The plane left the ground on time at 9:40 AM CST. It wasn’t a straight through flight, unfortunately. There was an hour and a half layover in Denver. We arrived in Las Vegas at around 1:30 PM MST, and checked in w/o hassle (expedia.com actually worked!). Jake (5)^*, Monica (4) and Ali (2), the only other members of the team to make it during the daylight hours were already there, and while Monica napped, Jake, Ali, Mel and I headed out to see the city. Our first night, we walked up and down the strip as far as the Treasure Island and Mirage casinos before the drinks, the heat and walking around in it started to catch up with us. On the way, we were slowed by groups of Mexicans (seemingly, anyway, by look and language) who were passing out cards with the contact information for various hookers and escorts. Awesome! However, tired from getting up early, and slightly jet-lagged, Mel and I retired around 11:00pm MST.

Aaron (2) showed up late, but Mel and I had already gone off to bed, so we didn’t hook up with him yet.

First impressions… Las Vegas is pretty cool, but it’s not the fancy ultra swank beautiful-people-everywhere town I expected. Maybe I just didn’t see the right things or hit the right places. The Riviera where the tournaments will be held, and the Circus Circus (henceforth, called “the CC”), where we’re staying, aren’t anything like I imagined Vegas to be. Too many kids at the CC, and the Riviera is somewhat cheap looking. They’re like women with entirely too much make-up on, that once the make-up is scraped off with a butter knife, there’s nothing but bags and pits remaining. Maybe there are… no, I’m sure there are better things just around the corner and down the street.

The Thing Most Cool of our first day was meeting, even if only very briefly, Alison Fisher. She’s about as tall as I imagined. Monica had a lesson with her in Sky Box 209 (imagine box seating at a baseball game, complete with mini-kitchen and a balcony). We would have liked to have watched the whole thing, and I think Alison would have let us, but that would have made Monica nervous, so we respectfully waited until near the end. Either way, we can now say that Alison Fisher let us hang out in her box for a few minutes.

^{* Indicates APA handicap rating}