Maybe a good title for my trip report would be "eat until I'm sleepy, then sleep 'till I'm hungry" because I think we all felt like that a time or two. I guess a better title would be something along that lines that friends are better than anything Las Vegas has to offer, although friends can enhance the Las Vegas offerings.

I don't do much gambling unless I have friends or family in town. I sometimes play a little here or there when I go to a casino for a meal. This way, it keeps it fresh, fun, and exciting. It's not like it's a job, it's not a rut, and most importantly it doesn't eat my daily expenses. I can slowly save up for a big event and plenty of expendible cash if I should have a bad streak. So the Bark At The Sun event was an opportunity to behave as if I just came into town as a tourist.

I started on Tuesday morning. I drove to Texas Station for breakfast at Fatburger. This is one activity that I do at least once a month because I love the Fatburger breakfast, and I usually take a little $ from the optimal play video poker machines there. I had two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, fat fries, and a Sprite. It was delicious as usual, except I usually only have one sandwich. I sat down at a VP machine and it ate a hundred dollar bill quicker than I could eat a sandwich. I blamed it on the machine and moved to another favorite machine. Same thing. So I quit two hundred down, and come back home. I did a little housework, took a nap and headed out to the Wynn Dot for the nonsanctioned pre bark party. I arrived a little early, played some VP and tried to sign up for a players card. All they would do is give a blank temporary card. If I got enough points on it, they'd really sign me up. At this point, they didn't even want my name or address. After a small win, I found a nice bar near the buffet dot and got a rum and coke for only $10 including tip. They had some nice easy live jazz playing. I caught dag and Linda walking by and we had a good talk and decided to take a sneak peek at the buffet dot food. We all gave it high potential. After checking things out, Lee and Sharon showed up. We had a chat and then ate the buffet as described in other posts. Thanks Again for dinner dag. After dinner, I went to the Sahara and lost a lot of money just playing 5 cent VP.

The next morning, I got up late and headed out to a pub and grub called Rounders. It's very out of the way on Buffalo between Trop and Flamingo roads. I had a very hearty breakfast with 2 meats, 2 eggs, 3 pancakes, 2 pieces of toast, and some dynomite skillet potatoes. That was so good that I came home and took a nap. When I came to, did a few chores and packed my bag for a 2 night outing and checked in at The Silverton. I lost a bundle of money there and got cleaned up for dinner. I went to the Gold Coast and played a little VP, then met the Texas Tornados and the California Wild Fire at the Cortez room for dinner. As mentioned many times, good friends make any meal good. But when you combine good friends and good food, it's just an awesome experience, and that's what we had. Wendell, Maxine, and Daisy had just come to town, so they were a little tired. But we had a great meal and caught up on current events. Thanks Wendell, you are class act. Maxine does a great job keeping you in line. After dinner, I went back to the Silverton where I lost at everything that I played. I tried to make it a point to watch the Mermaid shows and they just bored me to tears. I could watch the fish in the tank longer than the shows. I had planned on taking pictures of the shows, but the shows used very dark lighting colors. Lee and Sharon were nice enough to come out and visit with me. We talked for hours and hours while Lee gave some serious gambling lessons. It was a great time.

Thursday morning, I got up slowly. Very slowly. I tried a little 5 cent VP to see if my lucked changed. I hit 4 deuces and decided life was good. I made it out in time to have lunch at Fatburger near my house. I went home, did some chores, and headed back out to the Silverton to do some intense "barking". Before the meet, I hit a 5 cent machine for a royal and was all set to Bark At The Sun. We all met at the Shady Grove. At first, we had a great bartender. As the crowd grew bigger we moved away from the bar into the lounge area. We got stuck with a stuck up waitress on her first day on the job. I challenged Lee to make her cry. He thought about it for a minute, and decided it was too easy. I think Daisy bribed a couple of guys to keep the pool table tied up so we never got a chance for a pool tourney. Redneck Bowling??? That's a different story. I can tell you we had a great time, but we didn't have enough time. Linda had the best first game. I kept doubling my score. One more game and I was destined to get a 300. Before the bolwing got into full swing, it was time to eat. Dinner at Twin Creeks was pretty darn good. That was 3 nights in a row of great friends and great company. The prime rib was about perfect that night. There was some discussion on whether we could get some cooked rare. Mine was fine and I heard no complaints from the others. Thanks Lee for picking up the tab. I wouldn't have had the sugarry dessert and coffee if I knew everyone would be too full to go to the desert and get naked and howl at the moon for a while. Daisy and I had one quick torunament on the VP machines and she cleaned my clock.

As for me, I spend all night looking for the sun and finally it dawned on me. It was a pretty sunrise because of the smoke in the valley. I still barked at it. As Daisy later pointed out, most tourist don't realize that we have a sunrise here in Las Vegas. By the time I got through barking at the sun, I met Daisy at a VP machine at The Orleans. Once again, she was in total control of the VP machines while I crashed and burned. We met Wendell and Maxine for a breakfast buffet and that was yet another great time. Thanks for breakfast Daisy!

That was my last dealing with the Bark crew. I had plans for work. Saturday I worked a double shift. Sunday and Monday were my days off. My plans were to work as much overtime as I could on Sunday and Monday, as it would have paid triple time because of the holiday. We have our overtime system online, and I saw where I was in position to be the first one called on both days. On Sunday morning, there was no overtime called out for the start of the shift, so I drove to Santa Fe Station for a Fatburger breakfast. I just had one sandwich this time and played about 30 minutes before my $40 bankroll for that session was over. As I left the casino, my phone went off with a voice mail message that they were calling for overtime. Since I didn't answer my phone, they bypassed me to call the next person on the list. Apparently my cell phone doesn't work in the casino, but when I stepped outside I got reception and found out that I missed a chance to make big money. I didn't want to make that mistake again, so I had a big dinner that night and skipped breakfast on Monday. I didn't get called in on Monday morning, so I waited and waited and decided try the Arizona Charlies coffee shop for a late lunch. I went inside at 2:00pm, had lunch, lost $20 in 10 minutes, and went to the car to go home. As soon as I stepped out of the casino, I had a voice mail message saying that I was being bypassed for overtime (again) because I didn't answer my phone. Good grief. I was severely bummed. I could have hit a quarter royal each day, and still would have lost money for not answering the phone. Instead I lost money both days in the casino and lost money for being out of cell phone range. When I was dining at Arizona Charlies, I saw a lady on a cell phone and briefly thought that if any calls came in, I'd get them. Perhaps it is my cell phone service provider. Perhaps the lady was just trying to call out and hers was blocked too. Maybe I was in a bad part of the building. Regardless, those two days were not filled with joy.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed the times with the Bark crew. I lost a lot of money on the gaming side. I lost so much that it was shocking to me. The room at the Silverton was very comfortable. That Serta mattress is very nice and is supposed to be the same one used at Bellagio. The food was always great and I never got to pay for any of it. Someone always picked up the tab. I thank them again and I owe a lot dinners to a lot of people. I appreciate the people on vacation who took time to spend some time with me. That's way cool. I can't wait until the next event. Thanks Again to everyone that was there.

AAAGGGHHH! That had to be a bummer missing out on that holiday pay, but I wouldn't fire your cell service yet - reception seems really unreliable in most casinos. Sometimes, I can get reception in the middle of the casino but nothing at the fringes, and it's just as flaky in different parts of the same hotel room. OTOH, I may fire my cell service because they are downright flaky on forwarding messages - some arrive in minutes but others take hours or days.

I think your attitude toward the "sin city" part of Las Vegas is pretty healthy - I've known others that moved to Las Vegas and found out they just couldn't get out of the tourist mold.

Thanks for the time we got to share with you .. and for the bowling lession. Maybe I'll get to practice some pool before my next trip<g>.

P.S. - I did get to see my first Las Vegas sunrise from the 21st floor out at Sunset Station.

Joe: I don't think you owe anyone any meals - you and the rest of talk vegas folks really add to a fun trip - all of the running around you, Daisy, and Lee have done for us have really enhanced our vacations not to mention the great company. AND, the best part of that is we get to do it all over again in November. (Everything is set for that one with the exception of our airline reservations and I am holding back for that, hoping fares will drop abit). We really outdid ourselves on this trip - took in 4 shows - i.e. the Follies at the Trop, Rick Thomas at the Stardust. Havana Night Club at the Stardust, and Johnnie Mathis at the Hilton, soooo, comined with all of the fun time with you guys, it was a great trip. Will comment more on this in my TR. If we don't see you sooner, we will see you in November!!

JMT,
My old phone service was horrible in the casinos. About a year and a half ago, I switched to Nextel, and I've missed very little. However, this past trip I had more trouble hearing the ringer (which was set on high) over the loud machines (not the phones fault).
I'm glad we go togeather that evening in the Silverton. Sometimes thier is so much going on at the bigger meets, it's hard to catch up. I was feeling no pain that evening. lol
Here's a question for ya.....(I've been big on conspiriacys lately) You think maybe it would be in the casinos best intrest if the cell phones didn't work inside the casinos? Maybe the places are designed like that???? Ya don't see a lot of clocks do you?

Hmm, not such a wild conspiracy idea to me, Lee. I've heard of hotels that are built to block cel phone systems so that you must use their phones and pay their charges. Not in Vegas specifically, but the hotel industry in general.

So why wouldn't the casinos want to block that "distraction" from the game?

Last february david kept saying that I was not calling him back, that I was not listening for my phone to ring. Maybe I was just always in a "no call " zone.

I don't think there is a conspiracy because I don't see how a casino would care either way enough to invest in providing or blocking.

OTOH, I think cell providers might offer to boost performance within a casino free of charge if the casino would let them.

FWIW, I use Verizon now. I came from Texas with Sprimt cell service and had no problems. I switched to get a Las Vegas number and Verizon offered cellular broadband internet on their PDA phones, so I went with Verizon.