Vegas Vacation

December 15, 2005
By: C.Whyte

It all started on a lonely Friday afternoon. I had just gotten off work and eaten at my favorite restaurant, Falafel of Santa Cruz, saying good-bye to the only one I only truly love... shwarma sandwiches.

The road was dry and boring as the music was playing some ware in the volume range of 18-20 and bass up at +5db, and I was driving at an amazing 70+ mph.

Before I knew it, aka 3 hours later, I was in San Louis Obispo (no, no I do not know how to spell it, nor do I care). "SLO," or "Slow" as I call it was surprisingly nip outside when I rolled up at about 5:30pm. I park in a space and get out of my car.

Before I know it the animal himself is standing over me at a commanding 6'2" (height) and 2'6" (length). Needless to say I was quite shocked by this uncanny turn of events, but I still managed to squeeze out a "D.......Y."

Prepared for what lies ahead, I had remembered to pack a digital camera and a digital voice recorder; there was no way I was going to let any of this gold go to waste! I then proceeded to unpack my car and make the transfer into DY's truck.

Before I knew it, the entire truck was packed with bags, pillows, and fellow Cal Pollians and we were on our way to the one and only... Bakersfield.

I know what you are all thinking: "Bakersfield is mad lame" or "Bakersfield is mad embarrassing" or "why did DY have a 2' boner upon arrival?"

The answers: "Because it is crazy cold, and Bakersfield is 1/2 way to Las Vegas."

The drive up to Bakersfield was interesting. I got the honor of sitting shot gun, while the two backseat riders (Andrew and Lenny... also referred to as "Len-Sauce") got to watch a DVD on a laptop computer. Star Wars: Episode III, I believe, the "Cool Runnings" of the 21st century if you will. I found out that it is a lot different to hear a movie than it is to see it. I also found out that Lenny's voice gets (amazingly) louder when he sees a light saber.

Before I knew it, we were there in Bakersfield. If you have never been to Bakersfield, conceder yourself lucky in a sense that you didn't have to smell it, but hurt that you haven't experienced the insane amounts of fog that travels through that town. If I am not mistaken, the super blockbuster smash hit "The Fog" was filmed and inspired by that town. A little side note, the super smash blockbuster hit "Jingle All The Way" is still available in your local Blockbuster Video store nation wide.

But back to business. It was time to live it up Bako style. In Bakersfield there are two things to do: (1) listen to country music and (2) jump into freezing cold pool water then jump into a hot tub.

At this point in the trip, there were nine of us total all staying in Wayne's mom's house. Believe it or not, he has never seen Wayne's World.

Anywho, Mike Barnes (I say his name in full because not only will he be a re-occurring quazi-pseudo character in this story, but also because the name means business and demands respect in the fullest ordinance of the highest degree) jumped in the freezing pool naked.

Why you ask?

That's what we were all asking and possibly still are asking ourselves to this day.

Morning strikes, and by morning I mean 1:30pm in the afternoon and we are ready to hit up Las Vegas! After a brief pick up of another person we were on our way.

The ride up to Vegas was epically boring and lame. If you have never driven through the Mojave Desert, you haven't lived. Despite popular belief, the desert is in fact cold at night. In fact, come to think of it, the entire trip was cold, but only temperature wise, Vegas itself was HOT. When I say "hot" I do not mean that the girls or women were hot... I am happy to say that I no longer have a need to look at women because I already have the perfect girlfriend who puts all others to shame. Mike on the other hand, was ready to go. Looking his heart out, we finally roll into our hotel parking lot on the main strip (don't get too excited), the Imperial Palace.

For those of you who don't know the Imperial Palace (IP), it is one of the cheaper hotels on the strip and is clearly Asian themed. DY was LOVING LIFE!

Here comes the part of the story where I skip around and just explain the good stuff, so bear with me on this one. Let's start with Craps.

DY, myself, Andrew, and Lenny all woke up early and learned how to play craps and found out that is a most excellent game to play. As we all might have guessed by the name, DY is fantastic at craps! He s what we in the business call a "hot shooter" or as the dealer called him "big blue." I mean this guy could not mess up even if he tried. The funny thing is that I am dangerously bad at craps, so I tried to play the same numbers as the Wildcat and somehow STILL LOST! As you can tell, I'm still a little bit bitter about that.

Anyways, there really isn't much else to say about craps except for we played it and DY took them, both for a dangerously long time.

As some of you might have recalled, the last time I went to Las Vegas the only thing that I wanted to do was put $100 on black at the roulette table. I was so excited to do it the entire time, but a few minutes before I did the bet, I called Tasha my girlfriend and she told me that she likes red better. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I made a foolish decision to put my crisp C-note on RED. Needless to say, I lost.

This trip was my perfect chance for revenge. Walking up and down the strip, I decided to stick it to the French and play my revenge game at the place of origin (yes, roulette was introduced in France, hence the name), so we went to the Paris Casino.

I cannot take the credit for finding the table of choice; this one was all on the Abomitible Drew-man as he noticed a roulette table that had hit red a commanding six times in a row! Regardless of the fact that every spin of roulette has the exact same odds of hitting any number, we thought to ourselves: "Who rolls red seven times in a row?" Drew steps up to the plate and drops $40 down on black. I then step in and power down my crisp 100 dollar bill onto of Andrew's 40. At this point a mid twenty year old Persian woman is giving Drew some pretty erotic looks.

Her mind was thinking: "OooOOo La La, who is that handsome fearless man!?!" The girl's boyfriend, who was sitting right next to her on the roulette table did not take too kindly to this look. He slides 40 chips on red (perhaps to prove his manhood) and the dealer spins the ball. At this point my heart is racing and all I can hear is Drew say "ohhh boy" under his breathe in a very quagmire voice. The ball begins to bounce in the slots... red, black, red, GREEN, black, red............ BLACK! We had done it! Vengeance was ours.

We collected our money, cashed out, and gave Paris the rocking of a lifetime that it was long over do for. Needless to say, we felt like bad-arses. We felt good that is, until tragedy struck in the form of a punch to the face.

The final morning in Vegas while everyone was downstairs gambling (perhaps a little craps, who knows) and the only one in the room (Andrew) was taking a shower, two African-American-Latino thugs had broken into our slightly left open room and were taking Mike's stuff.

Upon their exit of the room they came face to face with Crazy Mike himself who was walking up from the floor after realizing that he had no more money to gamble.

"What the hell?!" he yelled. "Give me back my stuff bitches!"

The two men (one HUGE and the other smaller than average) took off down the hallway with their hands full of Mikes personal belongings (laptop, DVD's, cd's, Men's Health magazine, ect). If you don't know Mike then you aren't going to understand why he chased those mofo's down the hallway at full speed.

The crooks turned a corner into an emergency exit only hallway... they were stuck.

Not knowing that it was an emergency only ending to the hall, Mike sprints round the corner, but right as he turns he gets punched in the left eye by the big guy. The small guy then takes Mikes head and slams it into the wall.

The jabronies drop all the gear they took and bolted down the hallway. Mike, being the tank that he is, debated chasing them down the hall or staying with his stuff... much to his dislike, he stayed with the stuff. After about an hour of security and medical tests and police investigations we packed up our stuff and left.

The damage done was not only to Mike's face, who at this point has a monster eye, but also to Andrew's financials. Drew's wallet was taken, along with his $115 Fossil "Titanium" watch which he loved dearly. You could say that the thieves took a little piece of his heart when they took that watch, but then again, the sting will soon subside.

The trip back from Vegas was a quiet one. We stopped once for gas where Andrew covered his sorrows up by buying porn and Mike with another copy of Men's Health (which we all know was secretly for DY).