ok, since i'm a recently revealed lurker, i thought (and chap suggested) that i'd share a tr about my recent trip during this last ldw. but its gonna pale by comparison after reading all of your great trip reports. it looks like i was one day off from everyone though cause we hit up all the palms clubs that saturday versus friday, but on to the report.

my friend dre was in town from south carolina and had decided to do a turnaround trip to vegas that saturday. originally, i told him i wasn't going to be able to make it cause my wife just had a baby, but after a lot of persuading by him, and intensive wife negotiations by me, it was on. he volunteered to drive his rental and had already arranged for us to crash at the hard rock with some of our other friends that were staying that weekend. so i was only there for 1 day/night but i'll split it up into 2 since i tend to be kinda wordy.


saturday 9:30am - 7:00pm

so he picks me up from chino hills around 9am sat morning and we're off. the drive is kinda congested for early saturday morning, but hey it was ldw after all. we stop in barstow around 10:30 and decide to eat and lay a base for the alcohol as we figure that could be our last meal for quite some time. so we pound our food in record time and hit the road again, and poof 2 hours later and we're in vegas.

seeing as we only have 1 day to try and cram as much partying in as possible, we decided to buy the wristband for the palms so we can hit up all of the clubs and not waste any valuable time waiting in line. the all access wristband also gets us into the pool party at the palms which they were having all weekend as part of a ldw dj party celebration thing, so we decided to head straight there and worry about dropping off our stuff at the hard rock later.

get to the palms and pick up our wristbands no problem so we head to the bar for the mandatory "i just to vegas" drink and cigarette. once we pick those up, we're off to the pool. there's a small line where there checking id's and unbeknownst to us, you can't bring any drinks in. no worries, i pound my beer and dre downs his long island which i can tell damages him just a little bit, and we head into the pool area.

so the original plan was that our friends that got in last night were going to get to the pool early and reserve us some loungers. yeah, that didn't happen. give them a call and they're still in the hotel room nursing their wounds from the previous night's escapades. so we do a lap around the pool in the futile attempt to find a chair. the place is pretty crowded with lots of talent walking around and of course no open chair in sight. so we end up just setting our crap down on the ground by a nice pillar between the bar and the blackjack tables, grab another drink, and camp out in the pool to enjoy the view. we drink a few beers, catch up, and bullshit for about an hour or 2 when the rest of the crew finally shows up.

so i'm just chilling in the pool drinking my beer when this drunk girl swims up, looks at my charger hat, and starts going off on how the chargers are a jv team and suck major balls, and on and on.

as a side note, i didn't realize that wearing a charger hat would be such a polarizing thing at a pool party (i'm a die hard charger fan, and yes it has been painful over the years but i appreciate your sympathy). i got comments everywhere i went, it was a love/hate relationship but as i was pulling serious wing/grenade man duties that day (man rule section 4 subparagraph 3 states that the married man/men in any group of guys must always be the wing/grenade man at all times. duties include being the first to infiltrate a group of woman who clearly don't want to be talked to, talking to a female companion of the woman your friend is interested in regardless of their size, looks or mental health, apologizing on their behalf when they behave inappropriately, and to provide adequate cover when an escape is necessary), it worked great at striking up conversations with random groups of girls. but i digress.

so this girl is just going off about how much the chargers suck and how the cowboys are the greatest team ever, and i'm like "excuse me do i know you". turns out i kind of do cause she came with my other friends. so all day we're engaged in a shit talking, shot taking, football debat that kinda made a scene in the pool the drunker we got. but she was actually pretty cool even if she did have poor taste in football teams. the rest of the day was pretty much a blur of talking to random people, miller lite cans, shots, and tony homo references.

at some point i do remember having a drunken debate outside of the bathroom with this extremely hot woman about how she was convinced that the mens bathroom was nicer than the womans. so she drags me into the women's bathroom and makes me drag her into the mens which causes the bathroom attendant to flip out. but i won that debate, the women's bathroom is much nicer, so we decided to hug it out.

around 5ish the pool party thins and we head to the hard rock and try and regroup for the evening. so we're hammered and starving so dre decides that we need to hit up the hofbrauhaus. for those unfamiliar its a german beer hall right across from the hard rock. i gotta say, i love the hofbrauhaus, always a great atmosphere. you sit down tavern style and share tables with other guests and everyone is so damn friendly. being rational drunks, we decide that we each need to order a giant stein of hefeweizen. that was the tipping point for me, i vaguely remember eating a fucktastic steak, and the next thing i know i'm lying in a cot in a room at the hard rock and someone is yelling "get up bitches".

part 2 to come...

Man I love Barstow

sat - sun 9:00pm - 11:00am

apparently i've been asleep for a couple of hours but i swear it felt like 15 minutes. i'm super tired, and still pretty tipsy. dre's all pumped up for the evening festivities and he's just killing me (is there anything more annoying than someone who's really upbeat when you feel like complete shit). so now the boyz have busted out the bottle of patron and start patron shots over me, (my cot is right in the middle of the room), and the smell is killing me. i finally can't take it any more and i drag myself outta the bed and head downstairs to starbucks. after a quadruple shot of espresso, i start to feel slightly better. i take a shower and get ready and i'm almost as good as new, if new is 1/2way hung over, tipsy, and slightly nautious. after another cocktail and a forced shot of patron, i start to feel better and the caffiene starts to kick in. so we head out to the room where are other friends are staying to round up the troops.

so we walk in around 11 and my cowboy fan friend is lying in bed puking her guts out in the trash can. i find this hilarious and start heckling her and taking pictures. apparently she's not gonna make it out to the clubs even though she already got the wristband. as funny as it was though, we were kinda bummed cause she was the "fun" girl but of the group.

the rest of us arrive at the palms around midnight and decide to head over to ghostbar first. we get there and the place is just a madhouse. just silly crowded and there are like 5 semblances of lines stemming out in various directions. i find the guy with the clipboard and show him my wristband and he puts us in one of the many different lines. at this time my friend john starts bitching about the wristbands saying how he knew we'd still have to wait in line. 5 minutes later, the clipboard guy comes back and lets us right in to the elevator. that shuts john right up and leads to jokes all night at his expense. a few moments later we're in and at the bar.

ok, so i've been to ghostbar a few times and this is the busiest i've ever seen it. then again, it is ldw. so we make our way to the bar and i order us a round of kamikazes. the girls start dancing in the no dancing zone that everyone is dancing in and dre & i head outside to look around. i head over to the railing to take a couple of pictures and to try and smoke a cigarette in peace. next thing i know, some girl grabs me and i'm now standing on the little see through window which gives you the nice view of the ground many stories away. so the random girl who pulled me on this thing says this way if the glass breaks, we can all die together. i'm like wtf? i look around and dre is taking to another girl in the group so cue grenade man duties i start taking with this crazy chick. dude, she's just out there, but i smile and nod at all of the right places and slowly disengage myself and start talking to one of her friends who is more or less sane. so we hang out with these ladies for a bit and debate how the bottom side of this plexiglass window gets finger prints and smudges on it as its like 50 some odd stories up and inverted.

around 2 or so, the rest of our friends come over and we decide to head on over to moon. again, super crowded, but we flash the wristbands and we're in the elevator in minutes. but i'm at the back of the group and end up having to wait for the next one. so i get up there and again, the place is super packed and my friends are not in sight. so i end up heading to the upstairs bar to get a drink before i worry about trying to find anyone. there's this hilarious scene at the bar cause this older short little balding guy is totally molesting a hot girl half his age while she bilks him for drinks. so i get a beer and start talking to the friend of said molested girl, who's just laughing at her friend. 1 drink turns into 2, which morphs into 4, and next thing i know an hour or so has passed and i'm a little drunk. so i get a hold of dre and he & john finally show up at the bar and i pull the introductions and all of us hang out for a bit. dre tries to surgically extract the hot younger girl from the older guy with little success and he didn't have the right tools for the job, ie a deep wallet and the willingness to buy her drinks for the rest of the night.

so we hang out for little bit longer and drunk dre & john decide to head to the dance floor to try meet/dance with women. yeah, to all of the ladies that may have been at moon that night, i sincerely apologize. so i decide to head down to playboy club to try and get my gamble on. this has been the longest i've been in vegas without gambling and i'm starting to go through withdrawals. i grab another drink at the bar then find a table i like (meaning one who's minimum i can afford) and i'm about to sit down when john and dre arrive. dre doesn't gamble at all so we try and figure out what to do next as the rest of the group has already called it a night. so we come up with what any other drunk group of guys would do at 4:00am in vegas, and decide to hit up a strip club.

we exit the palms and the taxi line is ridiculous. so we grab the nearest limo and have him take us to the strip club. now on goes the debate about getting in with no cover, the limo driver ensures us that we won't have to pay cover. so we get there, and of course we end up having to pay. but we don't end up paying for the limo which was some relief, but i would've must rathered paid $40 for that versus the $30 a person for cover. so i take dre's wallet away from him. (a couple of years ago dre lost the priviledge of managing his own money in a strip club due to repeat credit card and atm instances which always leads me to be his drunken strip club money manager). so he tells me before we get in that he's only going to get 1 lapdance and that's it, and don't let him get anymore. so we pay the cover and i look in the wallet and his drunk ass only has $5. oh well, looks like i'm covering his dance, its only one so no big deal.

so i go to the bar and grab us a round of drinks and by the time i get back, john is already off with a stripper and dre has a girl on his lap. she's totally selling a dance and i break the bad news to her that i have his money but i'll gladly get the dance for him. so i look at dre and ask if he wants one, and he looks back at the dancer and shakes his head, and she gets all offended and takes off. let me tell you, there's no more hated a person than the money manager of your drunk friend. all night, girls on his lap, him saying that i got his wallet, the girls hitting me up, me looking back at him, and him shaking his head.

so i eventually get up and head to the bathroom and by the time i get back i have an angry cocktail waitress giving dre a hard time. i come up and ask what the problem was and apparently my drunk friend had ordered another round of drinks without his wallet. sonofa...ok i pay the waitress and calm her down and now i've pretty much reached the sober level. dre finally finds a girl he likes and i take her aside and clearly explain that he's only got enough money for 1 dance and i give her the money and a fat tip in advance and she takes him off to a dark little corner leaving me alone with 3 beers. i start working on them as i'm trying to bring back the buzz. john finally reappears for like 2 minutes before another girl pulls him away. meanwhile i look at my watch and think and its been like 15 minutes which is way longer than it takes for 1 dance. so i'm just picturing the stripper giving dre like 5 dances and coming back to me with a large bill. and you're pretty much at their mercy, its not like the customer is always right here, debating the bill is definitely a moot point. he finally returns and it turns out the girl just wanted to hang out with him a bit, thank god. now that he's gotten his lap dance out of his system, and i no longer have to babysit, we just chill and drink some more beers and enjoy the show. john finally returns again and we grab a cab back to the hard rock.

6:30, the sun is coming up, and i still haven't gambled. so john and i sit down for some blackjack and dre grabs a coffee and water and starts sobering up. i'm excited, i've been itching to play all day now. so i pull my my last $200 in cash out of my wallet, cash it in and get ready to roll. 30 minutes later its all gone. now that was pretty anticlimactic don't ya think? so i get up while john continues to fight the losing battle. dre comes over and insists that he's ok to drive home. i say now? he says yep, gotta run from the hangover. another thing about dre is that he is done after a day of drinking. if he crashes now i think that there's no way we're getting outta vegas before 5:00pm and i really should get home to the wife & baby. so i say i'm down, we go out to the room, grab our bags, say later to the fellas, and we're outta town by 7:00am.

the drive home was uneventful, stopped at baker for the best bacon cheese whopper i ever ate and then we were back in chino hills by 11:00am. pretty fun trip, the highlight was definitely the pool party at the palms. it was the first time i ever hit one up and it was pretty fricken awesome. i was bummed that we didn't hit up rain but my friend john wasn't a big fan and we spent way too much time at ghostbar. huge thanks to the info on this site and everyone in the forum, those palms wristbands hooked it up. easiest time i've ever had trying to get into a club without bottle service.

a couple of pics, 1 of the hofbrauhaus beers and 1 or my cowboy fan friend in her finest hour. quality isn't the best though.

Great TR. I think if you drive from Cali to Vegas you MUST stop off in Barstow. It just starts the trip off good. In-N-out before and then Del Taco on the way home. For some reason that Del Taco puts so much more meat and cheese on their stuff.

the barstow del tacos are hands down the best around. the one on main street is the best, but the one by the outlets is also good. i think its because del taco was founded in yermo which is pretty close. haha, my wife loves her del taco.

typical anti-charger fans... :) were they big girls since they liked the cowboys?

great job dp!! see if you would have joined a little earlier you would have known to call the strip club for the limo, and had more dough for lap dances.

haha, i definitely wouldn't call the girls slender.

and good to know about the limo for future endeavors.