26. With Mike Stefanidis - The Sahara, January 17-19, 1992

• Mike and I left Friday night on a whim, and what a roller-coaster ride of a trip. By Sunday morning we were each up over $1,000.00, and by Sunday afternoon we had lost it all back. Kind of pathetic, really.

25. With Mike Stefanidis, Mary Whelan, and Mary Thrasher - The Maxim, September 20-22, 1991 (+$9.50)

• Mike had done some free dental work for a friend's relatives who lived in Las Vegas, and they set us up with a free room and free rental car. The car was a Cadillac, and we had a blast with it.

• We saw the show at Excalibur (the first Vegas show Mike and Mary Whelan had ever been to), and I thought it was terrific.

• Mary Whelan really took to craps. At the beginning of the trip, she would just stand behind Mike and me and say, "Um, could you put this chip on the pass line for me?" and by the end of the trip she was shooting the dice herself and saying, "Gimme a C&E and hard 8."

• I had a particularly good craps roll at The Mirage, and afterwards we noticed that Dan Lauria, the guy who played the father on The Wonder Years, had been betting on me.

• We played craps more than anything else this trip, and we got in on some very good rolls. Strangely enough, however, I was the only one who got in on the best roll. Mike and I were both down for the trip on Sunday, so we decided to go to the Fremont to try to recoup. We both quickly lost $100.00 on the crap table, so Mike walked away to play blackjack. I was the only player left on the table. I got the dice and proceeded to win back the lost $100.00 plus an additional $329.00. It was one of the most exciting craps hands I've ever had -- not just because I won, but because the pace was so quick. Being the only player on the table, I didn't have to wait long between rolls.

• Mary Thrasher was miserable most of the trip. She never did tell us why she was in such a bad mood, but her attitude came close to ruining the trip for the rest of us.

24. With Boppa - Excalibur, August 14-16, 1991 (-$296.25)

• I had an incredible roll at a crap table at Excalibur the first night we were there; I bought in for $90.00 and cashed out for $650.00. I rolled a ton of sixes and eights and just kept pressing them up.

• We ate prime rib at Sir Galahad's, and it was even better than when I had gone last time.

23. With Mike James, Murray Lott, and Guy Sandstrom - Circus Circus, July 21-23, 1991 (+$86.75)

• Mike had just returned from his first year in Japan with his Australian friend Murray. We flew to Vegas and met Murray's friend Guy; Guy had started in India and through a series of connecting flights arrived in Vegas about five minutes before we did.

• Mike and I got on an incredible roll at the 25-cent crap table at Silver City and ended up winning about $330.00 each. We started betting pass line and come for $1.00 with full double odds, and by the end of the roll those bets had been pressed up to $10.00. The guy with the dice rolled for about a half hour, but Mike and I were the only ones at the table that made any real money. No one else was pressing, and in fact we were the only ones using five dollar chips at the end; everyone else was using dollars and quarters^*.

• Saturday night we had an insane cut of prime rib at Sir Galahad's at Excalibur.

• I played 9's Up for the first and last time in a casino and found out the hard way that the player can never win with a zero in one of his hands. (For example, a dealer's 8-2 beats a player's K-Q.)

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^*As in 25 cents.

22. With Mike Stefanidis and Paul Huyser on an overnight junket, April 20-21, 1991 (-$412.50)

• We each paid $110.00 up front and were given round-trip plane tickets to Vegas. The deal was if we played for four hours at a $5.00 minimum table at the Sands, they would reimburse us $90.00. In other words, the air fare would cost only $20.00. Mike and I pooled our money, and we were actually each ahead $87.50 at the end of the four hours.

  The rest of the evening didn't go so well.

• Mike commented that one of the blackjack dealers at the Sands reminded him of Angela Sciacqua from Farrell's. I didn't see the resemblance, so I asked Mike why. He said, "They have the same kind of arms."

21. With Gary Eastley, Mike Stefanidis, Paul Huyser, Gary Wokuluk, and Clayton Clark III - Bob Stupak's Vegas World, March 8-10, 1991 (-$17.25)

• This was a pretty good deal. Gary Wokuluk had received an invitation from Bob Stupak for what amounted to a free stay at his "fabulous" hotel. (Gary had previously taken advantage of the Stupak deal one often came across in such fine publications as Parade magazine.) We each paid $299.00 in advance, and when we got to Stupak's, they gave us $300.00 in real casino chips (which we all immediately cashed in for money), a room for two nights, tickets for a buffet, a coupon for a free bottle of champagne, etc. In other words, we got all that stuff for free, and we made a buck profit.^*

• Some of the guys felt compelled to play at Stupak's a while since he did give us such a good deal. I'm proud to say, however, that he made no money off of me.

• Okay. So, the Stupak deal was pretty good. But, there were some lousy things about it:
  • Vegas World was not close to any other casinos. We were forced to play there or drive somewhere else.
  • The hotel itself was pretty run down. Plus our rooms had tons of Stupak propaganda on the wall.
  • The buffet was pathetic. It looked like Ma Stupak had whipped together a little something for her son's hotel. I'm not kidding. This was not a regular hotel buffet. It was just for people in the junket. The whole thing fit on two regular restaurant tables.

• On the other hand, the bottle of champagne wasn't bad.

• Seeing as this was my 21st Vegas trip, I thought I'd play a lot more blackjack than usual. It was a good move. I won a total of $198.00 on blackjack. If only I hadn't lost $215.35 on craps, keno, pai gow poker, and wheel of fortune.

• Gary Eastley, Paul, and I drove back home in the same car, and we played pai gow poker the entire time. It made the trip go by very quickly.

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^*We all got this deal because we were Gary’s guests. Gary himself actually got a better deal: He paid $299.00 in advance and received $350.00 when we arrived.

20. With Mom, Dana, and Sue - Excalibur, December 21-23, 1990 (-$238.30)

• Our flight to Vegas was scheduled to leave at about 8:45 p.m., but when we got to the airport, we were informed it was delayed an hour and a half. This was the weekend before Christmas; the airport was packed with people, and bad weather in other cities was causing flight delays. Since we had gotten to the airport early, we had a little time to kill. The video monitor said we'd be leaving at 10:20 p.m. Then it said 10:45 p.m. Then 11:00, 11:15, and finally 11:30. I asked a security guard if there was a curfew for departing flights, and he said no flights could leave after 11:30. As our plane was arriving, a representative from the airline told us that if we could not get the plane off the ground by 11:30, we would not be going to Vegas that night. He had us all organized to rush onto the plane as soon as the arriving passengers got off. We left the ground at 11:28 p.m.

• I had a very bad cold the whole weekend; the sore throat was hellish. To make it worse, the Sunday we were there was Las Vegas's coldest December day on record (temperatures in the teens, bottoming out at 11°F).

• We asked for maid service at 3:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, but neither of our rooms ever got cleaned. Finally at 11:00 p.m. we just said forget it and asked for some fresh towels. The next day we complained at the front desk and got $10.00 taken off each room's rate.

• This was the trip of the demon plane rides. On our return flight, we sat in the very back, and as we were taxiing away from the terminal, there was a distinct smell of fuel. (This is very common when you're sitting in the back, especially if it's cold out). Well, some rowdy New Yorkers smelled it and started yelling stuff like, "There poisoning us! She's gonna blow!" They were joking, of course, but it turned out to be pretty stupid joking because the passenger sitting across the aisle from Mom freaked. He started going on about how the airline was trying to kill us, and how he was going to sue, and he was extremely abusive to the flight attendants. They finally calmed him down enough so that we could taxi back to the terminal where he was escorted off. While taxiing back the captain announced that we were returning to the terminal to check on some smoke that was coming out of one of the engines. Initially I thought this was just a ploy to get this lunatic off the flight; however, they eventually had us get off the plane and board another one. A lot of the passengers were then saying stuff like, "Boy, that crazy guy was right!" But I'm pretty confident that the guy freaking over the fuel smell and the engine trouble they actually experienced were unrelated.