Well after a drinking P.B.R.’s and shots of Jim Beam for $3 last night at a dive in Philly, I set myself up with a splendid 4 hours of sleep before my flight to Vegas. I woke up feeling oh so great with the best hangover you could ask for when you’re about to spend half of your day flying. I packed lightly for this trip. A duffle bag for clothes and a laptop bag for my electronics were all I needed. I packed my clothes for the week in about 5 minutes and headed out the door.

My flight was pretty nice; I ended up with an empty seat between myself and another passenger so there was a little more room to breathe. The in flight movie was The Game Plan, starring the people’s champion, The Rock. Needless to say, it was a great idea to load my iPod up with movies and shows last night.

I managed to watch Family Guy: Blue Harvest (Star Wars spoof) and finally caught some of the show Weeds (6 episodes). Before I knew it, we were landing in Las Vegas almost 45 minutes ahead of schedule.

I caught a cab to The Orleans where my grandfather was awaiting my arrival and placing bets in a horse racing tournament. I felt pretty bad for the cab driver. He looked identical to Milton from Office space and seemed to have the same pushover attitude. He told me stories of his bingo nights with his female best friend. How he would never win but occasionally she would win and treat him to dinner. So touching…

I arrive at the hotel just after 2:30 PST and meet up with my grandfather and quickly drop my luggage in the hotel room. My grandfather throws me a white baseball cap saying “HORSE PLAYER WORLD SERIES 2008” across the front. This was to be used as my disguise for sneaking into the racing tournament so I could score free beers and food. It worked pretty well.

I got to meet a few of my grandfather’s friends at this round table in one of the three tournament halls. They were all between the ages of 45 and 75, so I felt like we would have little to talk about. One of the men even began pulling me aside to give me lectures on life. Somehow we got on the topic of music and two of these guys told me they had seen George Thorogood just the night before. Dammit! That would have been a sick show to check out.

I never really paid all to much attention to horse racing but I must admit, it’s pretty exciting. Sort of like basketball, it’s really only exciting during the end. Everyone sits, chatting quietly during the first three quarters of the mile and suddenly it seems like everyone just notices the race is on. People start yelling, pumping fists in the air and jumping on chairs. It’s kind of crazy when some of the people on chairs are elderly women smoking cigars.

So I’ve just stopped back in the room and decided to jot this stuff down as I wait for my grandfather to get ready to go out tonight. There are no particular plans, but I’m sure it will be interesting with my grandfather. He can be pretty crazy from time to time. We’ve decided to delay our departure to Florida until Monday morning, which is nice because I’ll have an extra day to hang out in Las Vegas. I just can’t wait to get lost and drunk at some bar in the middle of America.

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