On a warm evening in late May, I signed online. As usual, I initiated a conversation with Mark. Halfway through our conversation, he told me that he would be going to Portland in a week and a half to baptize his brother’s newborn daughter. As we began to joke about our pastimes, Mark made a shocking suggestion. Verbatim, he said, “You know, maybe I’ll come down there [to Vegas] and cause trouble for a couple of days.” At first, I took the statement lightly, chuckled a bit, and moved on. The next night, he made the suggestion again. I replied, “Are you serious?” His reply was subtle, yet firm…“WHY NOT?” Thus began the two week process of planning an intense vacation. I would later find that this reunion would be the paramount outing my best friend and I have ever had in our seven and a half years of friendship.
Over the next two weeks, we began discussing places to go, where to grab bites to eat, attractions to check out, and overall MUST-DO items. We came up with a two-page list with multiple activities, which we would later have to do reduce due to time constraints. Despite my persistence, Mark insisted on staying on the Strip. I told him that airfare cost was already a large burden, and accommodations at a hotel would be even more burdensome. Besides, the amenities of a hotel can all be found in a home, and I suggested he stay with me for the duration of his trip. He insisted on his desire to be on the Strip, so I said, “OK, whatever then.” While looking for places to stay, I suggested Green Valley Ranch Hotel and Casino, a premier resort located in Henderson. We would later scratch that off the list when we found out that the nightly rate was over three hundred dollars! Mark’s sister-in-law, who has connections in the travel industry, booked him a flight on Alaska Airlines, and found him accommodations at the Luxor Hotel and Casino for five days at a combined cost of six hundred dollars. BINGO. Mark had a way to come to Vegas, we had a place to stay that was on the Strip, and we had cash to do our activities over the five days. Now we needed a way to get to those places. So, I got a 2004 Nissan Sentra rental car. It was cheap, gas efficient and best of all, brand new. OK so we were set. Mark finally left Guam on May 29. The next two weeks were packed with anticipation. The night before Mark arrived, we spent three hours making last minute arrangements. The next morning, I dropped my mom off at work, cleaned out my van, and left the house at 11:30 am to go to the airport. In detail, here’s what we did.
MONDAY
Upon arrival at McCarran International Airport, I frantically searched the concourses for Mark. It was 12:30, and his scheduled arrival time was noon. Suddenly my phone rang. As I walked off the escalator, I saw Mark behind the telephone booths. After I picked him up, we began our trip by going to Smiths, a local grocery store to get items for the hotel. Afterward, we headed back toward the Strip area, and parked at the McCarran Airport Observatory to watch planes land. Unfortunately, the time at which we arrived was the time when few planes were either arriving or departing, so I took him to Goldilocks, the Filipino Bakery and Restaurant, where we got some munchies. We got some Mamon (Cake) and Biko Malagkit (Sticky Rice). Fry’s was next. We headed over to the computer area, and I thought to myself how nice it would be to build my own computer. Mark said “Get the parts, and I’ll do it.” I really thought it would be cool to do so, but I had to check with my mom first. After Fry’s, we had to get my mom so we could check into the hotel. Nevada has this stupid law. No one under the age of 21 is allowed to check into a hotel, so we manipulated the reservation so that my mom would be the primary name on the account. We went to pick her up from work at 3:30, headed to the hotel, and checked in. Mind you, this is the Luxor, a pyramid-shaped hotel. The hotel’s layout is such that each floor is slightly off-set from the preceding floor, in order to accommodate the unique shape of the hotel. We were on the 27th floor. The Luxor has 30. As we ascended in the inclinator (The word inclinator is used in Egypt to refer to elevators), a stomach-tickling feeling came over the three of us. The inclinators, located at the four corners of the pyramid, travel in a diagonal direction. When we entered the room, we opened the window and found ourselves in the perfect room for plane fanatics. Usually when people come to Vegas, they seek rooms that offer views of the other hotels on the strip. Our room, however, had a view of the entire airport, which made Mark and I feel almost as if we were Air Traffic Controllers. After dropping our stuff off at the room, we decided to get dinner. My mom chose Around the World Buffet, located at the Green Valley Ranch Station Casino. Our first meal together was great. I think Mark and I exceeded $15.00 worth of food that night. After dinner, we went to pick up our rental car. My mom was weary about me driving the car, but I somehow managed to instill confidence in her that night. I took the keys, and Mark and I drove to the hotel, while my mom returned home. When we got to the hotel, we wasted no time. We immediately got ready, got back in the car, and went to Wal-Mart to get other food and beverage items. We left with a can of air freshener. So much for fulfilling our purpose there. It was already 1:30 in the morning, so we decided to get some sleep, and get up early so we could accomplish even more in the days to come. We got back to the room, and our stomachs started rumbling. We left again, walked to the Excalibur hotel next door, and got Krispy Kreme donuts. After that, we returned to the room and knocked out.
TUESDAY
We got up on time on Tuesday. Got ready, packed what we needed for the day, and headed to Henderson. I wanted Mark to try this drink at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. It’s this Green Tea beverage. From the look on his face, I could tell he enjoyed it. Afterward, we decided to get breakfast. The previous day, while at Goldilocks, we saw a sign that read “Join Us for an Early Breakfast at 8 am For Only $3.99.” Sounded interesting, so we had breakfast there. It consisted of rice, scrambled eggs, and two longaniza sausages. Eating that meal reminded Mark and me of the times we’d have breakfast at FD, where our caterer Ev would make a similar meal. When we finished breakfast, we decided to go to Primm Valley, which is a small casino-hotel on the Nevada-California border with a huge outlet store mall. Primm Valley is about 45 minutes out of Vegas, but we made it there in 25. When we arrived, we devised a small inside joke that would last the entirety of the trip. Mark said “GOOD JOB”. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just clapped sarcastically, attempting to mock his comment. From then on, any time I’d do something stupid, idiotic, or just plain out of the ordinary, it was a “Good Job”, followed by a “Clap Clap”. When we got down, we walked into Old Navy and did some shopping. For driving him there, Mark got me a single-strap sling backpack, which I used for the remainder of the trip to carry my personal items. We left Primm about two hours later with empty wallets. As we re-entered Nevada, and eventually the Las Vegas vicinity, I decided to take Mark to Aloha2Go, Vegas’ Hawaiian goods store. Mark didn’t find anything he liked, so we went to Chinatown, just to cause trouble, and get a good laugh at what they sold there. After another hour of pure boredom, we went around town to the different malls. We visited the BOULEVARD and GALLERIA malls. We found some items at each, but the malls were pricy, so we didn’t spend much money at either of them. Mark mentioned before he came down that he had gone to a “Birmingham Store”. I had never before heard of such a place, but I took him to “Burlington Coat Factory”, and it ended up being the same store. Good Job, Clap Clap. Exhausted from a long day, we went back to the hotel to rest for a couple of hours before heading out again. Boredom hit us again at the hotel, so we watched planes. At the Airport Observatory, you can tune your FM radio to 88.5, and actually listen to the conversations between pilots and Air Traffic Control. There was a Delta 757 and a Northwest 757, the former waiting to park, and the latter waiting to taxi for takeoff. It was funny because the ATC told the Delta pilot, “Delta turn on 25R and hold while we decide what to do with Northwest.” When operating one of the busiest airports in America, waiting to see what you can do with a plane is not an option. Mark and I could not help but crack up. Good Job, Clap Clap. Deciding what to do next, I looked at our list, and chose a place to get dinner, and decided on Joe’s Crab Shack. Before leaving for dinner, the Luxor gave us complimentary tickets to view the Tomb of King Tutankhamun. Interesting as it was historic, Mark and I found the tour a complete bore. En route to Henderson on Interstate 215, Mark and I saw Philippine Air approaching the runway, and suddenly increase thrust and head away from the airport again. We found this unspeakably hilarious, and as a Kababayan, Mark found this to be completely embarrassing. The plane circled Vegas for about five minutes before deciding to land. Good Job, Clap Clap. We got to Joe’s, had dinner, and went back to my house for a few so I could drop something off. We hit the road again, got Cold Stone Ice Cream, and headed to the Stratosphere, a 1,500 ft. tower with a roller coaster (The High Roller), a free fall (The Big Shot), and a device that swings you 28 ft. off the tower’s edge (The Xscream) at the very top. We tried out the Xscream, and spent nearly an hour trying to regain our senses. We went back to the room to grab some stuff. Not yet satisfied with our accomplishments that day, we went out to the Strip to walk and take pictures. We started at Mandalay Bay and worked our way to New York, New York. The day ended with yet another trip to Krispy Kreme.
WEDNESDAY
We spent most of Wednesday on the Strip. Our day started around 9 am. We drove to the Venetian Hotel, and went to Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum. There, Mark and I met over 30 celebrities, including Jodie Foster, Princess Diana, President Bush, Brad Pitt, Abe Lincoln, The Kennedy’s, and even American Idol emcee and host Ryan Seacrest, as well as wiseass judge Simon Cowell. The museum actually set up the American Idol display so that visitors would have the chance to sing a song, and have Simon judge them! Mark and I decided to pass on that LOL. We walked further south, got to the Aladdin Hotel, and had lunch at Todai, a sushi and seafood buffet, renown throughout the U.S. Mark was weary about eating Masago, the orange-colored salmon eggs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince him to try it, in spite of me telling him the Russian’s call it “caviar”. After lunch, we returned to the car and went to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets, where Mark got a few things at the Nike Store. The event of the day was at the Hilton, where we experienced Star Trek firsthand. There are two attractions for $24.00. First, an interactive show where aliens take the riders hostage, and our mission is to be returned to Vegas to save Spock, and another in which another group of aliens try to steal our DNA. The second one was freaky because the chair in which we sat was designed to simulate actual events happening on screen. For example, the when the alien tried to withdraw blood for a DNA sample from us, the chair would nudge at our backs Before the shows, one of the characters snuck up behind us, and in a deep voice said “Good Afternoon, humans.” I had never seen Mark so freaked out and scared in my life LOL. That was truly funny. After the Hilton, I got permission from my mom to get my parts to build my computer, so we went to Fry’s and got everything. We dropped all the parts off at the room, and went out to the strip again. Mark wanted to watch the Treasure Island Pirate show, so we headed toward Treasure Island Hotel. On the walk over, we encountered EXTREMELY windy weather. We found ourselves walking through dust devils and dodging thousands of people who were thrown off their walking course because of the inclement weather. We arrived 30 minutes early to the show, when suddenly they announced, “Due to the high winds, the Sirens of TI has been cancelled.” Good Job, Clap Clap. Too tired to walk back, Mark pulled out $3.50 for a trolley ride back. When we returned that night, Mark began the process of putting the computer together. We spent about two hours working on it, when hunger hit AGAIN, and we decided on Little Caesar’s downstairs in the hotel’s food court.
THURSDAY
Thursday brought an odd feeling. I could feel Mark’s vacation beginning to come to a close, and I knew I had to do everything possible to make his less than 48 hours in Vegas good ones. I realized that I had used my entire luggage of clothes throughout the week, so we left extra early to go to my house so I could shower there and get some clothes. While I was getting ready, Mark made the final installations on the computer. When he was finished, he decided to do a test run, but unfortunately, the computer wouldn’t turn on. He figured it was the RAM chip, so we took that with us to exchange later that day. We left the house, got some food at Jack in the Box, some coffee at Starbucks, and headed to Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam is about 30 minutes from my house, so it was an extremely easy destination. When we got there, I became a little irate at the fact that there was a $5.00 parking fee. Knowing it was Mark’s last few days turned the five dollar fee into pennies. We walked around the dam for a while and took some “dam” good pictures. Mark was amazed at how one half of the dam is in Nevada and the other half is in Arizona. Because of that characteristic of the dam, Mark had the opportunity to visit three states while on vacation with me. On Tuesday, in Primm Valley, Mark had the opportunity to be in California, as half of the outlets are located in California, while the other half is in Nevada. Because of the dam’s location, we got to see squirrels. They were literally everywhere. When it was time to leave, Mark made one last request. He just HAD to call his parents from the dam. I told him to use my cell, but he insisted that calling them from the payphone located at the dam was more “authentic”, so I let him call them on the payphone. After leaving, we went to A&W to grab root beer floats. That was extremely filling. 20 minutes later, we arrived back in the Vegas Valley. We rushed back to the hotel to get ready for our 4:00 show with Rick Thomas the magician. Rick worked at SandCastle on Guam before making it big here in Vegas. He is world-renown, and was selected as Magician of the Year by the U.S. Association of Professional Magicians. His show is rated the most successful afternoon production in the history of Las Vegas. The show was amazing. Unfortunately, we were seated near a bunch of kids who kept making noise. Mark commented “Now you know how I feel in your presence.” LOL. After the show, we went back to Fry’s to change the RAM chip to a genuine one, and then headed over to Metro Pizza for dinner. After dinner, Mark literally threw our leftovers to the back seat, causing Marinara sauce to spill from the left to the right of the rear passenger seats. ARRRGHHHHH!!!! I remained calm, got a chamois, and cleaned it up. Mark was so amazed by the performance of the chamois, that we had to go back to the Las Vegas Outlets *formerly known as Belz Outlets* on Las Vegas Boulevard because he wanted a chamois of his own. After we cleaned up and left the parking lot, we went to Vegas’ very own Hard Rock Café to take pictures of the huge guitar. We headed over to Caesar’s Palace to get a couple of shirts at the Niketown in the Forum Shops. I had taken Mark to The Nike Store at the Outlets, but he insisted that the merchandise at Niketown is GENUINE. We then left to Treasure Island to catch the show we missed the previous night, but the Discovery Channel was filming something, so AGAIN, it was cancelled. Frustrated, we went to watch the Bellagio Watershow. When we finished, we headed back to Henderson to replace the RAM, and FINALLY, the computer was finished. We installed Windows XP Pro, Microsoft Office 2003 Pro, and Adobe Photoshop CS (version 8). Thanks Mark…I really appreciate the time you spent on my computer. While Windows XP was loading, we went to Wal Mart to try out the photo-editing machines, so Mark and I could print out some of our pictures. Unfortunately, the machines didn’t want to work. Good Job, Clap Clap. So we drove around Henderson, and took panoramic pictures of the Strip. Henderson provides some of the most magnificent views of the Strip. Afterward, we returned to the hotel to spend our last night there. Mark began packing and cleaning up. Mark and I thought it would be a good idea to just stay up the entire night since it was his last day. Unfortunately, sleep hit us at 4 am, and we didn’t wake up till 7 am.
FRIDAY
Mark’s last day arrived. I started to miss him already. While I was showering, Mark finished his packing and did Express Checkout. The hotels here in Vegas—and I’m sure throughout most of the civilized world—provide electronic checkouts. If you check in with a credit card, all you have to do is turn on your room TV, and click “express checkout”, and you’re done. You insert your keys into a key-return envelope and drop it in the drop box and the elevator (or inclinator in our case) entrance. While leaving the hotel, we took final pictures of our five-day home. Leaving the hotel was bittersweet, but all good things come to an end. We went back to my home again so I could get ready. After I finished, we immediately left for breakfast at The Original Pancake House and had baked omelets and “original” pancakes. Goldilocks was next so Mark could get some goods for his family in Portland and on Guam. While at Stratosphere on Tuesday, Mark saw and item there he just had to have to we went back and got it. It was this hand-painted Chinese banner-like scroll that symbolizes the autumn. Very beautiful I must say. The whole week Mark had wanted to go to the Guinness World Records Museum, where one could see the fattest, oldest, tallest, skinniest people, things, or objects of our society. The museum included other superlatives, but overall Mark called the museum cheap and useless. He remarked, “We paid $5.00 to see toys.” Good Job, Clap Clap. Then we went to the Fashion Show Mall, the only stand-alone mall located on the Strip. It was very beautiful and had just phased completion 4 months ago. We made no purchases, but the experience of going there made Mark eager to return and see what Vegas would be like on his next trip. We returned to the Las Vegas Outlets to get the chamois Mark had seen prove itself the night before when he spilled marinara sauce all over the rental car’s back seat. After that, I took him to BoBuzz to get one last shake, and headed over to the Paseo Verde Library, which is a five minute walk from my house. Mark needed to check his online reservation, so we went there to do that. Afterward, Mark felt like Jamba Juice, so again we went to get a shake. Tired, we went back to my house and Mark repacked his luggage to accommodate the newly purchased items. After doing so, we ran out to catch the 4:20 pm showing of “The Day After Tomorrow”, which we had planned to watch on Monday. Our busy schedule impeded us from completing that in the previous days, but we finally found time three hours before his departure to do it. We both fell asleep. Two thumbs down, a BIG waste of time. Good Job, Clap Clap. Mark was feeling hungry, so it was over to Jack in the Box for some Ultimate Cheeseburgers. My mom called, told us she and her family were down at Joe’s Crab Shack (Tuesday’s restaurant) and that she wanted us to join her. Mark’s flight left at 10, but he want to be at the airport by 8. The time was already 7 pm. We only had time to stay for about 30 minutes and say some last goodbyes. Mark and I made our way to the airport. When I dropped him off at the Alaska curbside, it finally hit me. It was time to say goodbye. Keeping the emotion masculine, I shook his hand and said, “Alright dude, you take care you hear.” Mark laughed and responded “What the fuck are you talking about…YOU take care of YOURSELF…I’m not the one who needs it.” We both laughed, waved, and Mark walked into the terminal. I drove off and headed back to Joe’s Crab Shack, where my mom was waiting with her family so we could return the rental car. The ten-minute drive back was the longest ten minutes I had in those last five days. I started to reflect on Mark’s and my journey in Las Vegas. From Monday, when he slowly appeared out of the shadows, until Friday, when he returned to those shadows, and headed home. Mark did a lot for me by coming to Vegas. He forked out a major cost by providing the hotel accommodations and his airline ticket. He paid for a lot of my meals and covered a lot of my shopping expenses when I couldn’t. He even put together a new computer for me, which I am currently using to write this incredible story. Mark gave me, has given me, and I’m sure in the future, will give me a lot of things. But the greatest thing he gave me was his friendship seven and a half years ago, when in sixth grade, on my second day at Bishop, I turned around and said, “What’s up.”
Last week proved paramount our friendship, and as I’ve said in my testimonials to Mark in the various friend-networks to which we belong, “Mark and I have a friendship that’s ever-lasting. If it’s lasted this long, it’s sure to go on.” Thanks for everything Mark. Take care of yourself, and give my highest and warmest regards to your parents for allowing you to come and make my being in Vegas a lot easier to bear.
In the next entry are some pictures to visually enhance the story you’ve just read. Hopefully you enjoy the pictures as much as I have enjoyed partaking in the activities portrayed within them.
Click HERE to jump to ClubPhoto.Com where you can get all the pictures!
