my hotel! these are just 3 of the 17 different casinos, each with a different theme, each perfectly designed to disorient the shit out of you relative to time and space, and to drown out the tortured screams of your bank account:
This was my room. squee!
being from iowa, it’s difficult to get anywhere near a really good concert. occasionally someone awesome comes to des moines, but usually i have to travel 4 hours or more to get to a larger city. i lucked out – not only were Stone Temple Pilots playing AT MY HOTEL, there was still exactly one balcony seat available! and since Scott Weiland is newly sober, the show even started on time and i got to bed at a decent hour for my event the next morning!
now, it is obviously a terrible idea to eat at a converted-taco-bell-lookin-ass restaurant with a white trash name advertising authentic mexican food.
terrible, but funny! i had brunch here before an early-afternoon event, and holy crap was it good. healthful, even! mexican grandmas made me an egg and homemade chorizo burrito with love and fresh salsa. halfway between my hotel and the fencing venue, rocket-fuel power-lunch FTW!
i was supposed to fly home the morning after my last event. the thunderstorms in denver had other plans, though, and my flight was cancelled. so i booked flights for the following day, got back on the airport shuttle, and went back to the fencing venue with all my luggage. i hung out with Coach and got to watch AbsoluteZen and Capo95 in their last events, then finally got a room at the atlantis hotel, which was right next door to the fencing venue. by the time i checked in to my new room, it was 5 PM, and all i had eaten since the night before were a couple of power bars. so i looked into restaurants at this hotel… and as it turns out, “toucan charlie’s,” a horrible margaritaville-themed restaurant, had an all-you-can-eat buffet for $20. after 3 days of fencing and a day of fasting, turns out, i can eat a fucking LOT.
then, i was totally headed back to my room to read or watch tv. i SWEAR. but it turns out there’s a video game arcade tucked in among the casinos of the atlantis, apparently so parents can dump their under-21 children there for hours on end to scream and fight with each other in seizure-lights happy-land. this arcade had 3 dance dance revolution games that were only 30 cents per 3-song, 2-person dance-off play. AND there was a group of bored teenage mexican girls. so! for an investment of only $20 and four hours, i got my biggest ass-kicking of the week! also, i was more sore from the dance-off than i was from all the fencing combined. and i slept like a baby on the plane!
