Sunday
I couldn't fall back asleep and wandered over to Mandalay Bay. It's been my Sunday routine where I watch the Yankees game and play poker. I Sat down at a $4/8 table and played for the duration of the game. It was a wild one as the Yankees came from behind to win 8-7 in extra innings. Jason Giambi even hit two home runs and became the first Yankee to hit 14 HRs in July since Mickey Mantle did it in 1961.
I ended up a few dollars, enough to pay for my late lunch at Wild Wild West. The food is decent, they have great specials, and they are open 24 hours. The only bad thing is that the service there is awful. They are severely under staffed and the few people there are horrible servers. It took them almost 15 minutes before someone took my order. I was ready to walk out. At least the drink girl was around. I drank almost two iced teas by the time an old lady came over to take my order. I got the chicken fingers and she asked me what kind of sauce I wanted. I said Hot. I assumed that they were standard strips with dipping sauce. When they arrived it they were lathered in the sauce. I ordered Buffalo Style chicken fingers without even realizing it! There was some average bleu cheese that came with it, but the chicken was great. I think I found a new dish that I like there. Usually I get the $1.49 French Toast with bacon special (from 11pm to 11am), or the infamous $1.99 1/2 pound burger, or the $9.99 dinner special.
After lunch, I wrote for a few hours and tried to catch up on more email. I finally made a list of things I need to do this week and there's more than I expected. I wrote for a while then I tired to go to sleep early. That never happened. I had a craving for a donut and ended up walking over to the Krispy Kreme at Excalibur. While I was there, I stopped into the poker room to play a few hands. I ended up playing NL for over three hours and lost about $80. That was one expensive donut.
Saturday
Daddy lives along the 15th hole of a golf course in Indiana. He called me late Saturday night to share a special moment. He was laying in grass looking up at the stars in the middle of the fairway. His dog was lying down next too him. "Dude, I'm been drinking for 16 solid hours," he slowly told me. One man on a bender. That man was Daddy. He told me that his old man had been reading my Fox Sports and Poker Player Newspaper articles. He particularly liked Sad Amy. It's always an honor!
On Saturday morning I had to get up early and meet Senor for breakfast before he went back to Rhode Island. I walked over to the Luxor from my place at the Redneck Riviera. We grabbed some food at the Nile Diner. He grabbed a cab to the airport and I was tired and exhausted and decided to catch a cab back to my place. As soon as I got in, I noticed that the old lady named Delores was mumbling to herself. I got a bad vibe right away. I told her to take me to my place and said "I'm across the street from Wild Wild West."
Her air conditioning wasn't running too well. By the time we got to the end of the Luxor driveway, I wanted to tell the driver to pull over. I felt so uncomfortable by the lady's weird vibe that I wanted out. I missed my chance and she drove off to my place. Once we got close I told her to "Make a left at the next light." She said, "The main office is up one more light."
At the light we stopped and she began counting out quarters for my change which I thought was odd. She said she was going to drop me off at the McDonald's on the corner. Fine with me. The sooner I got out, the better. When we pulled over the meter read $7.50. I felt sorry for her and handed her a $10.
"Keep it," I said. She took the bill and handed me back exact change.
"You insulted me. So I refuse to accept your tip."
"Huh?" I said perplexed. "Now that's insulting. Not accepting my tip. What did I say or do to offend and insult you?"
I quickly ran down the possible scenarios.
1. She wanted an airport fare and was pissed she had to take me off strip to the Redneck Riviera.Now I doubt she was pissed at the last thing I had said to her about making a left at the first light before the second. That probably made her feel better because it got rid of me faster. Now, I never referred to my place as the "Redneck Rivera." I told her the actual name of the place where I was staying. The most possible and more likely scenario is #4. She was probably pissed off about something else and I became her punching bag. She was ticked too that she didn't get an airport fare and she probably didn't like how I looked. Maybe she had been driving cabs for thirty years and was pissed that I told her where she needed to go.
2. She didn't like the looks of me.
3. She took offense to the fact that I told her I was staying at the Redneck Riviera across from Wild Wild West. There are two separate versions on my street several blocks apart.
4. I did nothing and she was pissed off about something else and took it out on me.
From what I'm told by the local cabbies, the average tourist in Las Vegas is a bad tipper when it comes to taxis. I probably would have given her one of the biggest tips of the day, but she refused it.
I sat in shock with the money in my hands. I wanted an explanation of what happened. I asked her again, "What did I do wrong?"
"We're done here," she shouted without turning around.
Just in case she had a gun, or a razor blade, or a can of mace, I jumped out of the taxi. I glanced at the name of the cab company and her name. I was going to file a complaint and sink the bitchy driver. As she sped off, the ire inside began bubbling up. I took one of the quarters and threw it at the taxi. I missed by a few feet.
I spent the rest of the afternoon confused. I tried to catch up on reading all of my email and wrote a freelance article. Afterwards, I watched some of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind while I played online poker. I didn't play very well and headed over to MGM to play some No Limit.
Friday
On Friday morning I was hungover and met Senor at the Bellagio. I called for a cab and they said 35 minutes to an hour. Holy fuck! It takes me 15-20 mins to walk to the nearest casino's taxi stand, so I did that and caught a cab from there. Senor was playing when I arrived and I signed up for a table. The waitlist was 40 minutes long before I was seated at a $8/16 table. I lost my very first hand and within 10 more hands I found myself down $160. Ouch. I saw that there was a seat open at Senor's table and locked that up for me. I switched tables and played with Senor for a few hours. His table was fun. They had a couple of geeky guys on the far end, a hot Mexican girl who didn't really know how to play, two Asian women from Southern California, and a retired black guy who was a huge man. At one point, he had to un-do the latch on his stretch pants because his gut was too much for it. When he stood up, his pants almost fell down. He was trying to fix it but since he was so big, his crotch was kinda in Senor's face as he continued to sit. It was a weird scene and everyone at the table got a kick out of it. Inside of a few hours, I won back all the money I lost and ended up winning a few bucks... enough for a free dinner. We headed over to Noodles for a quick bite.
Late night, we met up with Grubby and headed over to New York New York so Senor could use their 24 hour business center and print up his plane ticket. Grubby and I ate pizza and wandered up to the arcade before we left. We decided to gamble on some video games. We're action junkies. There was ahorse racing video game and we tried that. We then wandered over to the skee ball games and played a version of skee ball basketball. We played $5 a game which meant that the person with the most points won $5 from the other two. Grubby won round 1. Senor won round 2. And I broke even when I won round 3.
After we were done gambling, we headed off to Sapphire, one of the biggest strip clubs in Las Vegas, to blow a few bucks. Stay tuned for that report.
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