Vegas - Day 1 (Wednesday, May 17th)

Jen and I flew out together, our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:05ish Chicago time, landing in Vegas at 10:56 Vegas time. We planned on taking the Blue Line out to O’Hare, so we met on the 152 Addison Bus at roughly 5:15, in order to get to the airport in time. Now, it had been overcast most of the day, with the threat of storms as well. As we boarded the Blue Line it started hailing pretty badly, worse than I’ve ever seen before. Neat.

We arrived at the airport and checked our flight status. Now leaving at 9:56pm Chicago time. Awesome. We checked in, checked our luggage, and decided we’re going to grab a beer. All lines at restaurants were enormously long, since most everyone else was delayed as well. We found a place in line at Chili’s, and quickly scored a couple of seats at the bar. It was at some point while ordering beer #2 at Chili’s that Jen & I decided to have an airport bar crawl while we waited, after all, we had 3 ½ hours to kill. We finished up beer number 2 and headed to the next bar. (Mind you, we didn’t really know where any of the bars are, so we just wandered around the airport, stopping at the next bar we’d see).

In between bar #2 & bar #3, we decided we were idiots for not capturing this adventure on film, so we begin to take pictures outside of each of the remaining bars we stopped at to imbibe adult beverages. (A picture show will be posted as soon as I get the pictures).

Also in between Bar#2 and Bar #3, we decided to check the departures board, to make sure our flight time hadn’t changed again, and to make sure we were at the same gate. Our flight was listed with a new takeoff time of 11:14. 11:14!!!! Effers. We head to another bar, considering it’s was roughly 9:00pm at the time.

Bar #4 was pretty boring, so we finished quickly, and headed to the next bar. We decided to check the departures screen every time we went to another bar. We checked our flight, another new departure time, this time, it was 10:15. Now, it was close to 9:45 or 10:00 at the time, so we booked it to our gate, assuming they were already boarding. This was not the case, but during the brisk walk, we learned that the later 10:30 flight to Vegas had been cancelled. So, now we had all of our flight waiting at the gate, along with 100 more people, waiting in line after being so rudely cancelled.

10:15 rolls around, no sign of any sort of boarding of the flight. The time on the sign at the gate listed the flight at 11:14. I decided to go back to Chili’s, order 2 more beers, and carry them out, back to the gate for Jen and I. Others saw my genius idea and followed suit.

Eventually we took off, roughly around 11:20 or so, landing in Vegas at 3am Chicago time (1am out there). I felt like crap, the flight was terrible; I had to sit next to a Busy Body Lady, who needed to talk to her husband the entire time. We deplane, I felt sick to my stomach, and found a bathroom to barf in. I barfed, our bags finally arrived, and we grab a cab & head to the hotel, to go to sleep (which disgusts me, as the first night in Vegas is usually the best). We arrive at the Flamingo, enter the casino, and are no longer tired. Jen and I decided to drop our bags off in the room & head back out. More to come in my next entry.