Day 14-15 VEGAS Baby!

Day 14-15 June 23-24

Vegas Baby!
Temp: 100 degrees
Milage: 500
Time from home to home: 22 hours

 What to hear a story about how finally have a “I went to Vegas without a hotel room” story?  Well, here you go.  We were picked to sit in the audience of the American Ninja Warrior tv show.  It tapes at 12:30 AM Monday morning.   Brian has to work a mere 9.5 hours after taping starts.  How will this work?????

We left around 10am and drove 4.5 hours to the Hoover Dam.  We first walked ½ way across the Memorial Bridge – it was HIGH!  900 ft above the water if memory serves me right.  It was SOOOOO windy.  It made us wonder if Nic Wallenda was experiencing the same wind gusts just 250 mile east at the Grand Canyon – he is supposed to walk across an open expanse ¼ mile long and 1500 ft from the bottom of the canyon.  He was able to cross and we were having a hard time keeping our hats on.

At the Dam itself let me attempt to guess how many dam jokes the guides and the boys made: infinite.  We did the power plant tour and walked on to the viewing deck – well 3 of us did.  Sullivan was nervous about the heights.  It is quite amazing how big the dam is – 660 ft wide at the base!  It was said that there is enough concrete poured to make a 4ft wide sidewalk around the perimeter of the earth at the equator.  Geesh!  When walking through the power plant tour the boys started thinking too much and got claustrophobic thinking they were under so much water and concrete.  Brian was able to distract them by discussing hydo-enginering, it worked.  Ok answer me this: what is PSF? ok good. Pounds per square foot.  PSI? Pounds per square inch.  PePSI? A drink that rivals Coke.  The tour guide questioned the group and Brian was the only one who yelled out Pepsi.   

On to the Venetian – or the Venenzulan as Sullivan is calling it.  After some parking issues we  got to the hotel.  We split up as 2 smaller people were picking on each other and it was not fun for a while.  Seth and walked around the Forum and found some people dressed up – both people in the pics liked the shirt Seth was wearing. He thought the hotel was the fanciest hotel of all time and when he comes back to Vegas he is coming back here! Sullivan and Brian found a beautiful art gallery of photographs and looked over them for a while.  We also saw one of those statues that moved if you gave him money.

 Well, that killed an hour.  It is now 7pm, what will we do for the next 5.5 hours?  Let’s go to a movie.  We bought tickets for World War Z at The Orleans (Wait!  This is a hotel AND an 18 screen movie theater!  Amazing!).  The previews were SO scary – eyes closed, ears plugged… we left during the middle of the 3^rd scary preview and changed theaters to see man of Steel.  Very good!

Went to a food court for the 4^th meal.  10:30 pm.  Eyes were drooping and bodies were slumping in chairs.  Cokes all around!

 American Ninja Warrior is a show we’ve watching for a few seasons.  It is amazing how this guys do these obstacles.  So getting these tickets was quite a win for us.  We got the absolute last tickets possible for the taping. The worst ticket time possible – 12:30 AM Monday. At midnight we parked in the very dark lot on the east side of the strip across from Mandalay Bay/Luxor.  We tried to shut our eyes for a bit, but that last about 60 seconds.  We got to the waiting line just after 12:00 and had to fill out waivers.  Now this is a good time to say that the minimum age for attendance is 12 years old.  We have now taught our kids to lie about their ages – I hope this doesn’t come back and bit us in the butt.  We got into the stands at 12:30, front row!  An obnoxious older man was sitting behind us telling ‘jokes’. 

 Thankfully we had to move to the right and got away from him.  For the next hour we sat, waiting for the show to start.  FINALLY the announcers came out and we had to do about 6-7 takes of loud raucous cheering/high fiving!  We finally figured out that if we pretend to yell we can save our voice – so ½ the time you see me ‘yelling’ I am just mouthing.  At 2:08am we moved to a different set of bleachers to actually watching the competitors – we are not in the 6^th row, not the front! But, it took another 30 minutes to get that started: 2:40am.  We were cheering the Americans and Japanese.  I can’t tell you how athletic these guys are – you have to watch the show.  We saw about 8 guys go through the course of varying degree.  Then, a standstill about 20 min of nothing.  We aren’t sure what was happening but  it was getting late(r)- 3:30.  We, and many others in the stands, left then.  Out to the car and on the road at 3:50am.  I took the first leg of the trip – hoping to make it to Barstow, but only made it 100 miles.  We got home at 7:20am, boys went straight to sleep, Brian took a cat nap and went to work around 8:00.   Not sure what time Sullivan woke, but Seth got up at 2pm.  SOOOOO tired.  But totally worth is.  I thought I would be driving in the dark for about 2 hours, but it was about 4:30 and the sky was glowing behind me.

 

So that is how at the ripe ages of 41/42 we now have a “I went to Vegas with no hotel room” and the boys are only 9/10 and they have the same story.  Oh and we felt like super awesome parents parading the boys through the casinos at 11:30 pm on a Sunday - we looked like real winners.

Best Parts:

Brian: Watching the guys compete!
Sarah: Watching Seth marvel at the Venetian and being in the front row for the taping.
Seth: American Ninja Warrior because I got to stay up late.
Sullivan:  American Ninja Warrior because we got to stay up late!  And seeing the statue guy at Venezualian.

Worst Parts:

Brian: Being to flipping tired. Switching movies.
Sarah: The drive home.
Seth: Not watching all of ANW
Sullivan: the previews at World War Z