Vegas Trip Report

This past weekend I made the drive to Vegas to meet up with my buddies from Cleveland Dave, Brad, Tony and Jake.

Since I plan on buying a new car, I decided to set a $50 limit on gambling.

I planned to leave for Vegas at 8pm right after getting my car appraisaled from Carmax. Well the appraisal process ended earlier than I expected but I was not happy with the result. Carmax gave me a low ball $9000 offer for my car which is absolutely ridiculous! So, I was in a pissed off mood when I left for Vegas at 7:30pm. Besides a bit of traffic leaving LA, it was a pretty uneventful 4.5hour drive.

I listened to the UPGRD Podcasts during the drive and basically forgot about the Carmax offer.
I gotta admit, the second the Vegas skyline appears on the otherwise boring drive on I-15 gotta rank up there in terms of exciting moments.

Overall the weekend was filled with lots of drinking, laughing, eating and observing my buddies gamble. The company was great and filled with interesting characters. We had a guy who was 6'8, a uber nerd who works for Google, and a guy who was a contestant on Jeopardy. The pit bosses and dealers kept making bets on how tall my 6'8 buddy was when we walked up to a table.

I was able to stay within my gambling budget and left Vegas happy. And of course, no Vegas trip ends this uneventfully...

I left Vegas after lunch at 3pm, and naturally hit a pocket of traffic. That pocket lasted till the Nevada border. More traffic ensued randomly along the drive. We had to stop at the Agricultural stop and the mother of all traffic, a truck flipped over and caught on fire closing 2 lanes along the mountain roads entering LA. So in total, I was behind the wheel for 8 frickin hours, reaching home at 10:45pm. I could have made it 4/5 of the way to Asia! Completely ridiculous!

UPGRD Podcasts

Thanks to my college roommate Phil, I recently became a huge fan of listening to podcasts during my commutes and business trips. I started by listening to my favorite sportswriter, Bill Simmons and his B.S. Report. His podcasts were insightful and highly amusing, making the dreaded drive up to LA an enjoyable experience. But a couple of weeks ago, I decided to search available podcasts and found the best thing since sliced bread. The UPGRD Podcasts were one of a kind, it was a podcast uploaded by a bunch of aviation and frequent flyer mile gurus. The guys, Matthew, Foz, Matt,and Ben knew the ins and outs of the travel industry. I realized these guys were just like me and I had so much to learn from them. So ever since my discovery of the podcasts, I've been addicted. I found myself listening to the podcasts all the time, during my drives, when I'm on the treadmill and even at work. I've burned through half of their 50 podcasts already, I don't know what I will do when I run out of fresh episodes.