Wednesday, June 28, 2006

A trip here and a trip there, soon no time at all

I have not ignored your pleas for more stories and an end to this hiatus I have taken from this blog. It is not that I don’t love my readers, I really do its just that life has yielded a few new priorities that all request my attention. It has now been almost a year since I have moved to the city and as much as I do love city living on the weekends the commute is a bit of a drag. Thankfully with my travel schedule I am not here enough to really hate the commute but spending a couple of hours a day in the car does get a bit well tiresome. But lets go into a couple of fun stories shall we?

Last week I was in Vegas for my company’s large users show. Over 11,000 attendees were all in one place for this event and I am pleased to say my session sold out at around 170 attendees. But this is not about my session (which rocked) or my presentation skills (out of this world) or the reaction of my audience (they absolutely loved me), but rather some of the night life outside the life of corporate America. What happens when people go to a city where they think anything goes? It started innocently enough, just a drink with a couple of co-workers in a nice bar at the Bellagio. One of my buddies ends up talking to a girl who is standing next to him waiting to be served. Turns out it is her 21st birthday and she is here in Vegas with her father, but she really wants to go clubbin. My friend of course invites her out with us for we are planning on hitting Tangerine a club in the casino Treasure Island. She is all set to go but someone needs to tell her father. Yes you guessed it, as the only single person, and of course the one that lets face it all parents love, I am the one that is nominated to talk to her father.

Lets recap. I need to go out and tell a father that I am taking his 21 year old daughter out with three strange men out to a different casino her first time in Vegas until the wee hours in the morning and give her copious amounts of alcohol. I am marketing, this shouldn’t be too hard, and indeed I pass with flying colors. Before I know it we are in a cab flying down the strip to TI. In the car Jenna (as she puts it, think Jenna Jameson the famous porn star) informs us that she is going to be in the September issue of playboy, the college edition. Man does that rev everyone’s engine in the cab, including the cabbie himself who looks at me in the front seat with raised eyebrows and a knowing look. Jumping inside the club she somehow makes her way to the top of the stage in under a minute and is soon towering over the crowd doing a dance that hasn’t been seen since the last out-takes of dirty dancing. The crowd loves her, especially the more than occasional flashes she gives to the audience. Before I know it she takes one of our companions off to a back room or bathroom. Coming back she gets a drink and soon takes my other co-worker off. Of course I have been duly warned I can never tell his wife about what goes on here. Later that night after a few more drinks she comes shaking that little bootie on over to me and tells me it’s my turn. Hmmm, you know what, I think I will pass. No hardship for her, she finds Chris Lydell the UFC champion and ends up going home with him. Something tells me this 21 year old has been to a couple of bars before her legal birthday. As for my co-workers, I wonder how surprised they would be if they knew their wives to be cheating on them as they do. Somehow the concept of ‘Loyal and faithful until death do us part’ and ‘What goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas’ seem to be in direct conflict with each other. Welcome to life with a trade show group.

So besides the little Vegas fiasco, life was ok out there. It is amazing how fast that city is growing. Virtually every casino has added a new tower with between five and seven thousand new rooms. This is in addition to the up to 15,000 hotel rooms per casino. How long is this place going to sustain this growth? I so hate that city!

With luck my next update will happen on a more imminent manner.