Day 0: When I (Don’t) Go to Vegas

Four score and seven years ago (ok, it might not have been exactly four score but it was definitely 7 years ago) a few teachers found a great deal on Orbitz for round trip flights to Vegas and four nights in a Venetian suite. The rest of the world was struggling to claw its way out of a deep pit of recession- but we’re NYC public school teachers, and while we don’t ever get raises, we also aren’t subject to cut backs! So with consistent pay checks and an aim to capitalize on the dipping flight costs, we booked our trip to Vegas, baby!!

What happened next has gone down in (teacher) history as the infamously, worst traveling experience of all time. When we arrived at 6 am to LaGuardia airport the planes’ wings were frozen (concerning) and we were stuck on the Tarmac for an hour while they were defrosted. We arrived for our connecting flight in Milwaukee where we learned that our second flight had left 8 MINUTES earlier. They chose not to wait despite the fact that there were over 20 people on our plane booked for that connection. Instead, they flew us to Minneapolis where we spent 6 hours sleeping on seats in a sketchy hallway between two terminals because they were the only rows we could find in the entire airport without metal arm rests breaking them up. We scoured the airport for food and settled on fish and chips at 8:30 am because it was the only thing open and returned to our camp out to find Suavest of the Seas napping with an $80 Brookstone pillow and blanket set that she bought in a sleep deprived trance (actually, this was the single good thing that came out of that day because that Brookstone set has come in handy in many an international airport and an entire month in Sicily since).  We then flew to Atlanta (because that’s on the way to Vegas) to finally get on a 4th plane to our destination. By the time we had arrived, we were so wrecked, and our immune systems were so strained, that two of our crew spent the first 48 hours vomiting in the Venetian suite toilet and two days later I ended up at a sketchy off strip Vegas clinic where Casually Kissing Cowboys and Suavest of the Seas were left for over two hours in the waiting room to plan how to gently tell my family I had succumbed to my battle with what has been affectionately coined “Vegas Throat.”  Four days and three prescriptions later (including a dubious bottle of “Magic Mouth Wash”- actual name) we returned to NYC with our heads bowed in defeat. Not even a close encounter with Christian Slater at an airport slot machine on which I won $150 could compensate for the disaster of Vegasgate 2009.

I tell you this anecdote now because you would think- nay, you would pray- that we had learned our lesson. But no. In planning this road trip we thought, “hell yeah, it’d be great to start and end our road trip in Las Vegas, and hey, it’s summer, so no frozen airplane wings right?” Right. Except, we did not account for tornados in New York (are Tara Reid and Ian Ziering filming Sharknado 5 or something?) and golf sized hail in Vegas. Nine rebookings, two dropped calls with Unites airlines, and one arrival and imminent departure from LaGuardia airport landed us…literally no where. Day one of the road trip can be summarized in the following screen shot from my mail app:

Please note the time stamp at the bottom because that’s the time we left this morning for Vegas. Because, we spent day one of our road trip… at home. Actually at Tech Talkin and Walkin’s home in Scarsdale because the rest of us are literally living out of a van (more on that later) until the end of July.

I’m happy to report that I am blogging this from the Vegas airport having finally arrived.

We’d like to give a special shout out to Pete for driving us to Laguardia and back for no reason at all, Doris for finally booking the Newark flight over the phone, the captain of United Airlines flight 1899 for weathering the worst turbulence I’ve felt in years, and finally the charming flight attendant who told us our in flight entertainment didn’t work because, “the left side of the plane has had a stroke” (dear God).

I am going to leave you with this gem, the breakout single from DJ Ken Utting’s debut LP mix CD fondly titled “When Teachers from Hell go to Vegas,” a fan favorite from Vegasgate.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=up9fq9hJ9Zs

Enjoy!

The Gringo Gaucho

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