Hartwith's Vegas Trip Report Part 1: The Journey Begins

Hartwith's Vegas Trip Report Part 1: The Journey Begins

Monday, 29 June 2009

Like most poker players, I find waking before midday a struggle, let alone 5am to catch an 8am flight from Heathrow. I tried to instruct my girlfriend to keep me up all night with the intention of sleeping through the 2 connecting flights to counter the jet-slag. Needless to say this failed miserably and I ended up falling asleep at 3.30 and what then seemed like minutes later, waking up to some ear grinding ring tone at 5am. Not the best start to my first ever Vegas trip.

As most tall people will tell you, trying to sleep in Cattle Class (generously defined as Economy/Coach by the airline industry) is about as easy as parallel parking seems to be for women. There is simply no position that remains comfortable for more than 20 minutes. I made the amateur mistake of choosing an aisle seat, thinking that I might be able to stretch my legs out into the aisle for the duration of the two flights totalling 13 hours. Fool on me. On the first flight I had a young child sat on the window seat who seemed to have the bladder capacity of an 80 year old man and had to spend more time out of his seat that in it. No problem, I thought, I could sleep on the 4 hour flight from Detroit. Wrong. Clearly I’d pissed off the hierarchy at Delta Airlines in some previous life as I again found myself in an aisle seat with the person inside me again needing to rise from her seat every 30 minutes. Worse still, it wasn’t for toilet breaks either, I believe she was a relative of the Hulk, or at least she was as big as him and therefore had to do her DVT exercises (essentially plane exercises for fat people) for 15 minutes at a time in the aisle with her arse (which was wider than the food trolley) constantly coming to rest in my face. Delightful.


To say I was relieved to arrive in Las Vegas was an understatement. By this time I was expecting further calamities to present themselves, but thankfully none were forthcoming and we were picked up at the airport and taken to my friend’s house just off the strip. And what a house it turned out to be! 4 bedrooms, a massive pool, Jacuzzi, pool table and table tennis just in case I get bored of the confines of the Rio. In the current 100 degree heat, suddenly trivial flight problems experienced disappate and you realise where you are. Vegas baby! The place is surreal, no amount of watching WSOP re-runs on Bravo can prepare you for the shock of it all. It’s just ridiculous. Being a degenerate gambler, I feel like I’ve arrived in paradise, which can only be bad news for the bankroll. The poker starts tomorrow but in the meantime, jet-slag or no jet-slag, it’s time to experience the nightlife Vegas is so famous for. Good night!



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