LAS VEGAS
This is my first hand account of pretty much everything that I can remember. I started with an outline and I'm filling in everything that I can, feel free to e-mail me if any of you guys were not blacked out for anything that I missed. I’m not done yet, give me another week to get the pics, videos and the rest of the story posted…
Updated: It's all here know. Be easy if I forget some details, I finished this this over two weeks after we got back and after a debacle of a birthday party...
Partiers in no particular order:
Nicknames changes on the trip:
THESE WERE MADE BY GROUP CONSENSUS, IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE CHANGES PROVE IT.
Our flight was delayed 1-˝ hours out of Cedar Rapids, it’s not like we had been waiting for this trip forever or anything. 7 of us had direct flights to and from Vegas out of Cedar Rapids: Klobbo, Gards 9, Joe, JB, TJ, Trudy, and myself. What else do you do but drink $5 beers at the airport while you wait?
JB was getting a little antsy about his first plane trip but was sure to stop halfway down the gate to the plane, hold up his hand and yell, “It’s OK, I’m a limo driver.” The jitters continued for him, but after a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels on the plane he was fine though.
Unfortunately for us, Gards 9 hadn’t taken a shit the past week and his farts proved it. They were bad when we were waiting around the airport but they were even worse when we were stuck on the plane.
ADDITION REQUESTED BY KLOBBO:
When you fly to Vegas some people are ready to party, clearly our flight was one
of those for sure. Long story short, the flight attendant started the
dollar game. Everyone that wants to takes a dollar bill out and writes
their seat number on it, they pick up all the dollars and draw one out.
The seat drawn wins the whole bag of cash. The flight attendant chick had
narrowed the winner down to the rear of the plane and an isle seat and we got a
little crazy (the booze may have had a hand). Joe Daddy ended up winning
$101 before we even landed.
Most of us downed 3-4 mixed drinks during the 2 hour 45 minute flight. Before the flight crew new it there were yells of “I JUST NEED SOME CAT!” from the back of the plane and we could see the lights of Sin City.
While waiting at the baggage claim a guy with a cart approached us, he asked us if we needed a limo to our hotel. I had heard that it wouldn’t be much more expensive than getting two cabs and it would be much faster to get a limo so we said sure. The guys name was…yep you guessed it, LARRY. We rolled in style to a liquor store that was already closed then to our Excalibur hotel.
ADDITION REQUESTED BY KLOBBO:
Joe had about $88 one dollar bills left over from his plane winnings after his
share of the limo ride, we walked in with our bags still in our hands and Joe
threw all $88 on red. Wouldn't you know it, the roulette ball landed on red so
this group of Larrys went nuts as Joe collected his winnings.
After checking in we hit up The Sherwood Forrest (later to be renamed “Shenanigans” by Trudy due to his Laryness). It was discovered that the Breakfast Skillet at this place was probably the biggest and best in the nation, if not the world (and no Stroeve, I was not able to finish it). We missed the implosion of the Stardust Hotel and Casino at 1 AM because we were completely clueless about everything at this point. The rest of the first night was a blur of drinking and gambling until about 4:30 AM for me.
At this point I decided to cash out and get to bed. This is when Ian’s nickname “Rip VanWinkle” got it’s base, he had gone to bed “early” (around 3 AM). Ian and I were welcomed for about 15 minutes at a time ever hour or hour and a half by Joe, Klobbo, JB, and Homeboy. Those fuckers came in and either frog-splashed Ian or just plain screamed at us about being fags and sleeping. There were at least 2 times that I remember when they came back that Klobbo was in bed and almost passed out before Joe mentioned “Tropicana roulette” to perk up his ears and get him going again. I don’t think Klobbo said no to those two words the entire trip. You say roulette and his ears perked a little, then you say Tropicana and his eyes open wide and he gets that goofy grin across his face. Although I was in bed from about 4:30 until 11 I probably only got around 4 hours of sleep due to the Larryness of my roommates, not to mention the Excalibur’s pool renovation outside our 2nd floor window that started at about 7 AM.
As I said, the Excalibur is renovating their pool area so if we wanted the pool we had to go to the Luxor Hotel/Casino. So most of us did. Klobbo decided to take this quiet time to go to bed, but Joe has yet to go to bed at this point and was still going strong.
The Luxor had a pretty nice setup. Unfortunately only one of its 3 or 4 pools had water in it. Didn’t matter, we still managed to have a good time. Some of the Lars stayed in the pool most of the day and got burnt to a crisp. Gards 9 and Gards 10 (Gards 19 collectively of course) were in the worst shape but Trudy and Joe Daddy got a good taste of sunburn too. I exposed my pasty-white skin for about 15 minutes and started to turn pink so I headed back to the room after crushing a few beers poolside.
I think we left the room around 11AM; I walked back into the room at 1:55 PM to the alarm going off and Klobbo passed out on the bed. I turned the alarm off and yelled at Klobbo. Somehow the alarm was set for 12 noon, turns out that fucking Larry had been passed out for 1 hour 55 minutes with the alarm beeping loud as hell. Take note: this is what happens when you party balls.
This whole time Joe has yet to stop drinking since we got through security at the Cedar Rapids airport. He challenged himself to go 36 hours, possibly even 48 hours of straight drinking. Bottom line, he’s real Larry at this point and we are all amazed at the fact that he’s been awake for over 36 hours and coming close to a 24-hour drinking period.
Joe was so confident (drunk) in his abilities that he came over to me and slipped me a $100 bill to bet on him if anyone said that he couldn’t continue drinking for a total of 48 hours. I’m not sure if no one wanted to take Joe’s money or everyone actually believed that he could take 48 hours of continuous boozing but no one took the challenge. (Joe doesn’t remember giving me the $100 or his other collateral to make the bet. Odds are that he doesn’t remember much about the first day and a half that we were in Vegas)
Joe finally hit the skids at around 11 or 11:30 the second night to bring his total to 31 straight hours of drinking. We were at the Hooters casino when he put his drink down and sat for about an hour and came to the conclusion that his run had taken it’s toll. Klobbo and I sat down from watching Eric Gards 9 and Ian play craps and were rocking out the penny slots when Joe sat down next to us. He looked more banged up than anyone I’ve ever seen, Johnny Bravo volunteered to walk him back to the room and meet up with us later. We all were amazed…but it wasn’t over yet.
Video: Trudy challenges Joe's drunkeness after the contest is over
Anyway, we got up to the room about 10 minutes after Joe finally got into bed. He slept for a couple minutes but got back up after we came in. Beers and mixed drinks were being made, Joe sat down and slammed a whiskey and coke in about two seconds and asked for another. Clearly the second one didn’t go down nearly as fast. The rest of us somehow convinced him to go to bed. Don’t really remember the rest of the night, more drinking in the room, some of us went to bed, others I think went back to the Tropicana.
At this point Trudy, Gards 9 and Joe Daddy posed like the Thunder From Down Under (a bunch of homo ripped guys that were a show at our hotel) to show off their sunburn. Of course this isn't enough entertainment for a bunch of drunk guys, Gards got slapped...HARD
After the money was lost on the penny slots and craps Klobbo’s brilliant mind came up with an idea to fuel his roulette addiction. “Lets all throw $20 on red then go to the next casino and do the same thing.” On paper (or the internet in this case) the idea sounds like horseshit but Eric and I were sold in a second. Since we were still at the Hooters casino about $60 bucks landed on red before the ball landed on black. Since we had already spent plenty of time at the Tropicana we decided to skip that one and go on to New York, New York where about $100 landed on red. We hit it that time so we cashed out and left. I’m not sure what happened and why stopped our roulette tour after two casinos but I think we headed back to our room at the Excalibur.
I think that this was the point where we passed a good-looking girl sitting by herself at the slot machines on the way back to the room. The some of the other guys were walking ahead of me and had stopped to talk to her, invite her to the room for a drink, etc. Assuming that they would continue their embarrassment on their own I just kept walking. They came up to the room and filled me in on the situation…apparently she was willing to come up to the room…for a price (I’ll spell it out, that lady was a hooker).
pics from our our new room window:
After a shitty night of sleeping due to earth moving equipment doing laps outside our second floor window someone came up with the idea to see if we could switch rooms. Eric took the initiative to call the front desk for some info. Of course he couldn’t just ask, he decided to have fun with it. Upon answering the phone he claimed to be my “partner” and said his husband had trouble sleeping because of the loud construction outside. After a 3 or 4 minute gay conversation they said we were all set up and just need to stop by the front desk to finish up the paperwork and get the keys.
Trading rooms was probably the best thing for us, due to Gards 9’s shit pants the first night the room smelled like hell and it was already trashed. The fucking Larrys that I went with also managed to lose keys as fast as they drank so everyone was always looking for a keycard.
After Ian and I stopped and sports booking to throw down some mullah on some NIT games we got new rooms and new keys. In a matter of hours after everyone’s return from the pool the new rooms had been trashed just as badly as the other ones (luckily Gards 9’s ass has ceased it’s rankness).
Clearly I’m not the “CLUBing” type so I didn’t got clubbing with the rest of them, one night they went to a club called PURE, another night I think they went to the Ghost Bar at the Palms, and I have no idea where they went the last night. Luckily (sarcastic) I was awakened each morning by the Larrys when they came back to the room usually between 3 and 6 AM.
One night Trudy somehow believed he was holy and stood an
the foot of the two queen beds in our room “blessing us.” He had a cup of water
that he would dip his hand into before flicking at us. This continued for a few
minutes before someone tackled him. (KLOBBO'S CORRECTION) TJ
punched him in the ribs.
I don’t even remember half of the stupid shit that happened but one night the Larrys lost all their room keys so TJ decided to take my wallet and camera down to security and give them a story so he could get into the other room. Apparently the story went that I was too passed out to answer the phone or door but he had the proof of knowing me because there was a picture of him on my camera. I don’t know how, but it worked.
I knew I wasn't going to wake up in time to place bets in time for the first games of the NCAA tournament so I put money down on BC and Butler Wednesday night. I was right, most of us got up in time to see the start of the game but definitely not in time to place bets. I got up for breakfast then went back to bed to watch the rest of the first set of games. I met up with the rest of the crew down at the sports booking area about halfway through the second round games, by this time when they were in double digits of drinks of course. I'm kinda fuzzy on the details from here, I remember us ripping on a short guy with thick glasses that was rooting against Duke and also a really big guy that that glasses so big they looked like the novelty ones you could by at the dollar store. When drinks are free and you only have to tip to get a drink is when HawkeyeTom gets wasted. Our group took up about one entire bleacher (they have a bunch of nice chairs but they brought in about 8 or 10 sections of bleachers for the tournament). We stayed and watched most of the games and drank most of the day.
Trudy's wardrobe at the sports book deserves it own paragraph. He was wearing his white C L U B shirt that he had worn at least once or twice before (clearly spills all over it), khaki cargo shorts, white socks and black dress shoes. His drunken stare came my way late in the afternoon and he said, "Hey man, HT, do you have a belt I can use?" (in a partial slur of course) Clearly he was a debacle so I couldn't tell the Larry no.
JB, Joe Daddy, TJ, Homeboy and I went to the Bellagio $30 buffet for dinner that night. It was good, but 30 bucks are you fucking serious?!? After dinner we headed outside to check out the famous Bellagio fountains. We stayed for 3 songs and headed to The Mirage to watch their volcano erupt. Well, we got fucked on timing and wanted to see the pirate show so we walked by The Mirage on the way to Treasure Island for the Pirate show. If I had to compare the female pirates to anything it would be the Pussycat Dolls. It was a pretty good pirate fight with plenty of sexual connotations. That show was about 20 or 30 minutes. We were tired of walking around by the time that show was over so we all decided to head back to Excalibur.
We got back and everyone else was getting ready to go to the C L U B (and not the sandwich). I don't know where they ended up going but I definitely remember when they came back...
I woke up at 5:30 AM (on the day that we fly out) to Joe leaning over me telling me, "It's time." I got up and went over to the other room in time to film Trudy's upcoming hit on the billboard singles chart. (He had help with lyrics from Joe and Klobbo). After the solo it was the time we had all been waiting for, and also our best chance of being arrested on the trip. We gathered in the hallway of the Excalibur around 5:45 AM to watch Trudy attempt to break Joe's guitar over Joe's back. Turns out that cheapass guitar that Joe won was built pretty solid.
The video shows how hard Trudy hit Joe, but I cut the video and was heading to one of the rooms when Trudy cocked back again to take another swing before Joe cowered and prayed for him not to hit him again. After inspecting the damage to the guitar and to Joe's back there was a knock at the door...
Video: Joe's damage and a knock on the door
...and it actually was security. They just gave us a hard time and we promised to keep it down and go to bed.
I was way off, I had figured on at least one arrest and at least one hooker payday on this trip. I'm not going to say that I'm disappointed but I'm definitely surprised. Of course it would have been pretty hard to get arrested unless you were a total asshole since I only saw one cop the entire 5 days we were there.
Checkout was at 11 AM. I definitely checked us out at 11 when everyone was still packing up. Our flight was at 1:30 so we had plenty of time to get to the airport and get out bags checked. Outside of the security check where they swabbed my backpack and iPod speakers for bomb material it went pretty smoothly. We had enough time to get ripped off on one more meal in Vegas before we left. We ate at a diner in the airport. We didn't need to go to our gate yet but the bombs that JB was dropping out of his ass were worth standing or sitting on the floor by the gate.
I got an isle seat next to Trudy. We taxied out and were 6th in line to take off, about 45 minutes later Trudy woke up and asked me if we had take off yet. The Larry had been so fucking passed out that he didn't know we had been 6 miles in the air for the past half hour. Clearly this shows why I was unable to wake him up with multiple elbows to the ribs to point out the guy across the isle from be getting an HJ from his wife. After about 5 minutes of elbowing I gave up on Trudy and looked around to find all 6 of the other fuckers on the plane passed out.
Long story short (too late) Las Vegas was a party, if you had the chance to come with us and didn't you fucked up big time. Great idea on the trip JB, I'm looking forward to the wedding and reception. You better get enough kegs!
