The Ferengi’s advice on getting married was the First Rule of Acquisition.
Day Two of the Vegas wedding-vacation was less frantic, at the beginning.
Somara and I quickly walked over to Paris for the breakfast buffet which has become a mandatory stop on every visit.
Then we picked up everyone to check out the Las Vegas Hilton to take in the Star Trek Experience. Great timing when we went too. The city would be up to its ears in Trekkies the following week. I made one employee operating the ride laugh by reminding them of the great rebuttal from The Simpsons. “Whoa! A fat sarcastic Star Trek fan! You must be a devil with the ladies.”
Afterwards, Jose gave us the grand tour of his room at Stratosphere which had the greatest view I’ve ever seen…the fire escape! And my other friends who stayed at the New York thought theirs with the roller coaster stunk.
We started to head back but never made out of the Strat’s lobby because we saw a large line forming for the registration desk. Someone asked what happened and the word was the hotel’s computers crashed. Now everything had to be done the old-fashioned way at a slower pace. This wouldn’t have concerned us if only Jose was staying there. However, Ethan had just landed and he was on his way from the airport to, you guessed it, the Stratosphere. I didn’t have a cell phone then so Jose was telling Ethan the bad news.
Since Ethan chose to come to our wedding out of his own pocket, I grabbed Jose’s phone, told him we’d hold his place in queue, gave Somara the rental car’s keys with some tip money and said us guys would see them at the Aladdin in a while. I think I press ganged Nelson and Jose into this favor. They didn’t seem to mind, especially when a waitress came by to pass out free drinks to everybody waiting in line. Ethan’s shuttle bus must have stopped at every casino on the Strip too. By the time we saw him, I know I was pretty close to lit from the free (more like discounted due to tipping) booze. Jose was getting there because I remember him raising his drink going, “Free drinks just to wait in line! I love this town!” OK, I paraphrased him. It was a fuzzy afternoon yet we saved a friend over an hour of grief with the line.
The remainder of the evening, aka my Bachelor Party, was a nice, mellow evening launched at the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, checking out the fuss at Palms, conversing and smoking cigars at Mandalay Bay and wrapping up at Aladdin’s center bar. I was wiped so I left Nelson and Jose to catch up. I wish I stayed since Jose had one of the funniest Vegas experiences. Ask him, he tells it better and I don’t want to ruin the “punch line.”