DAY FOUR - December 27, 2000
Dan was up at 6:35am to close the drapes, but he couldn't resist taking a couple of sunrise photos. The activity woke me up and instantly I knew it was going to be a long day. I felt terrible. Everything hurt and my stomach was really unsettled. Both Dan and I tossed and turned until 8:30 when Dan got up and took a shower. I felt worse than ever and spent the next 45 minutes or so throwing up in our lovely bathroom. There is only one thing worse than being sick on vacation. That is being sick on travel day on vacation. Oh the joys of being sick in an airport and on a plane! Bleck!
[Dan Says]: Sonya wasn't feeling well, this morning, so at about 8:30 I went downstairs to give her a little more quiet time, and had a latte and muffin at the Kona Café.
Now what? As usual, the least expensive blackjack table at Mandalay Bay was $10, which was more than I wanted my minimum bet to be. Although with my progressive betting system I do frequently bet $10 per hand and sometimes more, I like being able to fall back on $5 bets during losing streaks. Frankly, I resent casinos that don't want to give me that option.
I found an Odyssey multi-game machine that offered blackjack, sat down and fed in $10. It was a quarter machine, so I was playing 5 units, or $1.25 a hand. I did all right, although machine blackjack was never as fun for me as the real thing. What the hell, I thought. I'd been generally winning in most of my gambling on this trip. I can afford some $10 blackjack. I cashed out for about $11.50, walked to one of the $10 tables and bought $100 in chips.
Ouch!
Even though I had two blackjacks in a row early on, I suffered a series of double down hands that lost. At $20 a pop they add up fast. After the first shuffle I dwindled through the second $50 fast, quitting with only two red chips left. While the blackjack books recommend buying in with 20x the minimum table bet, I often get away with 10x. But at this point in my life, $200 is more than I was willing to risk to come back. But I wasn't too upset. Between the $120 in awards from my credit card and my previous winnings at blackjack and video poker this trip, I felt I still did all right.
I felt a little stupid cashing in one of my red chips at the cashier for a measly $5 bill. I kept the other one for the chip collection I'm starting.
I sent Dan downstairs at about 10:30 to check us out and get a receipt with all our charges. I had planned on going to the slot desk to give another try at getting some things off our bill, but I wasn't up to it. I figure that the cashback will be there on our next trip and I'll let my disappointment with the slot club girl known in a letter next week.
We got everything packed up and headed down the hall for the last time. They were waxing the tile sections of the floor. There were carpet strips, but where the room doors were, there was a tile segment. The floor was very slippery, but they put bathmats out for you to walk on. I was just happy to be on my way home.
I made a quick stop in the casino to get some quarters for laundry when we get home and met up with Dan at the elevators to the parking garage. The elevators were terribly crowded with strollers and luggage and giggling tourists who weren't even supposed to be going up…. Can you tell I was cranky?:) We managed to get to the car without me killing anyone.
We stopped at a gas station on Russell Road to fill up the rental car and then down Sunset to Alamo. Check in took about 3 minutes and we were onto the bus. We got to the airport after what seemed like a long and winding drive full of bumps and jostles.
The line at Southwest was long, but moved reasonably well. Not as fast as at Oakland, but that was fine. Turned out that there were four flights leaving for Oakland within 2 hours. I didn't know that Oakland was that popular a destination. We got to the gate more than an hour before the flight took off.
Right across from our gate was an Ethel M. store. I had totally forgotten that I wanted to get a gift for our neighbor as a thank you for feeding our cats. I was so glad the store was there as it made things quite simple. We bought a box for our neighbor and Dan got a sample crème filled candy.
We got in line as soon as they opened the desk for our flight and got voucher numbers 15 &16 so I didn't feel the need to ask for pre-boarding status again. At that point we settled in for an hour wait. Dan played some games on his palm pilot and I read some more of Fly on the Wall by Dick Oddesky (I love that book! Highly recommended for the Vegas enthusiast!).
Dan decided that he'd better eat something as we wouldn't be home until after 5pm and we hadn't had any lunch so he walked over to the Pizza hut stand to get something to eat. I went over later to the TCBY to get a small frozen yogurt. The small was bigger than I wanted, so I asked the person waiting on me to just fill the cup half-way. She seemed confused and insisted that they'd have to charge me full price. I agreed.. I just didn't want to waste it. She served it up and handed it to the person who put on the sprinkles who tried to fill it up more. I stopped him and insisted that I didn't want topings and I just wanted a half of a cup. He was totally perplexed but finally passed me over to the cash register guy. He then preceeded to try to fill the cup up and I had to stop him. I paid my money and got out of there before anyone else insisted on giving me food. :)
The plane was about 20 minutes late but we got on fairly smoothly. The gate had different "lanes" set up by the boarding area. They were labled "1 to 30", "31 to 60", "61 to 90" and "PreBoarding Only". This makes lining up a lot smoother than trying to push past people blocking the gate with number 118 when you've got number 7.
We had a pushy family who really wanted to be first on the plane who were jostling for position at the gate. I told Dan that it wasn't important enough to duke it out with them over a seat so we pulled back and let them by. We got onto the plane right after them when they were finished pre-boarding. We ended up about four rows back. Getting the rest of the boarding process took quite awhile. There were 122 people on our flight and there was some difficulty getting the last people into the few remaining seats. After several minutes on the runway waiting for clearance, we were on our way.
The flight was uneventful. We landed and got our luggage and got away from the crowds at the airport and into my car for the short drive home. We got home about 5pm, safe and sound and exhausted! In fact, after a quick sandwich for dinner, Dan and I both decided to lay down at about 6 :30. Next thing we knew, it was 9:30 and the cat was crying to be let out for his nightly prowl. That's tired! :)
[Dan Says]: Sonya was very happy to see the cats again. As usuall she did her best to describe our trips in terms they can relate to. "We were in a place with many fascinating smells," she explained to the kitten.
All in all it was a nice trip. We had a lovely room and some good food. We saw some fun stuff and some stuff that was new to us both. I enjoy Vegas so much, but the crowds are just too much for me now. I think that we've done our last Christmas in Las Vegas because there are just too many kids and too many families. I totally respect their right to be there, but I don't want to step over the strollers in the crowds in the casino or have my feet run over by kids pulling their own suitcases through the aisles.
I'd much rather be there in April when things are slower.. maybe on a school night. :)
