Day 1
Saturday December 15, 2007

Well it’s finally here. A day I’ve been looking forward to since I got home from my last trip back in July! The day started bright and early getting up at 4:00am. Today’s flight is out of the local airport, Stewart – Newburgh. I really like flying out of here but usually the flight times and fares aren’t competitive with Newark so I usually go out of there.

I got to the terminal at around 4:45am and dropped a rental car off with Avis. Normally I just park my car at work which is down the hill from the terminal but I had a car rented yesterday with Avis to take advantage of some frequent renter perks and it worked out well that I could drop off this car steps from the front door of the terminal. The car was a Ford Taurus with almost 32,000 miles on it and good condition but you could tell this car as tired.

This airport is so small that you don’t even need to get here 2 hours before a flight. I got here about an hour prior and there wasn’t a line at the USAir counter. I’m not actually paying for this flight. Instead I used comp dollars from my Harrah’s Total Rewards account to buy a ticket. It cost me 50,000 points ($500 in comps) and the actual ticket price was $405. The fare was the same going out of Newark but since I wasn’t paying for this flight, I figured I might as well go from close to home.

Security was a breeze here except for one asshole (there’s always one). This guy was asked by the security agent if he had any liquids to remove them from his carry on. She told him this 3 times along with removing all metal from his pockets and removing his belt. Sure as shit, he had liquids in his bag and held the line up. Oh and here’s another tip people. Check these effing carry on bags. All you do is slow the process down especially when they are too big.

Today’s flight is 4001and scheduled to depart at 5:41am connecting in Philly. They just fly a small puddle jumper out of Newburgh to Philly and the flight is usually under an hour. The flight was actually only 36 minutes and in no time we were landing in Philly. This flight was only about ½ full so it gave everyone plenty of room. This flight went to F terminal and from there you have to take a shuttle bus to the others. My flight was in B terminal but I had plenty of time to get there.

I grabbed a quick snack at the CNBC news stand and then it was time to board.

This is flight 1477 and we were scheduled to leave at 7:45am and arrive in Las Vegas at 10:25am. I was pretty tired from no sleep and working 8 of the last nine days so the movie and food weren’t of concern to me. Sleep was! The in flight food was a small bag of pretzels the second time they came around later in the flight, and a soda. This is one thing I miss about not being on Continental this trip. They still serve a meal on their flights. I got some sleep on this flight to pass the time and reenergize.

The flight was quite bumpy most of the way out. It finally smoothed out after we passed over the Rockies. The captain came on and said we were 100 miles away from Las Vegas and would be arriving soon. Finally, this long flight was about to end and the fun would begin.

We arrived 5 minutes early and taxied a bit to get to our gate. From here it was on to baggage claim to get my luggage. The wait here wasn’t bad. As usual, my first bag came right out and it was 15 minutes later that my next bag arrived.

Next up was getting to the rental car shuttle. This is the first time I had to do this since last time I was in town I picked up the car at the hotel. There wasn’t much of a crowd for a shuttle and it took no time to get on and over to the rental car center.

I made a reservation back in September for a Luxury car at a rate of $576 before tax and discounts. However, last week I was rechecking rates and the rate dropped to $468 before taxes and discounts. That’s a $108 savings compared to the original reservation. I also used a discount code that got me 15% off and have a coupon for a free day (This baby was worth $26) bringing the cost down to $372, plus tax. This is one of the cheapest rates I recall on a Luxury Car. I don’t need a luxury car in Vegas but I like driving one as a change of pace. I checked in with the kiosk and had no waits or issues here. I do think they need to add some more of these though. I booked this reservation wanting and expecting a Cadillac DTS and when I go to the lot an attendant came to help me. He asked what type of car I was looking for and I said a DTS if he had one. He said “ut oh”. I don’t have one on the lot but can send one of the guys to check and see if we have any. After a 15 minute wait I did get one. While waiting I told him this was about the 3rd time in a row this has happened. The car I got had a little over 5,000 miles on it and would be my comfortable mode of transportation for the next 2 weeks. This thing was loaded with all sorts of buttons and gadgets in it including a navigation system that didn’t wok because there was no DVD to operate it. It also had XM satellite radio so I’d be able to catch Opie and Anthony and commercial free music (the preceding was paid for by XM Radio).

After a look over the car I was on my way out of the garage and on my way downtown to Main Street Station where I will be staying for the next 4 nights. I’ve got a mail promo offering 4 nights, $100 free play, 3X points, and a food coupon book. My host is replacing the food coupon book with a silver card which is good for food at all of the downtown Boyd properties.

Check in was super fast here like it usually is. In just a few minutes I was on my way to room 902. This room has a north view of the 95. It’s a standard issue Main Street Station room with [one king, night stands, TV cabinet/dresser, TV, sitting table and work desk. The bathroom is tiny with the sink outside and the toilet and tub in a separate room. I still don’t understand why when they renovated these rooms a few years ago nothing was done to spruce up these bathrooms.

After I got my stuff up to the room it was time to meet with my friend Buddha and his wife Nancy. Our plan was to have lunch at the Market Street Café over at the California to break in the silver card.

I went with my favorite hot open turkey sandwich here with mashed potatoes and a bowl of beef barley soup. I’ve been looking forward to this sandwich for days now and it was good. The soup was excellent today. The service was good this afternoon. Buddha also ordered the soup and the waitress asked Nancy if she wanted some. She declined. Then in an odd turn of events the waitress brought her one anyway and said it’s on me, don’t worry about it. Even more odd was mine wasn’t on the bill when it arrived either! The total bill came to 26 bucks. Technically the silver card is supposed to cover all appetizers, drinks, and 2 entrees but your mileage may vary when dining with 3 people. Today there was a slight issue but the cashier slit the bill into 2 separate checks to solve the issue and all was good.

After lunch they played VP and I went to take a phone call from NNylons and to stand in front of the Main Street and Fremont web cam. She actually saw me!

I headed back to the casino to say good bye to Buddha and Nancy and we ran into Trawna Jack. We had a little mini meet for a while and then I came up to the room to rest for a few hours.

In the evening I hit the casino to use up my free play. I was playing 8/5 bonus triple play and hit nothing. My $100 in free play was gone in less than 20 minutes. I played a mix of triple and five play and just couldn’t hit a thing. I managed to hit 5 quads and oddly 4 of them were jacks. I even tried $100 through on DDB and had no luck.

For a change of pace I moved over to a single line machine and played the NSUD version of deuces wild. More of hitting nothing was the theme here. That’s when it happened. I drew 4 aces and a kicker for 20 coins. The pain this causes is immeasurable.

Next up I hit the bar tops and talked with Bob the Bartender for a little while. The theme continued and the total lack of quads was killing me tonight. I made the switch to dollars hoping to finally hit a quad but had no luck at that. I did manage to pull 2 straight flushes within 2 minutes of each other for $259 and $251 (they are progressive at the Boar Bar). I finally cut my losses and decided to take the loss for the day and live with it. This isn’t the way I prefer to start my trip but what can you do?

While I was playing Trawna Jack stopped by and we had another little mini meet before he left.

I had 8 scratch cards worth $20 tonight. Four of them were for $2 and four of them for $3. I was actually surprised with the amount of $3 cards I got tonight.

For a late night snack I hit the Triple 7 and had an order of mozzarella sticks. Now I’m not sure if it was because I was really hungry or not but these were some of the best sticks I’ve had.

It was now going on 1am but my body was saying it was 4am and other than a few hours of broken sleep I’d been up over 24 hours. It was time for bed!

Total win/loss for the day -$400
Total comps for the day $626