Red or Black?

One more full day in Las Vegas. And more importantly one more night. After the debauchery the night before both Gray boys needed a good lie-in to recharge the batteries, so that’s what we did. After rolling in at 4am we were happy enough to be getting up at mid-day and made sure that the Do Not Disturb sign was on the front door and had not been pinched by the noisy neighbours. James was kind enough to do a Starbucks run and we knocked back the medium roast Grande’s whilst planning our next steps for the day and our onward travels. The difficult part was deciding how to get to Yosemite, by hiring a car, but from which city, from which pick-up point, which class of car, etc, etc. We settled on an automatic Kia Rio with apparently unlimited mileage, to pick up from Reno, near to the Greyhound stop. We had no luck with any couchsurfers for Salt Lake City (or rather we had done but we had dismissed them due to various criteria not being met – lived too far out of the city, lived with housemates, no references, insisted on giving us each a back massage if we stayed with him), and so had booked ourselves into the Camelot Inn & Hostel, for a measly $15 a head. It turns out that after we had done that we got some offers from surfers that we would happily have stayed with, but by then it was already too late.

Vegas by day

We had discussed exploring the old Downtown area of the city but due to the days late start and admin work we would have to save it for the Monday before we due to leave. Once again, the brothers were to be split up for (some of) the day as I had been given a night-time helicopter flight ride over The Strip by Philippa and Adam (again, many thanks to you guys if you are reading this!) and I was to be picked up from the LVH at 7:40pm and be taken to the Macarran Airfield in the south of the city. James was going to write a takeaway menu or a set of business cards or something, but I was to be swooping along one of the most famous roads in the world in a flimsy little helicopter hundreds of feet in the air.

Just like in GTA: San Andreas

James Maverick (his name was James and the tour company was Maverick Helicopter Tours, therefore I call him James Maverick, it sounds cool) met me outside the LVH and whisked me away to pick up our other guests. Other guests? My heart sank as I realised that I could potentially be caught in a very similar situation to the one I was in the night before – waiting on the bus whilst it picked up and dropped off numerous people from numerous hotels. And I had agreed to meet James at the Luxor Casino entrance at 9pm, and if either of us weren’t there then we would try again at 9.30pm, then 10pm, and so on, and so on. After 50 minutes on the small shuttle bus we arrived at the airfield and we checked-in, weighed ourselves (to make sure we hadn’t been lying on our application form) and helped ourselves to a complimentary “glass” of “champagne”. That means a small amount of cheap fizzy wine in a small plastic cup. But it helped to settle the nerves anyhow, as I’ve never been a great fan of flying. And looking at the seemingly tin-foil style chopper in front of me it didn’t make me feel any better about climbing aboard and zooming up into the air. After we were all checked-in the pilots came out and called out the names of the lucky people who would be flying with them. I got to take a trip with Travis, plus 5 other people, of varying shapes, sizes, ethnicities and mentalities. And looking at the 8 seats in the chopper I knew I had to get prime spot to get the most from this trip, as sitting in the two middle seats in the back would have severely reduced views. I edged closer and closer to the chopper aiming to get the window seat in the front, but Travis had other ideas. He had already pre-arranged who was sitting where in order to distribute the weight evenly. So it looked like I would have to take what was given to me, and lump it. I was given.......the window seat in the front! Hurrah! I could now strap myself in, sit back and enjoy the ride.

Roger, Roger!

And what a ride it was! It was a very surreal experience to be heading up into the air high above Las Vegas. Almost as strange a feeling as going up in a hot air balloon, but this had the added safety feature of a seat belt. We were up in the air for about 10 to 15 minutes and did a few laps of The Strip, swooping this way and that. It was a truly amazing experience and one I’ll never forget. And as we came back down to earth and landed with the rest of the parties that had been up with us, we headed back inside where we were offered the chance to buy our individual pictures of us with the helicopter, for a small fee of $19.99. Needless to say, I passed on this generous offer, and set off to meet James at the Luxor. Luckily, I had seen that we had passed the “Las Vegas Sign” on our way into the airport so I wandered down to take a couple of pics as we wouldn’t get the chance to do so the next day. Unfortunately this was one landmark that James wouldn’t get to see but I was going to make full use of the opportunity. But when I got there, there was huge wedding party and loads of young girls on a prom night or something so I only managed to get a couple of obligatory reversed-camera-at-arms-length shots before it was time to set off and meet James.

The Strip by night

We both arrived about 5 minutes before 10 and began our tour of the Luxor. After seeing the pyramid from the outside and the big sphinx, it turned into pretty much every other casino we had been in – hundreds of slot machines, high-stakes card tables, a couple of wheel-of-fortune games and countless zombies all desperately trying to win it big before their time in Vegas ran out. Once we were done with Luxor we hit Excalibur (a ye olde style Arthurian casino....apparently), New York New York, MGM Grand and a few others. Once again, after the initial intrigue of the casinos gimmick we would wander the slots attempting to cadge a free drink from one of the waitresses whilst slow-playing a dollar. This tactic got very dull after a point, where in New York New York it took 35 minutes before we finally got a drink. By which time it had probably cost us as much as it would have done to go to the bar. I had sidelined $20 for a few games of Black-jack or roulette in one of the big famous casinos before I left Las Vegas and the time had come, in the MGM Grand. I had seen most tables had a min 10 and variable max limit (sometimes up to 5000) but it couldn’t mean minimum bet was $10.......could it? After asking a Black-jack lady with no customers she confirmed that it was indeed $10 a hand, s that would give me two goes at trying to pay for my little Vegas trips out. I passed, and headed to the roulette where I thought I could put my money in the lap of the gods and go Red or Black. I cashed in my $20 bill for four $5 chips, and then realised something. There would undoubtedly be a minimum bet (larger than playing on single numbers) applicable to playing Red or Black, so I asked the croupier what this minimum limit was. She didn’t reply verbally, but simply extended all her fingers on both hands and mouthed the word “hundred”. Gulp. OK, so the gods did not seem to be looking down favourably on me on this occasion. I waited a turn to compose myself and ran through a few numbers that I thought might be lucky. 31 (my age), 21 (my house number), 6 (my birthday day) 16 and 25 (our room number in Vegas)? Before I knew it the ball was being prepped for another roll and the other two contestants in this riches-to-rags game were hurriedly lobbing on $5 chips all over the place. I place my four chips on the dividing lines of numbers (only a quarter of the odds, but a much better chance of winning something at least!), to this day I don’t remember which ones as it was all such a blur – the numerous Heinekens, the oxygen-rich air, the smokey atmosphere, the four chips lying on the table representing my hopes and dreams. Clunk.....clink.....clunk. The ball came to a stop. Even now I don’t recall which number it landed on. All I know is that all the chips were swooshed away into the “lose” pit. Apart from two chips. One blue, belonging to the chap who won $180 from a single chip, and one red, belonging to yours truly. OK, it had been spread across 4 numbers so I only came away with $45, but it was a win, and I was happy with that! So I thanked the croupier and went to cash my bounty.

The Strip

$7 of said bounty was spent celebrating with a medium-size Fat Burger as we trekked back to the LVH. A good burger, and one that I was definitely in need of having only had a banana, some raisins and a (nother) cereal bar. It’s a long walk back from the bottom of The Strip, and we got in at about half 3, still sweating from the heat and the long walk back. And that was it, our last night in Vegas. For this trip anyway...