It’s not every day you win in LV. Our sweet, sweet lady can be a harsh mistress. But I made a quick two Gs on BJ and smoked for Aces with the Kicker on Double Double. We had one more day on our trip. I was up. I needed a distraction. So I convinced Drunkle to walk with me from Planet Hollywood to Golden Nugget.
Our crew was never really big on walking. From the decades ago when we started Vegas trips, our goal was to get to O’Shea’s as fast as possible, get tanked, show up to a pool party, try not to spend money, then pass out, THEN go out to a club, try to score shitfaced and then gamble our life savings away. Rinse, repeat.
This walk was an experiment. We started off crossing over to Bellagio. Bellagio has wonderful Italian coffee and, if you are a guido or Eurotrash or Euroelegance, you’ll love it. We picked up a little snack there and continued on.
Next stop, Caesar’s. We crossed the street again. The Italian compass guided us into Venetian, Palazzo and over to Wynn. If you grew up Italian in the 70s and 80s, you felt right at home with the opulent decorations. We banged out another coffee and eggs benedict at the place next to Lavo. Awesome.
By now we had been walking for at least two hours, and in the August Vegas sun the sweat was pouring. To be honest, our bodies were very angry from the weekend and we were at the end of our ropes, livers or kidney function. We drank three mini bottles of water and headed for SLS Vegas.
SLS Vegas is a beautiful and small casino with cool restaurants and entertainment. On a Monday morning, the place was dead. I won a quick $500 in high limit while cuz took a doo doo out his yoo hoo.
Onward. We made it to Stratosphere, but didn’t go in. We were getting tired and wanted to get this over with. We noticed the palm trees had disappeared, there was no cops around and the common man or woman you might see looked as though out of a Cops episode.
Turns out, we were literally where the original Cops episodes were filmed. Cook County. A mile or so after the end of The LV strip hotels. God knows how many miles to go to downtown. Cuz whispers, “Put your watch in your pocket buddy.”
It was a Fossil – not worth much – but it looked pretty, and the peeps sitting on the stoops and unfinished porches were wondering what these two PA guys were doing “on set.” Lots of bad decisions had led us to this spot, all by me, and there was a chance we would have to run in our pool flip flops.
Call it Providence or whatever you will, we saw palm trees again, and passed the arches of the downtown Las Vegas. We walked straight into The Nugget and sat our tired asses down at a Blackjack table, ordered two giant waters and two Captain and Diets. We lost $100 each at the table. But we were alive. On the cab ride back, we vowed to never do that walk again, and went straight to the Pool, ordered up a bucket of Miller Lites and went back to doing what we do best.
