#111. Las Vegas (Sunday, August 14, 2005)

What was your best day…of being a kid in an adult place?

Sorry to disappoint, but as you might have guessed from the age, this Las Vegas story is not going to be like the ones that populate most people’s top hundred (or fifty or ten) lists. But Vegas is still Vegas, and Vegas is pretty awesome no matter what.

It was part of this ten-day Chinese tour bus trip through California and parts of Nevada and Arizona that I went on with my family the summer before sophomore year of high school. Besides Vegas, we hit all the usual spots – Hollywood, the Universal Studios theme park, San Francisco Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf, Sea World, Grand Canyon¹ – though it was pretty uneventful².

For the Vegas part, probably the most exciting event happened five minutes into the city. Our bus stopped at a light and I looked out the window see two armed cops crouched down nearby pointing their guns at some unseen person. And I recall thinking to myself, “Man, this place is legit.”

We stayed at the Riviera hotel on the strip, and for most of our two days there we just walked around checking out all the famous hotels. Treasure Island and the pirate show there, Mirage and the giant erupting volcano, all of them. The sheer grandiosity of the city – especially to a kid just strolling through the streets at night – definitely stuck with me for quite some time.

On the second night, we went to see the family-friendly V-show, which basically consisted of the host doing card tricks, a bunch of acrobats and jugglers, and this performer Joe Travel who did impressions and who I thought at the time was a big deal³ (which made him shaking my hand and calling me sir at the end pretty cool).

My favorite moment of the show was when the host called this funny-looking audience member Ned up to assist in one of his card tricks. While Ned was shuffling, the host turned his back and starting dancing to “Dancing Queen”, spotlight and everything, for a few seconds. Then when Ned was done, he turned back and said: “You want me now, don’t you?” Ned just shook his head in a nonplussed way and said: “No”.

Also that night, I recall being in this giant mall-like area in one of the hotels (I believe The Venetian). For some reason I still can’t figure out, instead of eating the food there, I had a second Southwest Taco Salad I got at the Wendy’s near the Grand Canyon earlier that day. Thinking about it now, that must have looked pretty awkward.

My parents did go down to gamble a bit after my brother and I were asleep, and won five dollars from the slot machine. For many years after, I thought I was being original when I kept telling my friends that they were the only ones to ever win money while in Vegas.

So that’s it. The entire trip.

Though the whole California-Las Vegas trip was average by all accounts, what makes it special is that it was the only time in my high school years – the best years to go outside and see the world – that I traveled with my family. The other summers I was too busy padding my college applications with extracurriculars, something that I kind of regret now. (You can sense a theme with this and #114.)

Youth is fleeting, and that short window of adolescence when a kid is able to understand Las Vegas, but not really understand it yet, is a unique time indeed.

A random photo of me looking especially relaxed standing in front of it, shortly after I’d been done holding it in for three hours on the bus (a record to that point and since), ended up being my Facebook profile photo for 10 of the first 11 years.
Probably a good thing.
To this day, I have not been able to find a “Joe Travel” of note through any online searches.