In October of 2003, I had an opportunity with work to go to a packaging show in Las Vegas. My wife’s birthday is in October, so I arranged to have her go with me as a birthday gift. At the writing of this post, this is the only time either of us has been to Las Vegas. The show was scheduled from Monday through Wednesday of that week, but we only planned to stay in Vegas through Tuesday. We would arrive in town early enough on Sunday to do some things before the packaging show began. We would also have some flexibility with the schedule on the show since we were there looking for some solutions for specific packaging problems at work. There was a guy from work who went on the trip with us. When we were doing most of the sightseeing, gambling, and eating activities, we all went. My wife stayed at the hotel and gambled any time that we went to the packaging show.
We stayed at the pyramid shaped Luxor hotel. We did all our gambling there too. There were no big wins or losses for any of us. We budgeted for our gambling expenses and didn’t go over our committed amount. We all positioned ourselves strategically to get plenty of complementary drinks.
For meals we wanted to experience a nice restaurant and a Vegas buffet. We managed to do both. We ate at the Buffet at Bellagio and were able to catch the fountain show while we were there. The next night we ate at a steak house at the Excalibur Hotel.
We didn’t do research on shows before our trip and didn’t have anything planned. We saw several shows that were interesting that we considered seeing but decided that there was no one that we would have gone to see if they were playing close to home so there was no need in going to see them there. The film Kill Bill Vol. 1 had come out on Friday before we traveled. Everyone in our party wanted to see it. So instead of going to a Vegas showroom, we ended up at a movie theater.
We spent a lot of time walking up and down the strip watching people and seeing the sights. We were entertained by the guys on the strip handing out cards for various “adult” services. There are a variety of names for these guys, card slappers, handbillers, card hawks and porn slappers. Several of them had a technique where they would hold a card out to you and flick the back of the card with their pinky and ring finger.
About a week before our trip, Roy of Siegfried and Roy had been attacked by one if the white tigers in their act. He was still in critical condition while we were there. We walked by the Mirage hotel where the incident happened and got to the makeshift memorial that had popped up outside.
Most of the time we walked to any location we were interested in seeing. One night, my wife and I decided to ride downtown to see the old casinos. I also wanted to stop and check out Circus Circus. That facility plays an important part in the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which is one of my favorites. I wanted to go anywhere that had connections to that book.
While we didn’t play any dice games while we were there, we did see dice that had our names on them in a gift shop. We thought they would be a good addition to our printer’s drawer as a memento of the trip. That’s where they are today.