Whisky City and Vegas

Before I get to anything else I want to congratulate Brian Ridgeway and his fiance' Andrea on their engagement! As soon as I hooked up with Brian in Vegas the first thing he did was tell me the good news. I was pleseantly surprised since I didn't know he was planning on proposing, but at the same time I was not at all surprised that he would want to marry such a fantastic woman. He said they have a tentative date of May 10th 2008 and will be getting married in Maryland. Also they've asked me to perform the ceremony! Very exciting stuff.

Now on to other topics. I managed to survive my vacation and now that it's over it seemed like it lasted about 45 seconds. The festivities started on Saturday night with the Whiskies of the World convention at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Jake, E.B. and I got to the hotel about 5 p.m. about 30 minutes before the event was going to start. After a short wait someone handed us a tote bag (for free goodies), we grabbed a few glasses and off we went.

I knew there was going to be a good amount of whisky at this event since it was $115 a person, but I wasn't sure how much waiting in line there would be or if the pours would be so insubstantial that it would be hard to get a buzz going. It turns out that it was a completely unlimited amount. There were roughly 50 vendors, each had between 3 and 6 of their best whiskies and there was virtually no waiting once we got into the tasting room.

We'd walk up to a table start with the 12 year stuff, then compare it to the 18 year and finally to the 21 year. We even tried two or three 30 year old scotches and whiskies which were over $400 a bottle. Three or four vendors had some other kind of hard alcohol in addition to their whisky and there was one that was exclusively gin and two that were vodka only.

Any worries I had about pour size were quelled in the first 5 minutes. While it was usually just a splash for the highest end stuff, it was a 1/2 shot or more for even the $100 a bottle stuff. And if it wasn't enough you could just ask for more. But after the first few I stuck to the plan of having a little taste and then dumping the rest in the dump bucket because I wanted to try at least one thing from every vendor (I think I hit about 75% of them) and like I said every vendor had at least 3 different whiskies.

Happily, there was also a huge table covered in hundreds and hundreds of bottled waters and a buffet that lasted all night. We hit the buffet three times and between the three of us probably had 25 bottles of water. During our first pit stop at the buffet we started asking each other if we knew exactly what the difference between a Bourbon and a regular whisky or a Scotch was. It turns out that none of us really knew, but the guy at the next table over heard us and ended up giving us an impromptu 10 minute lesson on what differentiates the various kinds of whisky.

All in all it was a great night. I managed to avoid a massive hangover in part due to the constant refueling and in part due to the fact that my stomach could only handle so much straight whisky. I found a few jewels and discovered conclusively that I prefer Bourbon or Kentucky whisky to Scotch. You can check out the pictures I took here

The next day we left Oakland airport at around 3 p.m. and after a little over an hour of the most turbulent plane ride I can remember we landed in Vegas. Before the trip I called a few hotels about getting a free room, but because there was one of the biggest conferences of the year in town (some kind of broadcasting conference) the only place I could manage was the Flamingo. Luckily E.B. was able to swing a free room at the MGM and the Paris so we had plenty of hotel space to go around.

The genesis of the trip was the fact that Brian was going to be in town for 4 days for a conference. He's an Oracle database administrator working for the U.S. census bureau and was attending an Oracle conference with his coworker Tom. Tom is an avid reader of this very blog (Hey Tom) and it was very interesting having someone who you've never met know a lot about you. Instead of "I heard your wife was pregnant" it was "So when is Jen going to have her next ultrasound?" While I might hear from a friend of a friend "I heard you were a poker player?" From Tom I got "I know April started out strong for you, how's it been going since?" To his credit, despite the fact that he was the least seasoned gambler among the 5 of us (by a mile), he was the only one who to my knowledge ended up winning for the trip.

For the most part the trip was a pretty standard Vegas Trip with plenty of drinking, eating and gambling but there were a few highlights. The first highlight was the best meal I've ever had (without a doubt) at 2 in the morning. We spent Monday and on into the early hours of Tuesday playing at the MGM. We'd had a late although sizable lunch but we skipped dinner, so by 2 a.m. we were all starving. After speaking to the pit boss we got a comp for a free meal at the Studio Cafe which was the only restaurant that was still open at the MGM. Every casino has one restaurant that's open 24 hours and I knew from experience that this one was one of the best.

The four of us (Tom split off earlier in the evening) sat down and as it usually does, the thing on the menu that caught my eye was the steak and lobster. Everyone else started mentioning the shrimp cocktail and we decided it was time to find out if there was a dollar limit on our comp. When our waiter came back we said "What's the limit on the comp" and he said (knowing he was going to get tipped based on the total) "It's unlimited, you can each get a 15 piece shrimp cocktail and a filet and lobster with desert and a bottle of wine if you want." Not wanting to over do it we only got two 15 piece shrimp cocktails ($35 per) for the table and a platter of chicken fingers (with 4 dipping sauces) that must have cleared an entire hen house. And, of course, all four of us got the steak and lobster. Throw in a few deserts and a half dozen 1 litre bottles of Fiji water and the bill came out to $357. Getting a meal like that for free made those of us that lost that night (not me, ha ha losers!) feel a little better about losing.

There is one major highlight and one MAJOR lowlight from the trip which will have to wait for tomorrow. The first one is about a miraculous comeback I had in a small poker tournament at the MGM and the other is about an unbelievably favorable situation that E.B. came across that ended up TOTALLY screwing him over. Both are stories that you will not want to miss.