a one day old shirt and my thongs (I'd forgotten to bring my shoes from San Diego). We didn't really care because we soon discovered that you could legally walk down the strip with open alcohol... This was to make it a far cheaper night.
We walked through all the big casinos with the girls making me take my shirt off and pose with a massive poster of the "thunder from down under". I think it's a bunch of male Aussi strippers. Someone did ask if I was actually a part of the show. I simply signed their breast and walked away without saying a word. I'm pretty sure it happened that way, but just for arguments sake we could say that I might have gone to the bottle shop and just bought more beer. But I'm pretty sure it happened the first way.
Everywhere along the strip were these randoms handing out business cards with pictures of naked girls and a phone number
Jackie :)
. All you have to do is call them up and they'll come to your hotel, steal all your money and give you a cocktail of std's... I reluctantly declined. We eventually made it to the mini Eiffel tower where Jackie was able to buy her massive cocktail in a giant Eiffel tower sized drink thing. Sadly the top of her prized cocktail glass (made out of plastic) was injured later in the evening but she still has the two pieces back in San Diego. At some time in the early morning we must have decided to trek back to our hotel. Along the way Nancy owned these college kids who were sculling wine out of a goon bag. One of them went for about 20 seconds and Nancy only stopped when she thought she was about to finish all their wine in one go. Go you Nancy.
When we finally made it back to the hotel we all collapsed and emptied out our pockets. We had been collecting all the porn card things from the street with a vision to turn them into a deck of cards... sounded like a good idea when we were drunk. Incidentally not. The night finished with Nancy pressed up against the wall trying to listen to a drug deal in the room next door or some people having sex, we never did quite work out which one. It was all topped with Jackie half passed out on the bed responding to what everyone said with a "that's what your mom said". All in all it was pretty sweet. The next morning we packed it all up and stumbled into the light and back into the car. Not before realizing that Nancy had lost her credit card and Jackie had lost her entire wallet (thankfully the wallet was recovered after an hour of liaising between the cleaning staff and the hotel managers).
So we left the lights and style (or there lack of) of Vegas without gambling a cent. It did seem a little criminal but we were having too much fun to sit and throw our money away. Next time.
