Year: 2015

Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, we walked outside onto the Vegas strip to take in the fireworks show. I braced myself for the unusually cold weather they were experiencing, but it didn’t feel so bad. I guess the camaraderie of hundreds of thousands of revelers warmed the atmosphere. My childhood best friend, Dave,… Continue reading Las Vegas Trip 2014-2015, Part Four

By the time we checked in at the hotel it was about 5:00 PM local time, which felt like 8:00 to us, after a night where Kim and I each slept about two hours. But we got our second wind. This was Kim’s fiftieth birthday after all, and we were finally in Vegas, so there… Continue reading Las Vegas Trip 2014-2015, Part Three

On Kim’s fiftieth birthday, which would be twenty-seven hours long this year, we got up at 3:45 AM and traveled westward most of the day. This was not exactly ideal birthday fun. I boarded our 7:00 AM flight from Portland to Philadelphia pretty much like I have for years. Just outside of the mouth of the plane I… Continue reading Las Vegas Trip 2014-2015, Part Two

When a group of people invokes the “Let’s go to Vegas!” toast at a bar, 99% of the time the idea crumbles under its own weight by the next morning. But on this night in January of 2014, we were in the 1%. The trip was conceived while the six of us – my two… Continue reading Las Vegas Trip 2014-2015, Part One