My worst fear

After another week in LA I was off for my usual trip over to Vegas for the weekend – there was a big event on that weekend so hotel prices on the strip were through the roof so I ended up staying at the Rio. 

I arrived fairly late on Friday night and having queued for ½ hour to get a cab then another ½ hour to check in I was gasping for a beer. The plan was to dump my bag in the room and head straight downstairs to the poker room for some action and at least a few drinks. It’s around midnight when I finally get to the room having landed at LAS at about 22.30 and the instant I turn on the light I can tell something is wrong. I’m working on the assumption that most people will have seen The Hangover (the original, funny one) and will be familiar with the bathroom scene – if not here’s a clip (watch from about 2.00 in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHMSM8fyB9U . It was like that – but much worse. Much, much worse. 

Although the rooms are a bit dated they’re usually perfectly acceptable to spend 6 hours a night in whilst in Vegas – this one was well cleaned, the fridge and TV worked fine and I wasn’t put in one of the rooms that’s a good hour’s hike through the corridors to get to the elevators. It was fine, it just had some non paying guests in it. Now everyone is scared of something – whether it’s mice, snakes, spiders, tigers or monsters under the bed everyone is scared of something. Those fears could be rational – tigers eat you, snakes and spiders can poison you, or completely irrational like triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13). Mine is moths – completely irrational I know but you can only play the hand you’re dealt. This room had moths in it – lots of them. I’m not talking tiny ones either – they were a good 2 inches long and there seemed to be dozens of them. And these little fuckers are evil – they’ll take your face off with one strike. OK I made that last bit up but I need to come up with a plan as there’s no way I’m getting any sleep with dozens of these flying around all night.

I rule out calling reception – they were really busy and will probably just laugh if I ring to tell them I want a room change – plus that means waiting downstairs for at least another ½ hour which is eating into my beer time. I could call down and tell them there’s a tiger in my room but they’ll probably notice I’ve lied when they send someone up to check. So I go on the attack – I’ve got a magazine in my case which will do the trick and I proceed to swipe at my enemies. Within minutes casualties are all over the battlefield and my magazine is plastered with the blood of the vanquished – by the time I’ve finished I’ve counted over 30 of them and I was still finding the odd 1 or 2 for the rest of the weekend. They almost get their own back on me the next morning as I find 1 flying around the bathroom whilst I’m in the shower and almost break my neck slipping over trying to get it.

So now I really needed a beer – I headed down to the poker room and played for an hour or so whilst turbo necking beers. There’s a tournament over at the Mirage I want to play on Saturday lunchtime so I headed off about 2am. Little did I know that Saturday was going to be a long day.