You clowns want to know what happened in Vegas?

Fine. Not a whole lot happened, and most of it wasn't very interesting.

Day 1. Transit.

To get to BWI, we took the Metro to Union Station, then took the MARC train (a DC-Baltimore commuter train) to BWI. Lasky missed the Metro, prompting Tufsky to say that his money is on Lasky finally catching up to us five minutes before the flight leaves. Once arriving at the station, Reed decided to be that special kid and go on ahead of everyone, get his ticket, and get on the train. This he does, and ends up on the wrong train (the non-express train, but still a train that will get him to BWI). To make matters funnier, Lasky had caught the next Metro and hauled ass out to the platform, thinking he had just achieved great success. Unfortunately for him, he got on the wrong train as well.

Lasky and Reed showed up at the gate five minutes before takeoff, confirming Tufsky's earlier premonition. Scary stuff. I'd say Tufsky's a lucky guy, except everyone knows that the day will come when a piano will fall out of the sky and cause his untimely demise.

On the plane, people were drunk and obnoxious. I never really understood the idea behind getting drunk on a plane, since it just dehydrates you and makes you get up and down a lot to pee. Either way, Pete was trashed, and everyone on the plane knew it. There were incidences of seat pounding, hat-taking, and a hilarious attempted SkyMall crossword. Revenge would be mine, however.

For whatever reason, Pete ended up the custodian of the boarding passes for our connecting flight. While in the Atlanta airport, he wandered off with some other chumps to go find the airport bar. On his way there, I pickpocketed him flawlessly and snatched the boarding passes. Later on we did a pretty good job convincing him that he had lost them, and even tricked him into going back to the airport bar and asking people there if they had found our tickets. Meanwhile, I distributed everyone's boarding passes and told them to keep quiet. Pete came back and Tufsky and Linc convinced him that the flight was overbooked and that we'd lose our seats if we didn't have our boarding passes. Finally, as he was frantically rummaging through his things, he stood up and turned around, where I was waiting, holding the boarding pass a few inches from his face. The charade ended and we all had a hearty guffaw.

The rest of the flying was uneventful, and then we hit rental car country. In all honesty, just not ever having to deal with Thrifty is a good enough reason to keep my car here in D.C. Seriously. Just as with every frigging time we try to rent cars, they tried to charge us the under-25 driver fee. Around two hours and several employees later, we have minivans and we roll into Sam's Town, the surprisingly nice off-the-strip hotel at which we were staying, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. The Rook (big ups to The Rooks). Linc lost $75 upon arrival, and we all went to sleep because it was 1:45am local time.

Day 2. Clowning.

Our second day was pretty relaxed, with a chill practice/drill-session at 4:00 that afternoon. Lasky and I hit the penny slots, where we discovered the joys of Pay Dirt, possibly the most entertaining of the penny slots. I ended up losing maybe $25, but it was at least fun. Everyone else was being really lame later on that night, which would start to become a theme as the weekend progressed. Instead of going to The Strip and enjoying fine all-you-can-eat cuisine, the rest of the clowns thought up a much better idea: rotisserie chickens from the Wal-Mart next door, washed down with a 30-rack.

After discovering that this had transpired, I found that Pipes wanted to go eat on The Strip, too. So we both tried to rustle up some crew and go. Three others indicated interest, so I told them I wanted to leave ASAP. We agreed I'd wait 15 minutes. The time comes, and the group has decided that they'd rather stay and drink more beer. I was absolutely starving, and I had just waited another 15 minutes for no reason. Just. Fucking. Great. Of all the annoyances to follow, this was the closest I came to having an aneurysm. A short time later, Pipes and I were at the Excalibur buffet and I was feeling a lot better, but still pissed at my teammates who had proven themselves completely useless in the area of enjoying the city outside the hotel room.

After dinner, I had to go pick up the rest of the guys from the airport, and help them get rental cars. Sure enough, Thrifty gave us the exact same song and dance from the previous night, and even when confronted with my receipt, were still incapable of understanding what needed to happen. An hour and a half wasted there again, and we were back to the hotel. The rest of the night was uneventful.

Day 3. First day of spring ultimate

We beat D-III National Champs Las Positas for our first game and first win of the 2007 campaign. It was a sloppy game at first, but we picked it up and beat a team we should have beaten. Next up, runners-up to the real national championship, Wisconsin. This was the best game I've seen g-dub play since... well since a long time ago. We were down 10-9 at one point, and ended up losing only 13-10. Unlike last year, Wisconsin didn't pull any of their big boys for the end of the game. This game was very encouraging and a whole lot of fun. Next up was UC-Berkeley, who were a weird team. They were douchy on the field, but pretty nice off the field. The guy I guarded most of the time noticed that I was stretching like a Romanian circus performer, and asked if I wanted some of his IcyHot. I told him I would have taken him up on it if I hadn't sustained a GROIN injury, but thanks anyhow. We came out on the losing end of that one, by two or something, and then we packed it up for the day.

That evening, yet again, people were super lame. I, of course, went to The Strip for buffets. This time, I went with Rhino (the only other person willing to hit the strip rather than drink Busch Lite in the hotel room) to the Luxor. I was pretty disappointed yet again by our team. There are people I expect to be curmudgeons and penny-pinchers. But even those who I thought to be fun-loving decided it was better to stay in the hotel room. Assholes. The food was pretty good, though not as big of a variety as the Excalibur. Eventually, some people showed up at The Strip, and Rhino and I ended up meeting a group of g-dub guys and girls. We walked around, ostensibly to see the Bellagio water show, but we arrived too late and had to walk all the way back to the MGM Grand where I had parked our car. I drove all ten or so of us back to the hotel in the minivan. Not a bad end to the night, at least people came out.

Day 4. Day 2 of playing.

Losses to Colorado State, Texas A & M, and Wisconsin-Whitewater. All of these games were irritating, and I'd rather not relive them -- thus I'll leave it at that.

On the evening of day 4, our last night there, people finally got their shit together. Unfortunately, the night centered around a boob show, in which I was not interested. Even so, I would have been the only person not in attendance, so I said I would go. Furthermore, other people had decided to go based on the fact that I decided to go, and even though I wanted to bail at the last minute, I was pretty much stuck.

In preparation for said evening, I sat on video poker and penny slots for a while, getting comped Tom Collinses and starting to get nicely tipsy. Pete had a Nalgene of some horrid citrus soda plus some equally horrid vodka, but knowing what I was getting into, the more alcohol the better. I imagined, like, the Maison Derriere from the Simpsons -- feathered costumes, singing, dancing, etc. This is not what I got to see. No amount of alcohol could have prepared me for the boob show, even though I continued pounding drinks throughout. Feeling thoroughly isolated from everyone else, I left the boob show, after punching Tufsky in the head for some remark he made.

We were at the Riviera. My one goal in this entire trip, besides not tearing my groin in half, was to see the Bellagio water show. Last year, I missed it every night I was on The Strip. So this year, I had to see it. Not only that, but I wanted to gamble at the Bellagio, just to say I had done so. Thus, after the boob show and thoroughly grouchy, I hauled ass to get to the Bellagio in time for the last two water shows before they shut off at midnight. I made the two-mile walk in good time, and arrived to see the show. Then, I learned some more people were behind me, so I waited around for them. A good group of people arrived, including my main man Max, Super Grover, Christina, and some others (I was kind of tipsy, and this was a while ago, so I don't really remember everyone involved).

Anyhow, we got some pictures of the water show, and went to explore the Bellagio. I sat down at one of the roulette tables, $10 minimum, and started playing around with $40. Well, through some good luck, I ended up winning an additional $35, more than enough to compensate for the boob show debacle. This also put me at -$15 for the whole trip, which is more than acceptable. My number didn't come up at all, but Tufsky's and Jack's did, so I won some good cash on those. Red was also very good to me when I needed a quick score. It was pretty fun, I would have continued except that a lot of the younger guys were waiting for me. In the end, being around my friends is more important than gambling, so I took my $35 and left.

We walked around The Strip some more, saw some sights, sobered up slightly, and headed back to the hotel. At this point I learned that Nightcrawler had gotten even sicker than he was before, and had yarfed in Mr. and Mrs. Rook's room in the Wynn. I had been taking care of him earlier, but honestly, there were things I really needed to do, and I knew he was in Graham's capable hands, so whatever. The only inconvenience was Pipes, whose place Nightcrawler eventually took upon returning to the hotel, when he knocked on our door at around 3am to take Nightcrawler's spot. Somehow, when I woke up, Nightcrawler was sleeping in his spot, and Pipes was nowhere to be found. I didn't ask questions, and suited up for our final day.

Day 5. Last day of playing

First we had Cornell, a regional opponent. Much like Regionals last year, we pw3ed them with our trap zone. I footblocked a guy three times in a row, two were "fouls" and the third popped up, only to be dragged down by a tall guy on Cornell. Even so, I had a good day on the mark, with I think three footblocks in the two games we played. There was drama though, as always. One of our players decided that his disagreement with one of our other teammates was more important than the success of the team, so he stopped playing. The second game would have gone a lot better if not for this, but in the end, we let Dartmouth come back from a 7-4 halftime lead. It was crazy windy this day, which worked to our advantage on defense, since our trap zone was working well. Unfortunately, our offense was miserable, and filled with inexplicable mental mistakes (drops, turfs, silly shit). Anyways, that was it for playing.

The rest of the story is mainly boring, so I won't get into it. I got sick on the plane, and touched down with a 10-page paper due on Thursday and the worst flu-like symptoms ever. This continued for a week. But in the end, it was a worthwhile trip. Unfortunately, our team was pretty disappointing in the getting-out-and-having-fun department, but I guess not everyone realized that you inevitably spend money on vacation and the hotel is not the best part of the trip. End rant.