Vegas Baby: part one - "I'm on my way"

Its been a week plus some hours since we left for Vegas, i am now experiencing an all time post holiday low and thought it might cheer me up to start some tour blogs.

4am i set the alarm for, by 4.30 am i had checked that i had my passport at least 4 times on my way to Pop Princess house to catch the shuttle bus.  We arrived too early and Pop princess and Stephan were still in the shower, i needed coffee/bourban asap.  The shuttle gets lost, Pokie Free Drink Party Queen #1 may or may not have given the wrong house number,i had time for 2 coffees (no bourban).  Finally arrives we are packed and on our way to Freemont Dancer and Pokie Free Drink Party Queen #2 to pick up the rest of the team and we are super excited " im on my way from misery to hapiness today, ah ha ah ha ah ha..."  I wasnt exactly miserable, i just have this as my in my head theme song when i am about to do something cool or when someone i am sick off goes away (some of you will understand the latter).

For some reason there is no traffic, perhaps this is because i am not heading to work, there is always traffic on these days.  We end up at Brisbane International with 3 or so hours to spare. This is probably a good thing, our Chawian (shes not a hooker, she is just being friendly)  team member had mismatched numbers on his visa/passport, i took three attempts at filling out the departure form and panicked the whole time i would miss check in (with 3 hours spare, i doubt it).

We separate through customs and Elvis is in charge of my carry on, here is where my Miffy travel kit lives, he has no clue what to do and i see from a distance he is asked to take it out and show it to an unsmiling man in a uniform.  PFDPQ #2 goes through her bag to discover not 1 but 4 lighters and tries to give me half to see if we can get through.  Confiscated. con·fis·cat·ed 1. To seize (private property) for the public treasury (i hope they smoke). Once through customs, breaky is on.  Elvis tells me that my travel kit has also been donated to public treasury as he could not explain the amount of drugs inside (or the fem fresh) and i neally burst into tears....instead i flip him the bird (i had one in my pocket) and go somewhere else for breaky.

He was joking.  Not funny.

Board the plane after 50 million cigarettes (may or may not have been that many), lucky we could keep 1 lighter. 13 hours of shear hell, sleeping tabs didnt work, bourban didnt work and 6 movies didnt work.  While Pop Princess was laughing out loud to Bridesmaids, i was balling my eyes out to Water for Elephants (why did he have to shoot the horse?), i must have been tired. 

Arrive at LAX.  Entering LA is like visiting a prison.  I dont really know this because i havent visited anyone in prison, but i can imagine it would be pretty close.  Fingerprinted, both hands, photo taken and questioned like i was in the hotseat of millionairre by a very big, very dark, non smiling man in a very official uniform.  Wow their uniforms are special in the US, shiny badges and guns, this is serious stuff.  Once through we hit McDonalds for an ever familiar breaky.  I have had breakfast three times since we left. Sausage biscuit? I went for the Breaky Burrito.  It is sort of the equivalent to our chiko roll (and i was thinking this because our Chawain/shes not a hooker friend was talkiing about them earlier), an outside skin filled with items of unknown origin, they may or may not have been edible....it was ok.  The iced coffee however came with options: cream and flavour, i said no to both and was given a giant sized cup of perculated coffee with ice in it.  I added about 10 creams and 20 sugars, it was like drinking a packet of no doze, and tasted like shit.  While waiting for our connecting flight to Vegas, i crashed into a heap on the floor once the hit wore off.

Southwest flew us to Vegas, the emergency advice was vague and the hostesses had an average age of 50yrs, not so glamourous, but we didnt care, we were almost there !!

Big man holding sign in Vegas airport "Russell S" once i convinced him my first name was Simone and not Russell, we climbed into our stretch limousines.  We all had pictures of hanging our heads out the roof of the car and waving our way into Vegas....no opening roof.  Sad.

Finally our hotel.  What a flight, we had left at 4.30am Wednesday, 13 hours plus about 6 in the airports, plus another 1 for connecting flights.  To escape jet lag, we dumped our bags and headed straight out.  PFDPQ #1 and #2 disappeared into the casino abyss only to be discovered an hour later unable to string two words together, they had discovered the "bet and drink for free/tip", if this was any indication of how our tirp would be, i didnt pack enough drugs.

Sometime before the sun came up we finally went to bed, i cant calculate how many hours we had been awake, it was somewhere in the 30 something, 8am we had the wake up call....the rule was whoever was the least pissed the night before was responsible for getting the team to breakfast (i havent had any other meal it seems) time to see Vegas (without the double nip bourbans which cost about $1 when you gamble, at least until lunch time).