Dawn of a new millennium

It was Catman’s birthday and the dawn of a new millennium so Hunnybear and I booked a first-class round-trip ticket on National Airlines to the entertainment capital of the world, sunny Las Vegas. Our taxi arrived ten minutes early but parked at the wrong building so we wheeled our whales up the driveway to where we knew he would be waiting and found him. Traffic was light to the airport and we made it to Terminal 6 in good time. There was no line to check in at National since they didn’t have very many customers, being bankrupt, and we were a bit early so we got our boarding passes for seats 1D and F and headed for the Red Carpet Club for coffee.

The Red Carpet Club was as busy as I had ever seen it, full of children and adults screaming and waiting. We found a couple filthy yellow chairs in the TV room and watched a cartoon parody of Titanic for a half-hour before heading back to gate 61. The inbound flight was just arriving so we had 20 minutes to wait before boarding. As usual we sat on the ground well past scheduled liftoff but in those leather seats with nice preflight drink service it was not a problem. Service was friendly but flaky as the stewardess forgot to serve me my warm breakfast breads. I asked about it after she finished serving the rest of the cabin and she said, “Did I forget to serve you?” Yes, unless I ate them quickly along with the napkin and tray.

We touched down 25 minutes late and then it took another 25 minutes for the luggage to arrive. Our driver, Abe, met us at baggage claim and schlepped the whales to the car when they finally arrived. We climbed into the golden MGM Grand limo and soon pulled up at the largest hotel in the world for the busiest weekend of the year.

Our host had tried to get us a penthouse suite but there were too many whales there so we ended up with a wonderful terrace suite, a two-level job a bit smaller than the penthouses but with the added attraction of an outdoor heated Jacuzzi. Our terrace faced northwest so we had a perfect view of the Strip for fireworks as well as general aesthetics. We went down to Wolfgang Puck’s Café to have lunch, a couple nice Cobb salads. It was a good people-watching restaurant with a view of the Fun Pit, the Mansion Casino for high rollers, and the sports book. I signed the bill, left a generous tip for our waiter Carl, and headed with Hunnybear to play a little video poker.

We played for a couple hours and ended ahead a little before we went down to the spa to work out. I read FlyerTalk on the Netpulse stair machine while Hunnybear ran on the treadmill. I had time for a little eucalyptus steam before I showered and went up to meet Chris the Lockergnome and his beautiful wife Gretchen. Despite a scheduled two-hour layover in Denver they missed their connection from Des Moines and had to stand by for the next flight. Fortunately they got on it and arrived only an hour late. That gave me time to try on my new tuxedo, which had been tailored for me by José, the crack tailor at Bernini’s. It fit so I went to meet Chris and Gretchen.

I found them in the elevator lobby toting several whales and escorted them up to their room, except I had not only the wrong floor but the wrong bank of elevators so we had to go back down to the lobby and up another set of elevators to their room. My host had got them a very nice spa suite with a pool view. We dumped the bags and headed straight to Mark Miller’s Grill Room where we had reservations for dinner. Hunnybear joined us and we ordered a bottle of the delicious Treana red wine and some spicy olives and grilled antelope. Chris was a connoisseur of steak so I suggested he get the Cowboy rib-eye, which he enjoyed. Gretchen had the pork chop, which looked yummy, and Hunnybear had delicious sea bass while I shifted back to the filet mignon. As a rule I don’t eat dessert but Gretchen wanted to try the crème brulee so Hunnybear and I split just one order of chocolate truffle cake with chocolate-chip ice cream. The check came to $243, taken care of by the casino in consideration of my loyal patronage, and Chris left a generous tip.

After dinner we had tickets to see Rita Rudner, the comedienne famous for being funny. She was indeed funny although an 85-minute monologue was a bit too homogeneous to hold my interest. I thought she should break it up by singing or magic tricks or something. We all had plenty of laughs though.

It was only 10:30 so we decided to see a few casinos. We walked over to New York, New York and then took the tram to Bally’s and Paris. We walked back from Paris amid the influx of drunken yahoos here for the big weekend and made it home before one. It was pretty late especially for the Iowans so we called it a night.


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