We flew out of St. Louis at 7:00 am on Sunday 6/5/05 after I had a long night of partying at a going away party for my friends (Nick and Erin) who are moving up to Minnesota. On only two hours of sleep, I was on my way to Vegas.

We flew Southwest Airlines, and after a brief lay-over in KC, we arrived in Vegas around 11:30 am. My sister, who was flying in from Chicago, was supposed to meet us there at the airport baggage claim at around the same time we arrived. However, we had found out in KC that she had missed her plane due to over sleeping (it was her 21st B-day the night before after all). So we began our journey without her.

My dad had arranged for a limo to pick us up from the airport and give us a quick tour of the strip. Very nice! The weather wasn't as hot as I had expected either. Only about 85 degrees at noon when we left the airport, which with no humidity out there feels like about 75 in St. Louis.

We got to our hotel around 1 pm and quickly arranged for an early check in. We stayed at the Los Vegas Harrah's, nothing fancy but it was as close to free as you can get considering that my mom is a Diamond member of the Harrah's Total Rewards program. She's got (or had I should say) over 97,000 Total Rewards points. Which means the first thing we did after checking in was hit the free (for us anyway) buffet.

After stuffing down a couple plates of grub, we had to nap. Catch up on some lost sleep before the night began. We laid down around 2 pm and caught about 3 hours of Z's before having to wake up to get ready for our first night in Sin City.

We had tickets for Cirque Du Soleil's newest show "Ka" at the MGM Grand Hotel that night at 8:30. A damn fine show, and by far my favorite of all the shows we would eventually end up seeing that week. It was less circus and more martial arts oriented which was f-ing great. Kind of like the Matrix live. The scenery and technical aspects of the show are unbelievable. Over 65 in the cast and 168 stagehands on the crew! Highly recommended if you're going to see any shows in Vegas.

After the show we had reservations at The Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill at the MGM as well, in fact, it was only 20 yards or so from the Ka theater. The food was great, but certainly not as phenomenal as I expected it to be. Maybe my expectations were set too high.

After the food and drink, we decided to walk all the way back to our hotel (which was on the north end of the strip) all the way from the MGM Grand which is on the southern end. It didn't look like too far of a walk, and we wanted to get a good feel for what the strip was like at night.

I thought it would be a wider street (only three lanes each direction for the most part) with much more space to walk (the sidewalks aren't much bigger than your typical city sidewalks until you get near the doors of a hotel/casino). There's very few places to cross the strip on ground level due to the nature of the traffic there, so most of the sidewalks across the streets are elevated.

So we walked, and talked, and enjoyed our first views of Las Vegas after dark. The hooker mini-pimps (mostly illegal immigrants who are handing out little hooker advertisement cards much like baseball trading cards) were out in full force and very persistent. Flicking the cards between their fingers to grab your attention and then shoving them in your face once you look. Once you grab a handful from one guy, ten more guys are there instantly to fill your mitts with more. "Collect 'em all" I say.

Since everything in Vegas is so damn enormous, the walk was deceivingly long. Our hotel looked like it was mere 300 yards away, when in actuality it was closer to 3 miles. But at least we burned off most of our 1000 calorie dinner.

By the time we arrived back at the hotel, my sister had just arrived, a fashionable 12 hours late. She looked just the slightest bit hungover, but hey that's to be expected on your 21st b-day. By the time we greeted her and got ready to go out to the clubs for the evening, we were just done for. My bro and I agreed to just call it a night at 1 am. Pretty wussy of us I know. But after drinking for 10 hours the previous night, getting no sleep, flying, eating, walking, eating, drinking and then walking some more, we figured we'd better rest up now so we would be fresh for the next five days we had in front of us. So we slept.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:38 AM