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May 21, 2007
The Trip Out West Part XXI: I'm still turning 24
If you are just coming in to the story, and you want to read all the good stuff about my stint in jail, you should really start at The Beginning.
When we last left our story Tom and I were in Vegas. We'd met a girl at a local mall and she was going to meet us at Caesar's that night with a friend. Stacy, the gal I'd met in Boulder was supposed to try to catch up with me as well.
I honestly didn't think Stacy was going to make it and didn't have a lot of guilt working on me. Then, again, I really didn't think the girl from the Mall would make it.
Tom and I probably hit Caesar's around 7 p.m. Since it was my birthday the casino gave me $10.00 in birthday chips and I boldly mixed those in with ten or twenty dollars of additional chips.
Birthday chips are a different color than the regular chips so they are easy to identify. I was playing Blackjack, probably, and betting birthday chips or regular chips without giving it any real thought. The dealer, a woman, was kind enough to point out that I should bet birthday chips first; since I wouldn't be able to turn them in for cash, I should try to lose them first. (Or use them as the building blocks of the vast fortune I was on the brink of accumulating. You know, whatever came first.)
As I've pointed out countless times before this was all a long time ago and I don't remember every detail. I remember that Tom and I went to Caesar's. I remember the friendly gambling tip. I remember knowing the girl from the Mall and her friend were going to page us. And I remember Stacy was going to page me.
And I remember, I think, being in an upstairs area when the page came in. (It seems we were away from the gaming area. Maybe we were just in an isolated aread downstairs. Isn't the upstairs mostly rooms?)
Tom and I had split up and it was while we were separated that I was paged over the intercom. I picked up a courtesy phone and found Stacy at the other end; she'd made it to Vegas on schedule and was in the casino. I met up with her.
As Stacy and I turned I saw Tom down the floor a bit. The girl from the Mall and her friend had just come in and were talking with him. Tom turned, saw me and gave me "the girls are here look." He then took a couple of steps toward me, noticed Stacy and gave a nod toward the courtesy phones. A moment later I heard a page come in for me; it was Tom.
"Your's is beautiful," he said, which was the sense I'd gotten from the glimpse I'd had of her from across the casino floor. She was a brunette with hair down past her shoulders.
Tom and I talked about our plans for the evening and I told him Stacy and I would head off to another casino — to keep from running into the other girls — and I'd meet him at the tent later.
I'm not sure how long Stacy and I gambled, if at all. She had an older girlfriend — one who would disapprove of her darting off to meed a guy — waiting for her back at the hotel and she couldn't stay out all night. As it happens, the Vegas stop wasn't part of her original traveling plan; she'd added it at the last minute so she could stop and visit me.
Anyway, at the end of the gambling evening, I was down about $20 in addition to the ten free dollars I'd been given. I know this seems like an odd thing to bring up, especially as the story seemed to be on its way back to the tent with a cute blonde, BUT, as you may recall prior to the first gambling outing I'd "won" more than a dollar from the KOA Kampground pay phone and had taken more than $50 additional dollars from the casinos … the morning of this gambling outing I'd lost money in the pay phone and then dropped an additional twenty at the casinos. Proof positive that if you can beat the phone company you can beat anybody. (You throw in a Burgess Meredith, Telly Savalas, or William Shatner and you've got a damn fine Twilight Zone on your hands.)
So, Stacy and I decided we'd go back to the tent.
Posted by delmer at May 21, 2007 3:13 PM
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Comments
So your taking Stacey to the tent, but you will meet Tom at the tent? Was Tom bring the girls? Man how times have changed, pretty sure if any guy at Bar Louie's Saturday night would have said "hey let's go back to my tent" he would have been standing there alone.
Posted by: mikeo at May 21, 2007 9:02 PM
Times haven't changed Mike, you and your peers have. The "let's go back to my tent" line still works between those in the 18-25 crowd, you know, the young, poor, and horny.
Posted by: Icy Mt. at May 22, 2007 11:59 AM
Come'on Icy, the poor boy goes home alone, or the girl is drunk. Ask Nate!
Posted by: mikeo at May 22, 2007 8:21 PM
Mikey: Tom was to meet me at the tent a lot later.
We'd left all the bad Jazz albums at home so the chances of anything too interesting happening were pretty small ... as was the tent.
Posted by: at May 23, 2007 12:17 PM
Well, MikeO, an alcohol-involved event is indeed a risk reduction factor. I've seen this line work twice in the last two years. Summer '05, at my neighbors hog roast where the under-21 crowd was only allowed to drink if they BYOB and spent the night. Boy and girl in tent both 19. Summer '06 in the Coke lot at IMS the night before the race. Exact quote overheard right before we couldn't find them anymore: "C'mon, let's go back to my tent and get busy." Boilermaker engineering student to recent Carmel High graduate. I'll let you guess which was male and which one female. Of course, the tent was one of those huge three-room Coleman jobs.
Posted by: Icy Mt. at May 23, 2007 1:55 PM
Icy, so your talking about a hog roast and a racecar event, nuf said.......
Posted by: Mikeo at May 25, 2007 3:22 PM
Mikeo: What are you ... Stan Lee all of a sudden?
Posted by: Delmer at May 25, 2007 6:25 PM