SATURDAY, 7 AM
I awake after three hours and am instantly refreshed. One of the best things about Vegas is because of the amount of oxygen they pump into those casinos, sleep is almost unnecessary, and hangovers are minimal, at least for me. Bergman and I go find a Subway across the street, recharge the batteries with a roast beef foot long (my Old Reliable), and go back to the hotel, where everyone is now waking up and making their way to the pool.
After a couple of hours of 11 guys being rowdy and annoying people who are trying to relax by the pool, Jake, Paul, Bergman and I go to the sports book to bet on some games. My first bad decision of the day: putting money on L.A. Sparks/Washington Mystics WNBA game, taking the over at 147.5. Yep, it wasn't even noon yet, and I was already willing to believe that two womens' teams (of which I can name all of two players) could score 74 points each. This does not bode well for the rest of my day.
SATURDAY, NOON
The girls deliver the 90 beers they owe me, and I decide to donate it to the cause, and we have an impromptu room party. This may have been my favorite part of the trip. All 11 dudes plus Jen and Buckley, just drinking, telling stories, and making fun of each other. However, I'm drinking fast. Some MIGHT say a little too fast. The wheels on my drinking train are getting a little wobbly. Then I start double fisting a Mickey's 40 oz. and a Steel Reserve. Now the axles are rattling a little bit. Then I shotgun a beer. If Dr. Sam Beckett had happened to Quantum Leap into my body at this exact moment, he would for sure be looking at the camera and saying, "Ohhh boy....."
SATURDAY, 5 PM
The wheels have officially come off; my train has derailed. I don't know how it happened, I mean yeah I was hitting it hard, but considering I made it 20 hours the day before, I am surprised that things got so catastrophic for me so soon today. I'm writing this next section in italics since I don't remember a single thing for the next 6 hours; this has all been told to me by others.
We meet at Margaritaville at 5 for our big dinner. I refuse to order food, saying I'm drinking my dinner instead. We have multiple towers of booze at our table. I label one of them the 'pussy tower' for whatever reason and refuse to drink from it. When the tower from my end of the table is empty, I refuse to fill up my cup from the 'pussy tower', instead choosing not to drink at all (my first good decision all weekend!) I can't open both eyes when I'm talking anymore, and everyone is laughing at me and saying "ARRRRR!" whenever I talk, since I look like a pirate with just one eye open. I get up from the table and meander to the bathroom, where I unload some projectile vomit.....in the urinal. Couldn't even make it to a stall. A few people take turns taking care of me. I make it back to the table. I go back to the bathroom and puke again. ADawg tries flushing the urinal. It begins to overflow. We book it out of the bathroom. We leave. We wander around Caesar's Palace. Most everyone gambles. I throw a fit in the sports book when I discover the Braves didn't cover the spread, and my WNBA bet didn't work out (shocker!!!)
SATURDAY, 11 PM
I wake up in the fetal position in my bed. I've missed 11 phone calls and 7 texties. I try to work up the energy to meet everyone out. I cannot do it. I lay in bed, pissed at myself for wasting a night in Vegas. At around 3 AM, Paul, Noles, and Horp start trickling back to our room, one at a time. Noles is furious. Paul is bombed out of his mind. Horp thinks he may have inadvertently married someone in his drunken stupor.
Noles is pissed because somewhere along the way, people were getting split up, then calling him repeatedly trying to find him. Paul alone called him 27 times in under an hour. Turns out Paul ran into Jeremy Roenick in Harrah's and got a picture with him. (Side note: growing up, when we played NHL '94 for Sega Genesis, I was always Detroit and Paul was always Chicago. Every time. We've probably played each other like 600 times with that matchup. Ipso facto, Paul is in love with Roenick, and I am not a fan of him.) So Paul yammers in Roenick's ear for like 10 minutes about how awesome he was in NHL '94, until finally Roenick tells him that he has to go and walks away. I am more mad about missing this encounter than anything else. I would've talked so much crap about how I owned him with Steve Yzerman, it would have made my year.
Horp, on the other hand, passed out in a bar, and when he woke up, everyone with him was gone besides Russell, and an unexplained wedding party had broken out. There was a dollar dance going on and a couple bridesmaids, one in particular, were basically sexually assaulting him. So he freaks out and leaves, and proceeds to call Noles a million times to find out where he was. Hence why Noles was so pissed; in under an hour he received around 40 phone calls.
I am giggling so hard at this trio of drunk idiots that I think I'm going to puke again. Noles throws the phone book at Paul because he won't shut up about ordering pizza (and I mean THROWS the phone book. Like he's pitching in Bambino baseball again. There are few things funnier to me than when Noles and Paul fight. One time Noles spit on Paul at a party since he was wearing Hawaiian, swim-trunk looking shorts. Noles' reasoning? "He looked like he wanted to get wet!" These two have had more legendary battles than Ali/Frazier.)
Paul and Noles finally join forces and start making a million jokes about Horp's sister, and Horp gets mad and literally falls out of bed. We end up ordering a room service pizza ($48 for 12 slices, holy shit) and to top my night off, I accidentally eat a piece meant for Paul, that Noles had completely covered in tabasco sauce. Exactly what my delicate stomach situation needed. They pass out and I lay awake until around 6:30 AM since I already passed out once and can't sleep now.
I feel like I just got my hand cut off, and Darth Vader told me that he is my father.
