Took the wife and my Mom to Phoenix to watch number one son in the Pac-10 Track and Field Championships held at ASU over the weekend. The kid is a senior at Berkeley - and he graduates tomorrow! Man, talk about a drain on the old EV - try five years of college!
Since we needed a place to shack up we decided to use an offer from HET for 3 free nights and $150 in Reward Credits that Ak-Chin was offering. Ak-Chin is about 30 miles southeast of the Phoenix airport. I have to admit we had considered just going to Phoenix a few months ago to use this offer. That would have been a colossal mistake! It's an okay place to visit, but I would never make a special trip there just for a casino "fix".
In short, I found the place to be pretty depressing. I guess the evening stench from the nearby cattle ranches was part of it - it made our eyes burn just being outside. Strangely, the stink was curiously absent during the day. But besides that, this type of casino experience is offers plenty of ammo for the Gamblers Anonymous crowd. It was actually kind of pathetic to observe the clientle here on a bright sunny spring day in the desert piling into this place to give their money to Harrahs and the Ak-Chin tribe. Yeah, they have $1 and $5 JB, but that is it. I actually saw 6/4 jacks on one machine! The BJ rules were decent, all 6 deck shoes, no 6-5 payouts, there is one automated roulette wheel - no one to even spin the ball. There is Keno, but no craps. No sportsbook, and worst of all - you had to pay for your beer! I knew this going in, but it is still wierd to see people bangin' away on crappy bar tops and having to pay for beer or
drinks.
Speaking of drinks - we decided to have one by the pool. OUCH! $5.50 for one Michelob Ultra, and $6.50 for about a 10 oz Mai Tai - which was the worst Mai tai ever made - I'm guessing.
The coffee shop was a decent deal, and the buffet was okay. The buffet offered a significant discount for paying with points as well. We had the $19.99 seafood buffet for 1199 RC's - which was worth it. I did have to arm wrestle a 450 pound guy for the last piece of choclate cake though. I lost - the stink from his piggarette was jus too much to overcome...(-;
I know I sound condescending, but the sight of old folks wheezing away with their (assumed) SS checks and smoking like there was no tomorrow - well maybe there isn't for some of them - was pretty hard to take. Not to mention the morbidly obese folks crowding into the buffet, sitting at the roulette wheel - and many smoking! Don't think the LV Visitors bureau will be taking any of their propaganda photos here!
So ends my not so excellent Phoenix adventure in Ak-Chin - fire away!
Oh yeah, the trip was a great success - the kid finished 6th in the Pac-10 shot put. Talk about an incredible difference of lifestyles - amazingly fit athletes on the upswing of life as compared to the dregs of the casion experience. Wow. Guess that's my sociology minor coming to the surface....(-;
Jigger
"My anger management class pisses me off"
"You can"t drink all day if you don't start in the morning"
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"Ever notice that people who spend money on beer,
cigarettes, and video poker are always complaining
about being broke and not feeling well?"
