Vegas.. 2006

It’s been a while and I guess I better write down this story before I completely forget. As part of my coming of oldness birthday, I got a few guys to go to Vegas to celebrate. There were 2 groups of guys coming at differnt parts of the week which made the trip insanely long. 6 days in Vegas. My liver was not happy with me, and it showed half way during the trip.

Two of the guys arrived earlier in the day while me and Howard showed up later in the evening. We had a flight delay that got us in pretty late, but it being vegas, time was not a factor. When we arrived at the hotel, we found the other guys were doing ok without us. By ok, I mean drunk.
Much drinking ensued, but that's not very interesting. I'll skip right to the good parts.

The highlight of the first part of the trip happened quickly and powered through with some good stamina. During our first night, me and one of the guys was playing craps. We’re used to us being the loud drunk ones at the table, but that night there were 2 cute girls by us that were just as loud which was very impressive. We joined in the fun and it was an amazingly fun table.

After gambling for quite a while, we ended up hooking up with these 2 girls and hung out with them all night. It was a really good time chatting and drinking with them. It's hard to describe, but the 4 of us just seem to mix so well. The time flew by and the next thing we knew it was almost 7am and we decided to call it quits. That was almost 12 hours together. Nice feat for someone we just randomly met.

The next night, with amazing coincidence, after watching the cardinals win the World Series, we ran into the girls again. In such a large and busy place like Vegas, it’s amazing to run into 2 people in 2 areas randomly. We were excited like we were old friends and haven't seen each other in years. We didn’t miss a bit when we got back together. We were back to joking and drinking right away. Good times.

The girls were going to stay up since their flight was at 6am and it was already about 2am. Of course, we stayed up and hung out with them. There was such a strange attraction to these girls. I think it's the conversation more than anything else. They were so engaging and shared about themselves. I know this is Vegas and they could've just made the whole thing up, but I'll take it.

We talked about everything and nothing at all. Thinking back, it was strange for as long as we talked, I can’t really remember what was discussed. Even after spending so much time talking, the conversation never once lost its interest.

Granted, I don’t remember conversations very well, but I remember things like this. I remembered how nice it was for us to sit at a little table at a corner of the casino. Talking and drinking away like we were old friends. I remember the music from a piano bar nearby and us randomly breaking out into some Journey tunes. I remember some strange contest about which restroom was closer and some obstacle course. I remember it all being a bit surreal and almost seem scripted being so good.

Around 4:30 am, we started our long goodbyes. Once again, it was quite strange as we’ve just met 2 days ago (although we spent probably 80% of the time together), but it seemed like such a big goodbye. It felt good and sincere. After a few minutes, we went our separate way.

The goodbye wasn't long enough in my book. Mainly because we knew we’ll never meet up again.