newyorkblog: Work in progress

Hey people, this is the first set of pictures from the first day and a draft of the evolving documentation of three days of Vegas. I have been and will be working on it every free second I get because I'm trying not to forget too much before I get a chance to write it down.

Vegas, Baby!

I'm sitting in the plane several thousand feet above the Midwest, I presume, cannot get myself to concentrate on this week's Rosen's chapter and skriehma was kind enough to hand me his notebook to get started on documenting this weekend.

I guess I should start from the beginning, resisting the urge to write the first thing that comes to mind.

Since Trillian was already at the Las Vegas airport at the time, Phèdre, skriehma and I set off for JFK at 5am on Saturday morning. The flight was scheduled at 8am, since MTA was moving us rather slowly that morning though, we decided not to take the bus as planned but use the 5$ airtrain instead. It brought us to Terminal 7 quite comfortably, where we used America West's Quick check-in to find many seats on the plane already taken - curiously with the exit row seats predominantly empty. Naturally we jumped at the chance of getting ample legroom.

Before we were allowed to remain seated in these beautiful seats the flight attendant put us to the test by requiring an actual verbal response to the question whether we can read and understand English. I was very tempted to rat out skriehma at this point but then decided that I would need his notebook again, so I gave him a nudge and prompted him to say "yes, m'am".

After the lengthy flight all over Northern America,

which we have almost completed the second one of right now, we were greeted by a bunch of slot machines at the gate.

Then we met Trillian, who had spent a whole 12 hours overnight at the Las Vegas airport, reportedly not having slept a lot.

The nice ladies at the tourist information desk told me that a shuttle bus to the hotel would be $5 per person and a cab was the cheaper alternative if we were four people. So we took a cab, after waiting for it in a long line that moved quickly thankfully, due to the constant influx of one cab after another picking up people. Unfortunately, as we later learned, many of the Las Vegas cab drivers have never heard of our little hotel about half a mile off the strip and neither had our driver. He took us on a nice tour of the city before "finding out" that our place was actually very close to the airport. The taxameter showed something around $29, much more than the shuttle, but hindsight's 20/20.

Just FYI, this was the point where I had to switch off the notebook, since we were approaching JFK. So now I'm writing from Manhattan again.

When we finally arrived in our hotel we were rather tired, especially Trillian who apparently slept less than two hours at the airport. Naturally, we nevertheless took the hotel's complimentary shuttle to the strip right after we deposited our luggage in our room, that we were allowed to check into early (didn't seem at all like they were very busy though).

After being a bit surprised by the fact that there was no free food on the plane our first target on the strip was - you guessed it - food. Even though McD appeared an obvious choice for quick food you wouldn't spend a long time searching the menu with, it didn't seem right to go to Vegas just to have the "one-taste-around-the-world". So Trillian invited us to an awesome lunch at the Harley Davidson Café.

We had loads of delicious food, my sirloin steak being especially tasty (they do claim to have the "best barbecue in Las Vegas", which out of the one place I tried, they certainly had).

One regret: the girls, especially Trillian, were not wearing too many layers of clothing, which was good out in the desert sun, but can be fatal inside with Americans and their pathologically maniacal air-conditioning. So we had to take breaks in between to go outside and warm up. There were some nice vehicles in front of the café.

Still, the food was awesome.

Out the door of the Café we started poking our heads into the souvenir shops one by one, skriehma and myself looking for proper poker chips and t-shirts predominantly, while the girls were more interested in shoes and other "pretty things".

Skriehma and I after some negotiations ended up with 500 chips and two silver suitcases to put them into.

All set to institute Texas Hold'em tables in Germany.

After slowly making our way up the strip

and getting separated we met at the Mandalay Bay's shuttle pick-up spot, the other place besides the Bellagio, where our hotel's shuttle would go. We were actually kindly brought back to our hotel by a shuttle driver from another nearby hotel who didn't have any other customers to transport anyway. Back in the hotel we went to a nearby gas station to stock up on supplies (90% liquids, since walking on the Strip at noon requires some serious hydration) while Trillian was stocking up on a few hours of sleep.

After sunset, we took the shuttle again to the Bellagio and ambulated up and down.

First stop was Treasure Island, whose sirens would have given us and several hundred other spectators a free show if it hadn't been for those "strong winds" they were talking about. Be that as it may, we kept walking on the strip

and went into about every other casino on the way. We wasted some money on some slot machines and I even bought some casino chips, $5 each,

which was the minimum bet at the roulette table. So I bet it all on red and they took my chips.

Verbal response
Sarah waiting
Cab drove us around town $28 on it
very tired
went on strip, Trillian invited to awesome lunch Harley Davidson Caf�
souvenir shopping, poker chips for skriehma and me, t-shirts
Trillian slept few hours, then went to strip again, gambled a bit
back home
after breakfast back to strip
tickets for today
food court
shooting range closed
ST Hilton
Chippendales
Flirt Lounge at the Rio
Shooting range

We did try our luck with several slot machines as well, but they turned out to be very dollar-hungry as well.

The second I actually was in the plus for the first time I hit the "cash out"-button overjoyed

but naturally, I put the money right back into the machine and it kept it.

All this losing money did not destroy the mood too much so we kept walking through the humongous and beautiful interiors of these money palaces.

This picture was taken at night, inside the "Venetian".

If you have not been to Vegas before, there is no way I can make you understand how huge these hotels are and how much money they spend on their themes and luxurious, spaceous interiors.

These few pictures cannot even come close to giving you an idea of the huge labyrinths the interiors of these hotels are. And I gave up shooting pictures of all of them since I could never ever capture a semi-significant fraction of it all anyway.

I do have to say though, that despite the obvious, shiny, ridiculously luxurious exterior of it all, the places all were casinos at heart. Hundreds, if not thousands (!) of slot machines standing in rows on the clean carpeted floors, dozens of roulette, blackjack, poker tables, wheels of fortune and whatever other games they played. We frequently had trouble finding a way out of the endless huge casino halls of just one of the huge hotels. And this was kind of disappointing actually. No matter how huge, beautiful and charming the exteriors and "themes" of the casinos, it always came down to the same layout and business at heart - gambling.

You could also bet on sports.

Eventually rather late at night we took a cab home and slept to see another day on the strip.

While we always knew we wanted to go to "Vegas", we actually didn't have any specific spots to visit picked out. Shooting a gun had been a plan for New York, yet shooting ranges seemed closer to reach in Vegas than they had been in NYC. So that was actually our target we set out for on Sunday morning, a shooting range rather close to the strip. After that, skriehma and I wanted to pay the Hilton and its Star Trek Experience a visit. Sorry, couldn't resist. In order to cut taxi costs, we took the hotel's complimentary shuttle to the Bellagio and strolled up the strip again during daytime.

On our way north we stumbled across a shopping mall that contained a place called Tix4Tonight, where we then decided to make up our minds on where to go that night. The girls actually got tickets for a show, if you read Trillian's post you know which one, skriehma and I found that we could get half-price admission to Star Trek there so we grabbed it.

We then hit the mall's food court (paradise!) and after a tasty meal

went outside to take a cab to the shooting range.

Bright as we are we didn't pay enough attention to the flyer we had to realize it's closed on Sundays.

Luckily the cab was still there since the place seemed like the middle of nowhere and we asked the driver to bring us right to there:

, dropping off the ladies at the strip on the way.

DISCLAIMER: If loving Star Trek makes me a nerd - so be it. Then I love to be a nerd! I felt like 12 again and I had a huge grin on my face all of Sunday afternoon, especially when the admission people told us we could go see the experiences as often as we wanted. Wooo-hooo!

Star Trek: The Experience is next to one of the Hilton's casino rooms.

Beautiful!

A bird of prey! Poorly illuminated, unfortunately.

Look, it's Zefram Cochrane's clothes!

This made up for the shooting range being closed.

A photon torpedo! True love!

Her majesty.

Now on the two main attractions of the experience, any type of photography was naturally prohibited. Which was a real bummer. So I guess I'll have to type a thousand words for every picture I would have taken. Too bad. Here it goes.

The first "ride" we took was called "The Klingon Encounter". They told us that we'd go on a simulated shuttle ride and people dressed up in blue "21st century" clothes led us into a rather small square room where we were to line up in four files. The wall ahead had four doors so that made sense. They made us watch a little video on how we weren't allowed to ride if we were pregnant and the likes, then we were supposed to board. Suddenly all the lights went out, the room became pitch black. Several shots from a flashlight ahead blinded us, then a strong wind came seemingly from all sides simultaneously. When the room was lit again it wasn't small and square anymore. I was looking down, so the first thing I saw was the familiar "light circles in a big circle" look of the floor in the transporter chamber. When I looked up I saw we were in a Next-Generation transporter room! Sure enough, at the console was a woman in Starfleet uniform, a lieutenant judging from the pips on her collar, who explained to us that we had been abducted into the twenty-fourth century. Awesome!

The two seemingly confused "twenty-first-century-tour-guides" were led to the side of the transporter room to be "briefed separately", while an ensign took us outside the door of the transporter room and onto the hallway of an Enterprise deck!

If I hadn't suspected I would look horrendously stupid I would have jumped in circles for joy. The ensign led us to a door that opened to reveal the Enterprise's bridge. THE BRIDGE! At that point my facial muscles cramped and my grin probably became very scary. I was on the bridge of the Enterprise! I was so overwhelmed I didn't even realize at first that there wasn't supposed to be a transporter room on deck 1 of the Enterprise, which is where the bridge was. We were told to stand on the back of the bridge, behind the tactical station. There were three officers in here, the one at the helm welcoming us and explaining that the first officer was in the cargo bay and he would brief us on what was going on. The first officer? Commander Riker? Number One? Woo-hoo! And sure enough, the viewscreen changed from stars at warp speed to the very familiar face of Jonathan Frakes, excuse me, William T. Riker, standing in the shuttle bay, several Starfleet officers seeming busy in there around him. I needed to refrain from yelling a loud "Sir!" at him. He apologized for the surprising events and explained to us that we had been abducted from the 21st century by an alien race called "The Klingons". Uh-huh, keep going! He then elaborated that one of our group was actually an ancestor of a person that was very important to the 24th century, a certain Jean-Luc Picard. Get out of here! I could be Picard's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather? I knew it! So cool! So why aren't we on a Klingon ship now then? Oh, you guys intercepted us. Very good! So now what, Commander? Ah yes, we were to take the turbolift down to the shuttlebay in order to take a shuttle back through the rift into our own time. Awww, what a bummer. Can't I stay? Naturally, there was a catch. Riker ordered the lieutenant at the helm to show us the three Klingon Birds of Prey on the Enterprise's tail. Uh-oh. Better get going then. We entered the turbolift, and after the doors closed and it started moving, I felt a bit annoyed. For one because I had to leave the bridge of the Enterprise :'( and also because the turbolift moved to the side initially. It shouldn't be able to do that coming from the bridge, since as I said before the bridge is on deck one at the top of the saucer section, there's not much moving sidewards up there. Be that as it may, naturally, the Klingons got several good shots off at us at right that time so we were in for a rough ride in the turbolift and it freely fell down dozens of decks before the bridge could restore power and brake our fall. When the doors opened we were in a large hallway, illuminated in the familiar light of a red alert. The officer who had ridden the turbolift with us led us into the shuttle bay, where we got final instructions from Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge over a viewscreen. He'd be flying our shuttle remotely and accompany us with another shuttle to make sure we find our way. The shuttle apparently was a side-loader, since we boarded it through a huge hatch on its left side. Once inside, we strapped ourselves in and enjoyed the ride. The shuttle bay doors in front of us were blown out (naturally they couldn't just open them for some technical reason) and next we knew was we were engaged in combat with several Birds of Prey together with the Enterprise. There was a planet nearby that contained a large machinery that apparently could open a rift in the space-time-continuum. Allright! So after a short jump to warp speed we flew down to that planet, followed by a pair of evil Klingon warships, combined our firepower to blow up that piece of machinery which naturally opened the rift in space-time, passed through it and immediately saw the familiar skyline of Las Vegas that we were flying over. Just as we started looking for the Hilton to set our shuttle down on, our shuttle rocked from disruptor fire. The Klingons had followed us back! Oh dear. We made a run for it and dove down to the strip, Klingon fire barely missing us and blowing up a car on the street. The voice of the Klingon commander Korath thundered over our intercom as he had caught both our shuttles in his tractor beam. As we were drawn closer to the Klingon warship he spoke "perhaps, humans, today is a good day to die". Seconds later we heard Riker's voice over the intercom "if you say so, Korath" and the Bird of Prey burst into flames, the Enterprise had followed us as well! We then set down/crashed into the Las Vegas Hilton and lights went off again. When the shuttle hatch opened again, we were in a very 21st-century room that looked like one of the maintenance areas of the hotel and one of the employees was surprised to find us there. He led us to elevators that we were to wait in front of, there happened to be a TV mounted on the wall above. It showed Las Vegas news, which was interrupted by a "this just in" - several UFOs and a strange series of explosions were witnessed today over downtown Las Vegas. They switched over to the closest Air Force base where a seemingly distressed officer was hounded by a press mob for answers. On his flight into the base he shouted out the UFOs were weather balloons and the explosions solar flares. We entered the elevator smiling. It brought us down to the Promenade, with the retail shop and Quark's Bar.