It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

Some personal lessons learned during the past year of "challenged" pandemic Vegas trips. If some of these help out the intrepid COVID Vegas traveler reading this, so much the better. Go on weekends: Vegas is dildoes during the week in-pandemic. 75% of the strip, especially during the daylight hours, is closed or severely restricted. The town comes more alive Friday to Sunday, so I'll play the game for a while. The next trip on the docket is April and it's a Thursday to Monday trip. The bean counters were already diminishing things for day drinkers to do even before COVID and now it's doubly as bad. Adapt and adjust. Don't assume anything will be open: Relates to the above. On the June trip, I walked down to to the The District food area at MGM on a Tuesday at lunch time and nothing, nothing non-food court was open. What a joke. You can't reopen the casinos and not reopen amenities to serve the people in the casinos. Or the people will not go into your c...

GTM. Going Through the Motions. As it stands now, a peck of a heck of a haul of a time from the next Vegas trip. Not really in any kind of hype mode yet, it's so far away I'm just trying to keep it in the back of my head. I suppose if my tax refund comes through before being pirated by the IRS, or if some sweet Biden Bux come through, I may be able to squeeze in a quick weekender trip before April. I actually came within a nipple hair of booking a last second trip last weekend for the MLK Day holiday, but flights would have been too buku and I didn't want to drive on what would have been a two full day trip. Most likely though I'll hold off. I'm already in the save regimen for the April trip, so I don't think I'd want to blow $2K on a quickie. Those trips are just too short, I need a good 3-4 days minimum to work my way into a trip. It's fine right now to let the town come back to "normal" a little anyway. 25% of Vegas was pretty skint over Xm...

  Going to let the Vegas breathe a bit after the long Xmas trip.  Already starting to get the bug again, just 1 week back, but I'm going to let my better senses calm that a bit and give myself a few months to build up the hype. Secondary reason is to let the vaccine hopefully do it's work and allow me to get back to a Vegas that looks more like Vegas, unlike the Xmas trip. I had considered doing a "10th anniversary" trip in February to commemorate my first trip 10 years ago, but instead I'm going to be prudent and stretch that out to a birthday trip in April. Nearly a 4 month gap between trips but again that gives things time to calm down from the winter virus hit, and hopefully some more things will be up and running by the time April rolls around. I have tentatively booked Aria in a basic strip view room for the 21st-26th. Going over a weekend saves on PTO used at work and will likely be a better experience in terms of people on strip and things open for them. T...

Back from the yearly Xmas trip. Things happened. Flights:  Both Alaska and both fine. On time and no drama. No seat mates either flight and no 'rona concerns. Forfeited the flight credit on Allegiant not taking the Sunday flight back but it was a very good decision. Rooms: Cosmo was the reliable Terrace Studio for the first 3 nights. Had the view facing PH this time, quite nice. Had a look at the ice skating rink. Room great as always, this resort and room have cemented themselves as my go-to now for trips and I'm sure I'll be there many more times. Bellagio I had the Resort Tower King, non fountains view, so a view of the side of Caesars and of the Rio/Palms. Pretty meh. Bellagio has a kind of old, run down feel. Everything is in need of renovation; wallpaper peeling, old furniture, barely working shower. Best way I can describe it is it's your grandma's idea of a luxury room. Vegas has moved on and Bellagio needs to keep pace. Nice enough for $20/night though I gu...

By this time tomorrow I'll be sitting around SFO waiting to get on an airplane to the Vegas. Everything is ready. Money out of the bank, laundry done, devices charging, playlist completed, just need to get a good night's sleep tonight, dump the car at the work garage in the morning, catch an Uber to SFO and go go go. A last minute travel embargo placed by the City will not be enforced in any way and is therefore meaningless, but it gave me a palpitation when I read about it. I'm not concerned about my health traveling there. I feel at least as safe in Vegas as I do here, maybe even more so. The resorts are no joke about enforcing mask/distancing now. In terms of people, I expect it to be pretty damn dead. It always is for Xmas week, but this may be half again deader. The wildcard will be what the foreign contingent does. The strip is usually little Pakistan/India during Xmas week, but if they are not able to fly in it could be truly a ghost town, which I really don't mi...

So, after all that bullshit , I'm going to Vegas for Xmas, and it will probably be most of a normal trip. Or as normal as a Vegas trip can be in this fucked up year of doom. I will be willfully ignoring our state's governor (and the City's mayor) and boarding a plane in 4 days for my happy place. I'll be staying in 2 beautiful resorts, right next to each other (The Two Towers?), and going by the Turkey trip as a guide it'll be fairly normal-ish for an Xmas trip, mellow but that's always the case for Xmas trips and that's one of the reasons I love them. Hearing that hotel occupancy will be exceedingly low, somewhere around 5% even which seems crazy but that doesn't count all the peeps who may drive in for a day or two just to gamble and hang out. I may end up being the one and only at a lot of bars, but as long as they are open that doesn't bother me a bit. Some of my standbys like Fuel with tiny capacity will probably not be doable, especially since ...

His Eminence the Governor of Nevada holds a press conference at 4p today to presumably decide the fate of whether I get to go to Vegas or not. Nervous, but at least relieved that I won't have to wait until Tuesday to find out. 4 days before the trip was going to be a bitter pill if I'm fucked. If there's something like a test mandate to enter NV I have time to have a chance to schedule it. The way this year has gone I'm sure there will be some new wrinkle I'll either have to deal with or that will break the camel's back. One way or another, I either get the real hype going after 4p or I get the real depression.  Fuck it, I'm going to be an optimist and say my chances of going are now 80/20%. Why not. Check back at 4p as I live react. UPDATE 1: @VitalVegas, who is about as in the Vegas know as anyone alive, thinks there will simply be an extension of the current restrictions, nothing more. Hoping... UPDATE 2: Press conference starting...late. More cases...mor...