Trade Show Day 3: Old-School Vegas.

Vegas Travelog #7
Back at the hotel - Thu, 30 Nov 2023. 12:30am.

It's already Thursday, Day 4 of this trade show, but I'm still writing about Day 3. Early Day 4 is still late Day 3. Yes, it's after midnight and I'm just winding down for bed after having dinner with a sales VP and several colleagues. ...And the VP and a few of those colleagues are still tearing it up at a dive-y bar at the casino next door.



Dinner this evening was at The Steakhouse at the Circus Circus casino. Yes, it's actually named The Steakhouse. It's an old-school Las Vegas restaurant... leather booths, wood paneling, dim lighting, and fantastic food. And it's in an old-school shit-hole of a casino.

How much of a shit-hole? Well, when I walked in the front door, my first thought was, "Eww, it smells like piss in here!" So maybe not literally a shit-hole but more like a public urinal. 🤣

I remember staying at the Circus Circus once on a gambling trip twenty-someodd years ago.... Back then it was already an obviously low-rent casino, but at least it had business. Today it's a low-rent casino that looks like a ghost town inside. We walked past a Del Taco take-away stand inside the casino to get to The Steakhouse. Colleagues laughed about that juxtaposition— and laughed even more when I told them about my journey to the site of the original Del Taco restaurant.

After dinner— and it was a fantastic dinner, proximity to a Del Taco takeaway counter notwithstanding— a few of our colleagues melted away. The rest of us went out to the gaming floor. There were, like, five other people playing in the casino. And the games had $5 minimums. $5 table minimums, on The Strip? That tells you what a shit-hole the Circus Circus is. 🤣

Three or four of the group gambled, the rest of us watched, and then a few more people peeled off. Then the last six of us went over to the divey bar. And by dive-y bar I mean the beers were only $8, not $14 like at the nicer places on The Strip. 🙄 I stayed for a while longer, knocking back still-overpriced "cheap" beer and tequila with my last few colleagues.

I called it a night at midnight and walked back to my own hotel. At my casino-hotel the tables were much more populated... with minimums of $25 to $50. And the drinks were better but twice the price. I ignored all that as I headed up to my room on the 54th 44th floor. Tomorrow's another busy day, and I've got to get some sleep for it!

The Fuzzy Edge of Drinking Too Much

Vegas Travelog #8
At the hotel - Thu, 30 Nov 2023. 7am.

Working a trade show is not a sprint but a marathon. One has to preserve energy to work the show each day and not stay out too late at night drinking and carousing with colleagues. The temptation to do so is doubly high in a party city like Las Vegas. Last night I pushed it to the edge— the edge between "I'm still having fun" and being too far gone.

The fact I wrote a blog last night— I mean, this morning— at 12:30am tells you two things. One, I stayed out late eating, drinking and carousing. I didn't get to bed until just after 1am. And I had a 6:45am wake-up alarm today. But also Two, I obviously still had enough presence of mind to write a coherent blog post. 😂

Finding the balance between "I'm having a good time" and "Uh-oh, I've had too much" when drinking is challenging. I'm not talking about the legal limit for driving. Driving is out of the equation here, and anyway that limit is both easier to gauge and way lower. This is about knowing "When to say 'when'" to still have a good buzz going but not get sloppy-drunk such that I make poor decisions or get sick or wake up hung over.

It took years to figure out this balance. It didn't help, of course, that my physical tolerance for booze changed as I got older. I remember back in college I could drink like a fish and wake up without a hangover. I didn't get my first hangover until sometime in my late 20s.

Last night I went right up to the line. I had a drink before dinner, definitely 4 maybe 5 with dinner, and two more later. I didn't really want to drink the last one, but there was peer pressure and my judgment was already getting fuzzy. Thankfully I still had enough presence of mind after that to put my foot down and decline more drinks even with colleagues egging me on. It's that impaired, fuzzy judgment that makes striking the balance difficult. It's an invisible line of no return. Cross it— like I think I would have with even one more drink— and I'd end up having 2 or 3 more drinks beyond that and waking up sick.

Well, here it is almost 7:30, and while I'm not exactly bright eyed and bushy tailed, I'm also not... bright tailed and bushy eyed. 🤣 I'm ready for Day 4, the last day, of this trade show!

Trade Show Day 4: It's a Wrap!

Vegas Travelog #9
Back home! Thu, 30 Nov 2023. 8pm.

We wrapped up Day 4 of the trade show today. I left a bit early, just after 2 even though the exhibit floor was open til 4pm, to catch a flight home. The booth was much busier today than I expected. Usually by the last day of a show everyone who's going to visit the booth has already done so... and especially in the last few hours it's often deadsville. Not today. We had steady traffic at the booth all day.

I spent the day in the booth once again portraying Jenkins the Butler. Colleagues and show-goers loved it. I grabbed a few colleagues to do a bit of guerilla marketing, visiting the booths of competitors and basically taunting them for not having a super-cool personification of their products. We also took pictures of me standing in front of their logos and surreptitiously giving them the finger. 🤣

I wish I could have stayed through the end of the show today. Usually I do, but this trip the later flight I'd need was already sold out when I got the last-minute request to staff the show.

For a day that didn't feel like a long, tiring day, I was wrecked by the time my flight departed around 4:30pm. We caught a delay in the conga line of, like, 20 aircraft queued up to take off from LAS. It didn't bother me because by then I was already asleep! 😵 I slept until we landed at SJC.

Getting home was pleasingly quick. I hailed a ride with Lyft, and a driver arrived promptly. There was no rush-hour traffic at 6:30pm. (It's a reverse commute, anyway.) I was home-home just before 7. And I promptly went back out to get a light dinner. Then, once home for the night I unpacked my suitcase. I've been living out of that suitcase for most of the past 2 weeks. It's time to relax and unwind!