Vegas Virginity Lost – Part One
Adam J Locascio
Thursday June 16, 2005
When I first heard that the ArenaBowl was going to be in Las Vegas this year, I made a promise to my girlfriend of four years – if the Tampa Bay Storm make it to the big game (they didn’t have to win), we would go to the game and get married in Vegas.
When the Storm made the playoffs, we booked our trip, however, poor Shari fell two games short of marriage vows, which is not to say that I won’t marry her, it just wasn’t in the cards for this weekend.
This was my first trip to Vegas. Whenever I go someplace new on vacation, I rarely get excited. Two years ago when I went on my first cruise, I didn’t say a word the week leading up to the trip. I was silent in the car on the way to Port Canaveral. Shari couldn’t believe that I wasn’t excited and chomping at the bit to get going.
The truth is I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. The second cruise we went on, I was a volcano. I couldn’t wait to get on that boat.
Now I didn’t know what I was getting into when visiting Vegas, but I spent a week on Vegas.com and other sites checking out the details and this was one trip I was looking forward to, even though I had never set foot in the desert. I had seen the commercials, the movies, the tabloids. I know Britney Spears was married for all of five minutes out there. It looked amazing.
But the trip from Tampa was anything but fun. I think that I am running out of airfare options, short of getting my own private jet. We spun the wheel and got Air Tran this time around.
The security line was longer than I had ever seen. I have been told since 9/11 to get to the airport two hours early, which normally means that I will be sitting in a Starbucks eating a $5.65 bagel and waiting 90 minutes to board. I am convinced that this is just a ploy to get more money to filter through the various shops and stores at the airport. This time though, we needed almost all of the time.
The first leg of our trip takes us to Atlanta, then on to Las Vegas for Arena Bowl XIX. For some reason, we weren’t able to pick our seats on the Internet until we got to the airport. Well, we got to pick our seat at the ticket counter. The bad news is, we got the absolute dead-last seat in the back of the plane. The only seat that is further back than ours is the toilet.
Shari and I sat on opposite sides of the aisle and, luckily, I got to sit next to a very nice young woman who was traveling with her little rat terrier in a mesh purse. Unfortunately, Atilla the Stewardess kept coming back and checking on her to make sure that she, under no circumstances, took Barney the Ferocious Rabid Rat Terrier out of his little purse.
After a transfer in Atlanta, we changed planes and headed to Vegas. We didn’t have the last seat in the plane this time; we had the exit row, which was nice because of the added leg room. I got lucky and won a contest on the flight. It was a three part question: what is the combined weight of the three flight attendants? What is the combined age of the three flight attendants, and if we are flying at an altitude of 38,000 feet, how many miles are we above the ground.
I think I was the only person on the plane that knew 5,280 feet are in a mile.
Landing in Vegas is actually a little different from landing in the other towns that I have visited in my life. The flight attendant squawks over the loud speaker that we have landed in Las Vegas, and the entire plane broke out into applause. That didn’t happen when I landed in Houston back in March. No one yelled, "Yeah! Houston rules!!" The three girls in the seat behind us break into a medley of "Viva Las Vegas" that sounds like a cross between a drunken Beyonce and Garth Brooks.
As we exited the jetway, we are greeted by a few people waving to loved ones and a cache of slot machines. I spend my first dollar and pull the lever on a 75 cent credit. Loser. I kept the 25 cent change voucher as a souvenir.
Our cab driver takes us to the hotel and we get checked in to the Monte Carlo. It’s a beautiful hotel. As we are walking through the revolving door, a rather slow-moving, imposing man with a rather expensive set of golf clubs is taking his time moving through the door. My girlfriend turns back at me with this huge smile and her thumb arched over her shoulder.
"That’s John Elway."
Strip Tease
The interesting thing about Vegas is that you can walk down the Strip and eventually get to everything that Vegas has to offer. But what is really fascinating is that, while you can hop down the sidewalk from casino to casino, you really don’t have to. If the Vegas heat is enough to defer you from going outside, you can literally "cut" through different areas of different hotels and stay indoors for about 90% of your walk. It’s almost like the architects of Las Vegas took 17 shopping malls and crammed them all within 35 feet of one another. One door leads to a tunnel which leads to a tram which leads to a staircase and viola; you’re three casinos away from where you started.
Our first night took us to the MGM Grand where our friends were meeting us. We wanted to go there to place our bets for ArenaBowl XIX, which was pretty much the reason for our trip since Kindra Strocher was one of the choreographers for the cheerleading squad that was to take the field during the game. Kindra is dating my friend Palmer and Palmer was getting slightly less heat than me to get married while were in Vegas.
The middle area of the MGM Grand was a bar called "Centrifuge." It’s a circular bar, dimly lit with a midnight blue tint and video poker machines built into the bar top. Palmer tells me that if you sit down and feed the machine a $20, the bartenders will give you drinks for free.
Now Palmer has this down to a science. He’s sitting in front of the machine with about $17.50 in credits on the machine and he is staring down at the electronic cards on the screen. He has a 2 and a 3 showing and lights on the screen are flashing "HIT" or "STAND." He’s not doing anything. He’s just staring. I know it doesn’t take him this long to add.
Meanwhile, the bartender is refilling his beer time after time after time. The guy gets like 12 beers on a $20 bill.
Centrifuge is a great place. Every 20 minutes or so, the bartenders get up on the bars and do a dance to some techno-pop song. Basically, it’s like Coyote Ugly without the cover charge, which I am supremely against. I never understood the concept of the cover charge. I am going to pay you for the right to come in to your bar, and then PAY YOU AGAIN to drink your alcohol. Is the mafia in on this racket?
We decide to venture around the MGM a little bit and come across the sports book. I had never been in a place where you could be on sports and you could put money on every conceivable aspect of a sporting event. I rationalize my decision and I put $20 on the Georgia Force to win, basically on the premise that the Force never gave up 80 points to anyone and didn’t have a losing streak like the Crush experienced.
The sports book at the MGM Grand is basically every guy’s dream living room. Leather padded seats, drink holders, waitresses with enormous cleavage, and about 100 plasma screen television showing nothing but sports. Every sporting event at that moment of the day is being televised. Soccer from Europe, cricket, zebra races, anything you can imagine is on television.
It’s quite a lot to soak in for the first day. It’s also tough to remember that this is the first night that we’re going to be here so we have to budget exactly how much money we’re going to spend. The free drinks are nice as long as you’re gambling, but unless you’re like Palmer who can put on a poker face for a video poker machine, sometimes it’s just worth it to pay for the beer.
Adam J. Locascio is a financial advisor in the Tampa Bay area and a Board Member of the Tampa Bay Storm Surge Fan Club. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Phoenix and is a six-year season ticket holder for the Tampa Bay Storm.
